5 ms·

Kids, take your college more seriously

41 points by redbell 3y ago

sBqQu3U0wH 3y ago
Sometimes I think about how I should have worked harder and paid more attention to my courses while in university. My grades were pretty good (though could have been better), and I put effort into my projects and labs, but I feel that I didn't use my time well and didn't explore the opportunities, whether it was taking different courses, attending events, or finding like-minded people with whom I could have created something together, or even reading more books and studying a little more. After all, it was quite a short period of time, and after that, life just went downhill anyway.
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  It’s so hard to get college exactly right. Part of the point is to make a bunch of mistakes and learn from them
  - jasonladuke0311 3y ago
    Yep. Unfortunately it’s cost-prohibitive for most people.
  - runsonrum 3y ago
    I still make mistakes decades later. I suppose the mistake will stop when the learning stops.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
notsurenymore 3y ago
I wish I had taken it seriously and gone… actually I’m not sure. I had a different attitude coming out of high school, I was more naive and arrogant, and probably wouldn’t have made much of it. If I could go back now, though, I have a much clearer idea of what I would want out of it, and what I could get out of it, and how to take advantage of it, unfortunately that’s not possible anymore.
- jwells89 3y ago
  Similar experience here. Coming out of high school, my head just wasn't in the right place to take advantage of college on any level and it'd be another 10-15 years with all of the accompanying life experience before that'd change. Part of this I'm sure has to do with how high school is structured (its almost total absence of practical examples for using what was being taught was a huge damper on my interest in it, for example), but there's also just so many other things on a young adult's mind competing for attention that it's no wonder many students struggle.
  - notsurenymore 3y ago
    > its almost total absence of practical examples for using what was being taught was a huge damper on my interest in it, for example Ag yes, notably, I just could not care about calculus when I was in high school. I understood it had practical users, but at the time it just seemed far away from me I couldn’t bring myself to care. Flash forward years later and I find myself interested in problems where that knowledge might have actually been useful.
    - mips_r4300i 3y ago
      Also couldn't care less about math in school, until it came time to write game engine stuff. I learned trig so fast, and it made intuitive sense because I could directly model it in my game. Same with matrix math. Kids have a hard time handling abstract concepts, especially boys whose brains develop slower and for a longer period.
- solardev 3y ago
  Can you do an online degree?
  - notsurenymore 3y ago
    Yes and no. I could do an online degree, but not for anything I’d be interested in going back to school for (at least nothing terribly useful). I’ve actually been surprised at some of the online offerings. There’s a decent state school near me, one I’ve considered going to if I could ever magically figure it out, but the online offerings are not great, mostly consisting of the typical degrees described as “useless” along with some seemingly made up programs. Another, at an even better school offers a variety of degrees, but most of them are BA’s described as being mostly for things like pre-law. Even the few interesting or useful degrees they offered online had a note indicating that it was probably better to complete a number of the courses in person. Also I don’t see an online program providing me any of the things I want to get out of university. Sure I could use them to get “a degree”, but that’s not particularly what I’m interested in. Most online and non traditional programs seem to exist solely for economic mobility, I.e. someone in a dead end job wants to get some degree that might lead to some sort of career, and that’s not the position I find myself in right now. I’ve been researching this for years, I actually hoped to be getting back to school this year, but after a layoff and a year of not being able to get high paid work, it’s just probably not going to happen. Tuition isn’t actually that bad in-state where I live now, but what is expensive is the cost of living, particularly when a bulk of full time work needs to be performed at the same time as classes run. Prior to my current predicament, the plan was to do the first two years online through a community college, transfer to the school I was targeting through the state guarantee programs, and then hopefully have saved up enough money to weather the rest of an undergrad degree.
forthwall 3y ago
I went to UC Merced and had a great time in my computer science course. The professors were passionate about what they were teaching and honestly I became a much better engineer (not programmer) by learning the course material and applying those skills. I'm mainly a web dev now but courses like operating systems and computer architecture have concepts really can be abstracted to other systems if you know how it works fundamentally. I was a self taught programmer before I went to college; I think it was a bit humbling to be in that space as well with high flying theory in CS and was amazed how you could apply that to real life concepts. That being said; if you're paying for school, make the most of it otherwise it's a waste, most engineering programs are pretty good and have at least some passionate professors behind them.
sharadov 3y ago
Totally agree - also beyond the coursework, explore other areas of interest and try to make friends who have diverse interests and backgrounds.
philipkglass 3y ago
