Year 1 Review

Year 1 at UW as an early entrance scholar or something.

Autumn Quarter | 2025

This quarter was a lot. Entering college with no credits was interesting because I got a schedule that looked somewhat similar to a high schooler’s, except with 2 or 3 hour breaks in between classes. I also joined Student Senate, which was a fun experience trying to fit study time between classes. I think this was the quarter that I learned the most academically and explored the most.

I took the following classes:

• Calculus I — this was a fun class that I did somewhat well in. If it hadn’t been for the final, I would have done pretty well in my opinion.
• General Chemistry I — this was not a fun class. Chemistry should not be this detailed; most of the quarter was on physics instead of what people would consider chemistry.
• English: Composition — very much projects-based. The structure of the class was freeing within the scope of the assignments. One of the essays I ended up writing was about Minecraft and Existentialism.
• First-Year Interest Group (University Community) Seminar — Communities Research project was interesting to do.
• Early Entrance Seminar — Basically repeated the First-Year Interest Group Seminar. Not my favorite class because it was highly repetitive.

This quarter, I took 18 credits with five classes. While these classes might not have been truly reflective of the “3 hours weekly work per 1 credit”, it was indeed difficult to balance all of them together.

Winter Quarter | 2026

Coming back from Winter Break, I was refreshed to do better. I don’t think I got out of relaxation mode, though. Averaging around 9 hours of sleep a day, I barely got through my 17 credit courseload. It didn’t help that three of my four classes were either fully asynchronous or had an asynchronous option.

• Calculus II — this was more fun than Calculus I, but I felt sort of behind on all the concepts. I should have studied a little bit more over the break.
• General Chemistry II — despite everything I did, I kept doing poorly. I did pretty well on the final, but didn’t do as good on the midterms.
• Concert Season — this was a low-effort class made to encourage students to engage with musical performance. I don’t think I got a lot from the lectures (my orchestra teacher in middle school was into teaching us about musical culture), but it was interesting to hear about the history of different genres and attend/watch performances.
• Introductory Psychology — first class I took directly for one of my prospective majors. This was an interesting class, but the online structure was not as engaging. If I wasn’t interested in the topic, I would have dropped the course.

Spring Quarter | 2026

I finally stepped into research!

• General Chemistry III — almost done! I did really well (subjectively) on the midterms, but the final really messed up my grade. I’m only half-convinced I did poorly.
• Biology I — very high-maintenance class for the course content. I did not like this class.
• Human Rights & Corporate Accountability — took this honors course as an elective. It was quite interesting to enter seminar-style classes again, especially in scale. Although I didn’t get into the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, I think it was a good course to have taken. It was a lot of synthesis, though.
• Experiential Learning Seminar — probably shouldn’t have taken this class content-wise, but it was helpful to reflect on my college career. On second thought, this was a great class to take because it required me to engage in reflection.
• Psychology Research — 2 credits, fun. I don’t think my supervisor submitted my credits though (they did, my transcript updated a few days after deadline).

Overall, this was a pretty chill quarter. Chemistry was stressful, but we have the summer to review.

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This year was very interesting, both in a positive and negative manner. The quarters seem to speed by (although summer was not that bad for being one week shorter — see next year’s review). I feel like I learned a lot — let’s see how long I retain it.