First year of college is in the books!
It's time for a recap...
Hey! It's been a minute since I've published a post. I've been up to... college. Life at UT Austin is busy and crazy and awesome. I figured I should write a recap for my first two semesters. Here we go:
coursework
These are the courses I've taken:
- 1st sem (4 courses, 13 hours):
- M408D, Calc 2 & 3, Dr. Theresa Martines
- M325K, Discrete Math, Dr. Shawn Williams
- HIS315L, U.S. History Since 1865, Dr. Rachel Ozanne
- ARC308, Architecture and Society, Larry Speck
- 2nd sem (5 courses, 15 hours):
- M362K, Probability I, Dr. John Luecke
- M341, Linear Algebra, Dr. Zachary Miner
- ECO304L, Intro to Microeconomics, Dr. Scott Carrell
- UGS303, Creative Problem Solving, Larry Speck
- GOV310L, American Government, Dr. Shannon Bow O'Brien
I was pretty pleased with all of them, and my GPA is still doing just fine. My top 3 favorite classes were M362K, M325K, and ARC308.
extracurriculars
I've been involved in:
- pickleball/volleyball: In my first semester, I was the captain of our coed intramural volleyball team. We weren't very good[1], but it was a lot of fun playing. In both my first and second semester, I played duos intramural pickleball. That was even more fun.
- chess club: I've attended chess club almost every single Monday since the start of the school year. What can I say? I love chess. I'm an officer now, and I help manage our social media presence and organize club tournaments.
- board game club: I discovered board game club late into my first semester. It's great and the people there are friendly and awesome. I'm a junior officer there, so I assist setup/breakdown for the weekly board game meetings. Sometimes we get a lot of people (30+), and it's really fun.
- hill house: I've found an awesome community here. This is a Christian study center, and they host dinners and scripture readings and study hours. It's all wonderful and the people are incredible. I especially became more involved in Hill House in my second semester.
- part-time work: I worked 4 hours/week in my first semester and 8 hours/week in my second semester at Arena Hall. I basically just helped set up events and kept the place clean. It was a much better experience than working at Chick-Fil-A or Chipotle would be.
- private tutoring: In my second semester, I found some clients for individual math & chess tutoring in Austin. This was intrinsically rewarding (I truly enjoy teaching kids/teens) and extrinsically rewarding (I made quite a bit more money than I did at Arena Hall).
I must say, that's a lot of side quests![2]
social life
I went to a high school with a grand total of 32 people enrolled. My graduating class was a whopping 12 people. So I knew everyone in my high school, which was cool, but 32 people is not a lot of people. UT Austin has 40,000+ undergrads. So, you know. Only a couple more people.
I was worried that I wasn't going to find a group of friends at UT. I was starting fresh, because I was the only person from my graduating class going to UT. I can now say that I've found friends, and that the #1 easiest best way to find friends is to join student organizations.[3] Friendships are way easier when you have a consistent way to see & talk to people.[4]
College is such a good time to make friends. I'm glad to have already met so many great people, and I'm excited to strengthen those friendships and meet more people in my next 3 years at UT!
trips
I had three trips that are worth mentioning:
- Jan 2025: I took a five-day trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, to play in the 2025 Pan-American Intercollegiate Championship. I played in the U1800 section as Board 2, and my three teammates and I managed to snag second place (out of 47 teams in the section)!
- Feb 2025: I took a long weekend off from school[5] to ski with friends & family in Vail. We shared a condo and went skiing as much as possible. The powder was excellent, and overall, it was a really nice break in the middle of my second semester.
- Mar 2025: I went with 6 other guys on a six-day road trip to Tennessee and Missouri. We drove 2000 miles in total and had a great time hanging out. This spring break trip was so fun.
conclusion
My freshman has been the most fun year of my life—so far! It's a little crazy to think that I'm already 25% through college, though. The adage is true: the days are long but the years are short.
email me!
To the reader: I hope you have a good summer! If you're so inclined, you should send me (nathan@njbrown.com) an email about how your 2025 has been. It doesn't have to be a long recap like mine—even a couple of sentences is great. I'm just curious what my readers are up to :)
We lost all three games in our pool play. The other teams evidently were not there to mess around. ↩︎
Shoutout to my M408D friend Andrea. She made the term "side quest" into one of my most-used phrases. ↩︎
Obligatory "your mileage may vary". Seriously, though, student orgs are awesome. ↩︎
However, it is 100% possible to have solid friendships even if you aren't together in any orgs or classes. Camille, one of my best friends at UT, is an advertising major, and although we have virtually nothing in common, we are still great friends. ↩︎
I left on Thursday evening and came back late Monday night. Thankfully, in my second semester, I had no classes on Friday. This was great and I would highly recommend it. ↩︎