If you're paying to go to a fully equipped university, take all the laboratory based courses in natural sciences that you can. That can be by selecting an appropriate minor or by loading up on those courses as electives. (Assuming you aren't already majoring in the natural sciences.) There is a wealth of material available online for self-study in many disciplines. But you aren't going to be able to download a mass spectrometer after you graduate, so take advantage of those well equipped labs while you can.
- tilne 3y ago
  Unless you wanted to pursue a career related to the physical sciences, what is the benefit of taking labs? I ask this as someone that took a large number of physics and especially chemistry labs before ultimately switching to computer science. The labs to me were more about how to game the grading process than they were about actual learning. And certainly I wouldn’t say I took anything from those mentally that I didn’t get out of, say, theoretical organic chemistry synthesis problems.
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
My advice to University students: find something that engages you. Do that to nearly the exclusion of everything else. Become one of the most enthusiastic knowledgeable people in that field. Being a generalist will get you some kind of job, sure. But being good at something in particular can get you further.
- fakedang 3y ago
  I think a better formula would be to become a generalist, and then specialize in one thing deeply. Talking from experience within my circle of friends, the guys who specialized well ended up getting FAANG level jobs, but the guys who were "generalized specialists" were building great companies - doing what they wanted to do. If ever their passion company were to fail, they could always take comfort in being a generalist and hence being employable still (one of my friends is currently going through this stage after his well-funded startup crashed). A specialist would not be easily able to take that kind of monumental risk so easily.
  - notsurenymore 3y ago
    I’m still trying to figure out how one becomes a “generalized specialist”. I would seem that once you establish yourself as a generalist, it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve specialization.
    - xorbax 3y ago
      I think a better formula would be economic rather than philosophical: find a job that pays a lot of money whether you like it or not, then establish your career in something you're passionate about regardless of how lucrative it is It's a fun style of advice-giving
      - notsurenymore 3y ago
        > then establish your career in something you're passionate about regardless of how lucrative it is Yeah this is the part I’m stuck at. You can’t just “establish your career in something you’re passionate about”, lucrative or not.
tester756 3y ago
College has significant pros and significant cons and their quality varies as hell. People who try give advice that fits them all are almost always out of touch with reality. Is going to good college and taking it seriously a good idea? Probably yea Is going to shitty college and taking it seriously instead of just graduating and doing your own thing behind the scene a good idea? Maybe not? Because time spent on the college's stuff will probably be wasted meanwhile you could put more quality effort into other stuff, alone.
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
  If you go to a "bad" college and don't take it seriously, then you are certainly wasting your money. There are surely other, far less expensive, ways to have a good social experience. My advice would be go to college or don't, but don't do this in-between stuff where you're a dumb kid wasting a pile of money for no good reason.
  - tester756 3y ago
    >wasting your money. Ehh, not every country in the world requires you to pay (except for the stuff like renting room).
zoomablemind 3y ago
Looking back, I see that university gives a chance to direct your own study. It's there to develop your own approach to knowledge acquisition. Of course, there's curriculum to chart the courses. Yet it's still up to you to explore the tangents, see the common sides, map your existing knowledge onto another domain. I wish I could see more beyond course requirements and homeworks. It helps when professors could also draw such parallels, especially in applied sciences.
syndicatedjelly 3y ago
I empathize with the idea that college feels like a waste of time. 18-22 is too early to be making major life decisions like what someone wants to do for the next 40 years of their life. I wish the concept of apprenticeships would come back - a kid fresh out of high school can work adjacent to whatever career they're interested in for a few years. Then attend college from 21-25, then begin their full time career.
YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
I am a graduate student and I TA for various professors' undergraduate classes in a STEM, but not engineering, field. After spending about a decade outside of academia, I wonder about the phenomenon of class attendance dropping off as the semester or quarter progresses. Previously, I would have chalked this up to students being irresponsible etc. And while there are certainly cases of this happening, and 18-22 year olds aren't finished (psychologically) maturing... I wonder if one reason for the drop-off in student attendance is simply that students don't perceive certain classes to be that valuable for them / their goals / the rest of their life. I know a few undergrads who have taken graduate level seminars and are struggling to get their first job. Some professors who have no experience outside of Academia aren't exactly equipped to impart deeper wisdom.
- depletedgherkin 3y ago
  As a recent university graduate, yes you're exactly right. I know plenty of people who'd skip class in order to grind Leetcode or job interview prep or whatever. It did make it so CS students in general were less passionate about their subject than my peers in other subjects.
LIzzyytujghf 3y ago
[dead]

