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Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

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Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As an aside, my totally unscientific examinations suggest that people grow more after a year of travelling than they do after 4 of college." As a corollary to that - study abroad while in college! It will never be cheaper, easier, or more socially acceptable. The semester I spent in New Zealand cost my parents about 1/3 as much as a semester at Amherst (mostly because tuition + room & board at New Zealand universiti…

Couldn't agree more. The statistic when I was in college was ~10% of students studied abroad, which I found shocking. A year's paid vacation to almost anywhere on the planet and 9/10 people said no! Also, despite the fact that you spend most of the time partying and traveling, employers look on study abroad favorably when you get out. I always found this amusing. Two other things: 1) go to western Europe or Tokyo, or…

1) That's actually not what I've heard from the friends that went to Ghana or Madagascar or Nepal - they seemed to get far more out of their study-abroad experience than us normal folk who went to New Zealand or Australia or Oxford. Many of them have traveled significantly since then - both to go back to where they studied abroad, and to other developed nations like Europe. Judging from my circle of friends, it seems like studying in the developing world is a life-changing experience while studying in the developed world is "merely" a nice experience to have.

2) Agree, but I didn't do so myself. Mostly because studying abroad was totally a last-minute decision for me - I got to a week before the deadline for the spring semester, found out all my friends would be abroad for the semester, and thought "Shit - what will I do for a semester?" Better halfway than never. My friends that spent a whole year got much more out of it - after a semester, you're still sorta a tourist, while after a year, you've really started to internalize some of the culture of your host country.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I can upvote you a million times over. This is something most people don't really appreciate until they leave college. As a recent grad this is something that bothers me. In college almost anyone you meet (of your interested gender) is in your dating pool - you are at most a couple years apart in age, everything works out, you're at the same stage in life, etc. Once you leave you will find that: 1 - Chances fo…

The fact that I'm getting upvotes and no solutions is somewhat telling, and very depressing :S Is this really one of those problems that we have no solution for? Shoulda stayed in school...

This is probably why PG keeps putting "a dating site that doesn't suck" as one of the ideas they'd like to fund... ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that I'm getting upvotes and no solutions is somewhat telling, and very depressing :S Is this really one of those problems that we have no solution for? Shoulda stayed in school...

This is probably why PG keeps putting "a dating site that doesn't suck" as one of the ideas they'd like to fund... ;-)

I've been toying around with an idea about that... guess I should get work on it ;) While in college I never truly appreciated the kind of massive ache we have in the market for a dating site that works...

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#134

Don't do what I did. I drank too much, partied too much, worked full time the entire way though, didn't go to enough class and didn't study enough(which turned out meant that I didn't get very good marks either). I basically did everything wrong in my university career. That being said, University was boatloads of fun, and while I didn't do stellar in school I am a pretty decent hacker and still am doing what I wante…

> Don't do what I did. Au contraire, I did what you did (probably to the extreme, I was on academic probation 2x and did more drugs than I can remember), and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone if they have the mental fortitude to actually graduate at the end of 4 years. When you stand on stage smirking and hung over with your degree and mortar board after 4 years of doing whatever the fuck you wanted, it feels l…

Yeah, I basically blew off college for the middle 6 semesters, barely graduated, flunked two courses in my major, was on academic probation twice, and skipped probably well over half my classes, and have no regrets. It was nice to stand up on the stage and get my diploma - a year late, though I didn't need to take any additional classes beyond my 4 years - and remember that I got everything I wanted out of college.

I actually didn't spend much time drinking and doing drugs - my reasoning was that I actually wanted to remember college. But I got involved in a bunch of clubs & activities, just hung out and chilled with my housemates a lot at like 4 AM, got to know hundreds of friends through the Internet, studied abroad, learned Lisp and functional programming, took on a major software rewrite for a popular website, went to a few parties (enough so I felt like I didn't miss out anything), had lots of quasi-intellectual discussions with friends, read lots of books, visited local attractions, and took courses at other colleges in the area. I feel like this is an opportunity cost that I'd regret missing a lot more than the class-time and homework assignments than I skipped.

The irony is that it doesn't seem to have harmed my career at all. Once you get that first job and do well at it, nobody cares how you did in college. And I got that first job through a friend I'd met on a programming website on the Internet, while I should've been doing my homework. Score one for slacking!

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#136
Having just got out, some things that I wish I had known when I started up:

Take Risks. Lots of them. College is one of the few times in your life when you're old enough to do cool risky things, but in a position where short of killing someone, everything is fixable. Most things that you do wrong (aside from plagiarism, which most places are big about going after) can be fixed, so take advantage of this to do some cool things.

Use your student status. Most modes of transport have steep student discounts. Your campus rec program will have classes that cost 30% (or less) than what they'd cost in real life. I got into martial arts because it got me into shape, introduced me to people outside my program, and gave me a way to burn off steam. You don't have to do that, but find a cheap class and take it.

Socialize outside your program. You make make fun of people in a lesser program, but they're interesting as well - just in other things. They provide some perspective on what you're doing, keep you sane and interested, and can offer great ideas without knowing it.

Socialize within your program. You may find these people boring, but you're all working on the same assignments and all having the same issues - so band together. They'll also be useful for networking in the future, and may have old exams you can study off of.

