From a New Freshman
1
Posted by: Hopkins Insider | 
February 1 2010 | 
Comments (1)
Name: Martin Kelly
Year: Class of 2013
Hometown: Eugene, OR
Major: Computer Science
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Like most freshmen, I came to Hopkins with a mixture of emotions. Although I was excited – I had been looking forward to college for as long as I could remember – I was also very nervous. In fact, the very things that made me excited also made me nervous. Although I was eager to choose what I studied rather than having it dictated to me, I also wasn’t sure what my classes would be like or how hard they would be. Although I was eager to live in a new city very different from my own, I had lived in Eugene my whole life and didn’t really know what Baltimore would be like. Although I was eager to meet new friends from all over the country, I started out all alone on campus desperate to make friends like I had in high school. In short, like most other freshmen, I could sense that my life at Hopkins would be very different than my previous 18 years, and whether that difference was good or bad would depend entirely upon myself. Although this freedom was exhilarating, it was also profoundly terrifying.
Luckily, like most freshmen, this new world of Hopkins is turning out to be much more exhilarating
than terrifying. Although my courses have been challenging, they have also been very rewarding. Unlike in high school, when I work hard here, I nearly always feel like I’m learning something valuable rather than completing busy work for a grade. And although it can be frustrating when professors have high standards – I’ve had to rewrite several essays in order to improve my thesis – I think my classes are teaching critical thinking much better than high school did. For example, in my philosophy class here, my teacher forces us to find holes in our own arguments; if we fail to do so, he will find them for us. In contrast, high school teachers usually gave me a good grade as long as I could understand and regurgitate the material.
I have also been getting used to Baltimore and adjusting to a big city. Before Hopkins, I lived in a town of 150,000, so moving to a big city on the east coast was obviously a big adjustment for me. That said, I’ve become comfortable with Baltimore and had some fun in it. My friends and I have been on some adventures in the city, and these trips often uncover a new restaurant or a part of the city we had never seen. Although they’re not Eugene, Hopkins and Baltimore are starting to feel more like second homes.
Finally, I’ve also been happy with social life here. Contrary to the Hopkins reputation, the people I’ve met here are not the cutthroat pre-meds that supposedly fill this school. Instead, it’s been really easy finding nice people, and I now have many good friends who make my college experience a lot more than four years of intense studying. We like to watch movies, cook, or just hang out. Because of them, finals week was actually one of the most fun all semester. Although we had lots of studying to do, we took a break most nights. One night during Hanukkah, we cooked latkes. Most of our hall helped us eat them as they followed the smell downstairs to the kitchen!
Obviously, not every day at Hopkins is perfect, but all in all, I’m quite happy here. My freshman worries turned out to be ill-founded, and I’m really happy I decided to come here.
By Double Major'13, February 1, 2010 @ 10:07 PM
Great blog martin! As a fellow CS major, i wasn’t very sure of the CS dept. here; mostly because of the myth regarding the all-conquering super powerful pre-meds! Turned out that the CS and ECE Depts are one of the best in the country.Interesting fact I came across: Jeong Kim, current President of the world famous Bell labs did his CS,EE double major from Johns Hopkins in 3 years. Many CS ,EE applicants just don’t see JHU in a techy manner with vibrant robotic clubs and ample research opportunities in the CS EE fields, guess ur blog went a long way in dispelling that.