41 points by redbell 3y ago

Sometimes I think about how I should have worked harder and paid more attention to my courses while in university. My grades were pretty good (though could have been better), and I put effort into my projects and labs, but I feel that I didn't use my time well and didn't explore the opportunities, whether it was taking different courses, attending events, or finding like-minded people with whom I could have created something together, or even reading more books and studying a little more. After all, it was quite a short period of time, and after that, life just went downhill anyway.

syndicatedjelly 3y ago
It’s so hard to get college exactly right. Part of the point is to make a bunch of mistakes and learn from them
- jasonladuke0311 3y ago
  Yep. Unfortunately it’s cost-prohibitive for most people.
- runsonrum 3y ago
  I still make mistakes decades later. I suppose the mistake will stop when the learning stops.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

notsurenymore 3y ago

I wish I had taken it seriously and gone… actually I’m not sure. I had a different attitude coming out of high school, I was more naive and arrogant, and probably wouldn’t have made much of it. If I could go back now, though, I have a much clearer idea of what I would want out of it, and what I could get out of it, and how to take advantage of it, unfortunately that’s not possible anymore.

jwells89 3y ago
Similar experience here. Coming out of high school, my head just wasn't in the right place to take advantage of college on any level and it'd be another 10-15 years with all of the accompanying life experience before that'd change. Part of this I'm sure has to do with how high school is structured (its almost total absence of practical examples for using what was being taught was a huge damper on my interest in it, for example), but there's also just so many other things on a young adult's mind competing for attention that it's no wonder many students struggle.
- notsurenymore 3y ago
  > its almost total absence of practical examples for using what was being taught was a huge damper on my interest in it, for example Ag yes, notably, I just could not care about calculus when I was in high school. I understood it had practical users, but at the time it just seemed far away from me I couldn’t bring myself to care. Flash forward years later and I find myself interested in problems where that knowledge might have actually been useful.
  - mips_r4300i 3y ago
    Also couldn't care less about math in school, until it came time to write game engine stuff. I learned trig so fast, and it made intuitive sense because I could directly model it in my game. Same with matrix math. Kids have a hard time handling abstract concepts, especially boys whose brains develop slower and for a longer period.
solardev 3y ago
Can you do an online degree?
- notsurenymore 3y ago
  Yes and no. I could do an online degree, but not for anything I’d be interested in going back to school for (at least nothing terribly useful). I’ve actually been surprised at some of the online offerings. There’s a decent state school near me, one I’ve considered going to if I could ever magically figure it out, but the online offerings are not great, mostly consisting of the typical degrees described as “useless” along with some seemingly made up programs. Another, at an even better school offers a variety of degrees, but most of them are BA’s described as being mostly for things like pre-law. Even the few interesting or useful degrees they offered online had a note indicating that it was probably better to complete a number of the courses in person. Also I don’t see an online program providing me any of the things I want to get out of university. Sure I could use them to get “a degree”, but that’s not particularly what I’m interested in. Most online and non traditional programs seem to exist solely for economic mobility, I.e. someone in a dead end job wants to get some degree that might lead to some sort of career, and that’s not the position I find myself in right now. I’ve been researching this for years, I actually hoped to be getting back to school this year, but after a layoff and a year of not being able to get high paid work, it’s just probably not going to happen. Tuition isn’t actually that bad in-state where I live now, but what is expensive is the cost of living, particularly when a bulk of full time work needs to be performed at the same time as classes run. Prior to my current predicament, the plan was to do the first two years online through a community college, transfer to the school I was targeting through the state guarantee programs, and then hopefully have saved up enough money to weather the rest of an undergrad degree.

forthwall 3y ago

I went to UC Merced and had a great time in my computer science course. The professors were passionate about what they were teaching and honestly I became a much better engineer (not programmer) by learning the course material and applying those skills. I'm mainly a web dev now but courses like operating systems and computer architecture have concepts really can be abstracted to other systems if you know how it works fundamentally. I was a self taught programmer before I went to college; I think it was a bit humbling to be in that space as well with high flying theory in CS and was amazed how you could apply that to real life concepts. That being said; if you're paying for school, make the most of it otherwise it's a waste, most engineering programs are pretty good and have at least some passionate professors behind them.

sharadov 3y ago

Totally agree - also beyond the coursework, explore other areas of interest and try to make friends who have diverse interests and backgrounds.

philipkglass 3y ago

If you're paying to go to a fully equipped university, take all the laboratory based courses in natural sciences that you can. That can be by selecting an appropriate minor or by loading up on those courses as electives. (Assuming you aren't already majoring in the natural sciences.) There is a wealth of material available online for self-study in many disciplines. But you aren't going to be able to download a mass spectrometer after you graduate, so take advantage of those well equipped labs while you can.

tilne 3y ago
Unless you wanted to pursue a career related to the physical sciences, what is the benefit of taking labs? I ask this as someone that took a large number of physics and especially chemistry labs before ultimately switching to computer science. The labs to me were more about how to game the grading process than they were about actual learning. And certainly I wouldn’t say I took anything from those mentally that I didn’t get out of, say, theoretical organic chemistry synthesis problems.