Find people you work well with. If you find someone (like a lab partner) you work well with, keep them - plan to take the same classes. I had a guy who I worked amazingly with in a lab, who was my lab partner for three years (across six classes). Never saw him socially, know nothing about him personally, but when we got into a lab we got shit done and fast, and knew how each other worked. This relationship is invaluable.

Get into student politics, lightly. I'm not saying run for class president, but there's almost certainly a Senate (or whatever your school's governing body is) committee on IT that takes student representatives. If you ask to be on this, you'll get a spot - since no one else will want it. You'll meet some interesting people in student politics (who will be good to know later), and you'll meet some administrators and department heads, who are also good to know - especially for recommendation letters for grad school. If your school has a technology transfer committee, get on that (it's full of interesting industry reps and people with great ideas).

Find a prof and get friendly. Every department has a few professors who are regarded as "crazy". They're the ones who have classes that people avoid because they're incredibly hard markers, and who teach a few esoteric subjects. These people fall into two categories - profs who mark hard because they're assholes, and profs who mark hard because they're demanding. Find one of the latter, take all their classes (which should be small because of their rep), and go to their office hours. They're likely very smart, and will provide valuable insight (and refereces) for your future. Get friendly with them.

Go to office hours and tutorials. Office hours are one-on-one with the guy who creates your exams, or at least superivses their creation. Tutorials are where that guy (or a TA he's instructed) goes over problems they think are important, which often are very similar to ones you'll be examined on. If the prof thinks that a particular problem type is important, then you can be sure that it will come back again - and it might even be important in the long run.

Don't sweat your grades. If you are sure you want to go to grad school, then sweat the shit out of them, and use your undergrad to form relationships with profs. If you don't, know that after your first job, no one will care about your grades. If you do good work outside of class and get soem good summer jobs, your first job won't even care about them.

Search for resume-builders. Ever school has a few societies that you can join for minimal effort that sound really good on paper, or classes that sound good but teach you nothing. These are worth it for the future. Also good is joining things like IEEE and ACM.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#137
post #60

My advice is two fold. 1) Have fun, you think 4 years of college is long...but trust me, it'll go by in a blink of an eye. 2) Start thinking ahead from day one. GPA: don't slack off early on, early on all your classes are bullshit, you might think they are hard, but you have no idea. Get those easy As early on. Startup/Projects: start working on them from day one. Even if it goes slow, you'll be much better of. Start…

Re: GPA, take As when you can get them. Doesn't matter if the course is bullshit - an A is an A, and your GPA is cumulative. This is especially important in first-year, as your performance therein haunts you for the rest of your time at school.

If you went to a moderately good high school, most of first year should be review for you. Learn the new parts, ace the old parts, and finish first year with a 3.7+ GPA and you're set for the rest of your time there.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#138
post #137
post #60

My advice is two fold. 1) Have fun, you think 4 years of college is long...but trust me, it'll go by in a blink of an eye. 2) Start thinking ahead from day one. GPA: don't slack off early on, early on all your classes are bullshit, you might think they are hard, but you have no idea. Get those easy As early on. Startup/Projects: start working on them from day one. Even if it goes slow, you'll be much better of. Start…

Re: GPA, take As when you can get them. Doesn't matter if the course is bullshit - an A is an A, and your GPA is cumulative. This is especially important in first-year, as your performance therein haunts you for the rest of your time at school. If you went to a moderately good high school, most of first year should be review for you. Learn the new parts, ace the old parts, and finish first year with a 3.7+ GPA and yo…

I'd aim for a 4.0 for that first yet. If you keep the same studying habits you had in high school getting As in those early courses is a breeze.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#139

Two pieces of advice come to mind: 1. If possible, don't think about what degree you're going to get until at least your 3rd year. (This might be impossible, depending on your college -- some institutions require incoming students to declare a major promptly.) Out of dozens of students I've dealt with, I'm only aware of one case where "spend four years taking whatever courses looked interesting each semester" didn't…

Number two never worked for me. Either I must have been doing something wrong, or the classes were not structured in a way which one could do this efficiently. I often found I would waste my time reading fluff content that was never pertinent. Either the teacher didn't follow the book closely, had a terrible choice of textbook, or I didn't have a context from which to read the book to put it's material into perspective.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#140
Version control - use it for everything

Even things not software-related. If it's done on a computer, it should be in VCS. Ideally on a repo hosted by your school, if that's not possible, then one on a third-party machine that's run by as large a company as you can find. If you roll with DVCS, then make sure you also publish it to somewhere third-party. This is not only for the versioning, but for the dating of those versions. Having all your work under a VCS means you can say the following things:

"Sorry Prof, I was a day late submitting this assignment because my flight had to pull an emergency landing in Reykjavik when this guy had a hart attack, and then we were locked in for a day by the fog. But here's a commit dated before the deadline, can you accept that?"

"No, I didn't plagarize that paper - you can see it develop over the past thirteen versions here, time-stamped over three weeks."

"I had my circuit designed, but when I opened it to print OrCAD crashed and mangled my data - here's a version that's time-stamped to yesterday I can use instead."

The third-party large-company aspect is good so that when they say (for all of those statements) "How do I know you didn't change the times on your server to make up that history of work?" you can respond with "The company that's hosting this had revenues of three million dollars last year, they're not gonna screw with their systems because I ask nicely." and then they drop the issue.

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