When I started at UCBA in the fall of 2012, I was unsure of what to expect. From what I had heard from various friends and family, commuting to college was made out to be an entirely different experience from living on-campus, a short walk away from your classmates and lecture halls.
While Clifton has a very different feel compared with Blue Ash as a neighborhood, the academic nature of both campuses carries a surprisingly large number of similarities.
In the beginning, I was overwhelmed to say the least. High school had been a breeze for me, but it hadn’t taught me how to really focus on my schoolwork. Homework was done during school hours in study halls or at lunch, and studying rarely happened for more than a half hour at a time.
My college classes, on the other hand, required several hours of homework, studying, and practice nearly every day. Weekly homework assignments, which took four to eight hours, each seemed ridiculous and were unheard of for someone who had never had to spend significant amounts of time on schoolwork.
For the first few weeks, I faltered. I was doing bare minimums to complete assignments, not studying outside of class, and thinking of all the “free time” I now had without realizing how much of it should be spent on school.
Soon, however, I found my footing, forcing myself into a routine of making several trips to the library every week, organizing all of my assignments more neatly, spending more of my free time studying, and working on better time management.
Now, in my second semester of college, I’m fully used to the heavy workload and no longer feel anxious about transferring to main campus for Electrical Engineering in the fall of 2013, having taken my core classes and survived the majority of my first year.
Overall, I’ve had a great experience and would recommend starting at UCBA to just about anyone looking to someday head south to Main Campus.
Wednesday, June 25, 2025