JoeAltmaier 3y ago

My advice to University students: find something that engages you. Do that to nearly the exclusion of everything else. Become one of the most enthusiastic knowledgeable people in that field. Being a generalist will get you some kind of job, sure. But being good at something in particular can get you further.

fakedang 3y ago
I think a better formula would be to become a generalist, and then specialize in one thing deeply. Talking from experience within my circle of friends, the guys who specialized well ended up getting FAANG level jobs, but the guys who were "generalized specialists" were building great companies - doing what they wanted to do. If ever their passion company were to fail, they could always take comfort in being a generalist and hence being employable still (one of my friends is currently going through this stage after his well-funded startup crashed). A specialist would not be easily able to take that kind of monumental risk so easily.
- notsurenymore 3y ago
  I’m still trying to figure out how one becomes a “generalized specialist”. I would seem that once you establish yourself as a generalist, it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve specialization.
  - xorbax 3y ago
    I think a better formula would be economic rather than philosophical: find a job that pays a lot of money whether you like it or not, then establish your career in something you're passionate about regardless of how lucrative it is It's a fun style of advice-giving
    - notsurenymore 3y ago
      > then establish your career in something you're passionate about regardless of how lucrative it is Yeah this is the part I’m stuck at. You can’t just “establish your career in something you’re passionate about”, lucrative or not.

tester756 3y ago

College has significant pros and significant cons and their quality varies as hell. People who try give advice that fits them all are almost always out of touch with reality. Is going to good college and taking it seriously a good idea? Probably yea Is going to shitty college and taking it seriously instead of just graduating and doing your own thing behind the scene a good idea? Maybe not? Because time spent on the college's stuff will probably be wasted meanwhile you could put more quality effort into other stuff, alone.

MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
If you go to a "bad" college and don't take it seriously, then you are certainly wasting your money. There are surely other, far less expensive, ways to have a good social experience. My advice would be go to college or don't, but don't do this in-between stuff where you're a dumb kid wasting a pile of money for no good reason.
- tester756 3y ago
  >wasting your money. Ehh, not every country in the world requires you to pay (except for the stuff like renting room).

zoomablemind 3y ago

Looking back, I see that university gives a chance to direct your own study. It's there to develop your own approach to knowledge acquisition. Of course, there's curriculum to chart the courses. Yet it's still up to you to explore the tangents, see the common sides, map your existing knowledge onto another domain. I wish I could see more beyond course requirements and homeworks. It helps when professors could also draw such parallels, especially in applied sciences.

syndicatedjelly 3y ago

I empathize with the idea that college feels like a waste of time. 18-22 is too early to be making major life decisions like what someone wants to do for the next 40 years of their life. I wish the concept of apprenticeships would come back - a kid fresh out of high school can work adjacent to whatever career they're interested in for a few years. Then attend college from 21-25, then begin their full time career.

YossarianFrPrez 3y ago

I am a graduate student and I TA for various professors' undergraduate classes in a STEM, but not engineering, field. After spending about a decade outside of academia, I wonder about the phenomenon of class attendance dropping off as the semester or quarter progresses. Previously, I would have chalked this up to students being irresponsible etc. And while there are certainly cases of this happening, and 18-22 year olds aren't finished (psychologically) maturing... I wonder if one reason for the drop-off in student attendance is simply that students don't perceive certain classes to be that valuable for them / their goals / the rest of their life. I know a few undergrads who have taken graduate level seminars and are struggling to get their first job. Some professors who have no experience outside of Academia aren't exactly equipped to impart deeper wisdom.

depletedgherkin 3y ago
As a recent university graduate, yes you're exactly right. I know plenty of people who'd skip class in order to grind Leetcode or job interview prep or whatever. It did make it so CS students in general were less passionate about their subject than my peers in other subjects.

LIzzyytujghf 3y ago

[dead]