It seems that a lot of good points have been covered so I'll point out two that seem lacking:
1) Make sure that when you do have a choice, that you only live with folks who will be easy to get along with even at their most acrimonious
2) for late night snacking and caffeine, fruits, oatmeal, and some variety of loose leaf tea are the way to go. Its cheap, and in the case of tea, even the strongest caffeine dosage of tea (even at the energy drink strength) is very low jitter.
3) you're in the boston area, take advantage of it and the opportunities to meet fun interesting people at other universities, seeing the constrast between the cultures at different schools is not to be underrated.
Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college
41–50 of 151 posts
Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college
#42I want to echo gdp's advice above. What I wish someone had told me as a freshman:
Grades don't really matter, no one will care about them.
1) Future employers (investors too?) will care about code you wrote outside of class, whether open source or your own projects.
2) Grad schools will care about great recommendations, which you do not get by getting good grades. You get those by doing research with the professor outside of the class.
I'm not saying it's ok if you fail; just that there are different priorities to be balanced. Missing out on that A in order to improve on 1) or 2) above is a trade off that will serve you better.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college
#43Here is my advice, which is going to be completely different from everyone else here. As a caveat, I almost flunked out of college but am doing pretty well for myself right now, so take it as you may. Just have fun. Screw classes. Screw trying cramming for tests. Do well enough to learn while not stressing yourself out. College doesn't matter at all for if you can succeed in life. If you have the chops, you don't nee…
College doesn't matter at all That's exactly what I was going to post, but I feared the downmod army, to be honest. I'm 34 now. Nobody has cared what happened to me in my early 20's since I was about 25. It just doesn't matter. Sure there are a lot of positives you can gain in those 4 years, but some of the most boring and average people I know define themselves by where and when they went to college and what they di…
my totally unscientific examinations suggest that people grow more after a year of travelling than they do after 4 of college.
This makes sense. Data point of one, I grew more by living overseas after college than I did by working my way through college.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college
#44Go to parties. Rush for a fraternity. Have fun. Meet girls. When you are laying on your deathbed, you will never think to yourself "gosh, i wish i got with fewer women in college."
I think chasing women is a terrible use of one's college years. The women are mostly immature and have terrible tastes in men. Better for him to recognize that he probably won't meet a marriage-worthy woman until his mid-20s, suck it up and work hard until then.
I definitely regret having lost a lot of great learning opportunities because I was fooling around with spoiled, immature, half-formed people. Very few men, at 18, are good enough judges of character to not end up losing badly on this gamble. Most 18-year-old men have certain, umm, influences on their judgment of other people that make them pretty bad at this.
Obviously, some people luck out and meet a soulmate at 18. One of my friends met an amazing woman (also his first girlfriend) in his freshman year and is now happily married. I've seen it happen even in the US, where the average quality of women is low ("hookup culture", Sex and the City) and the odds are bad. I don't think he should count on it, and he definitely should not allow his success or failure with women to affect his concentration and work.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree on this point. I skipped classes left, right and centre. I'm sure it annoyed the hell out of my lecturers, but I was spending my time doing things that turned out to be much more valuable in the long run. For example, I did actual research! By the time I was finished with my undergraduate programme, I had enough "real" research experience to gain entry to a very good PhD programme in another country. This…
I hate lecturers who take attendance. This isn't preschool, I can make decisions for myself. If I feel like I can do without that one class or feel like something else is more pressing (due project?) then I should be able to act on it. The whole idea of getting points for just being in class is silly anyway. You get grades to be able to rate your own knowledge, not as gifts or punishment. Thus if you've comprehended…
Mmhmm. I avoided those kinds of classes like the plague.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college
#46This is the advice I would have given myself at 18: Don't fret girls and relationships. I'm serious. Focus on making friends (male and female), working on interesting projects, and learning everything you can (academic and otherwise) during the next 4 years. You may have inflated expectations of college women, assuming that intelligence and good behavior, decent tastes in men, etc. are correlated. I sure did. In fact…
Also, I guess it makes sense to say that college is like a clean slate - no one (well, mostly) really knows you, so it's a good time to reinvent yourself if you feel like it.
Agreed, although it's easier to reinvent oneself shortly after college (in my experience) than in college.
Socially, college is very similar to high school. Real life is radically different. In some ways, it's worse. In others, it's better.
I think the best social experience can be had in late college, when you're old and mature enough to reject the bullshit (hookups, binge drinking, gossip) and still surrounded by brilliant, interesting people. My hope is that the OP will be wise enough to skip to this phase, which is "late college" for most of us, much earlier than the rest of us did.
College provides you great opportunities to meet fascinating people, if you're wise about how you do things; if you're not, you just end up expensively wasting time.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college
#471. No beard or moustache until you're old enough to drink. Goatees are OK.
2. There are core programming skills, and there are technology-of-the-week skills. Instead of worrying terribly about the latter, worry about getting your core ability to design and test efficient, maintainable code. Definitely play with functional languages instead of the enterprise-y fad-of-the-week.
3. Don't hang out with other geeks all the time. Branch out as often as possible. This will help you be a better programmer, businessman, salesman, and will probably get you laid more.
[Edit: added some explanations]
Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college
#48From experience: if you drop out at 19, know that things can get seriously fucked up. Now I'm 21, and the startup I stopped out for for nine months went nowhere. It can also throw a wrench in your college experience.
Just...if you want to learn what I learned from it, it's this: learn tech in class, and don't bother with nearly anything else. Except IP law and corporate law, and if you seriously suck at writing, which it appears you don't, learn to write well.
Also, I have no idea how, as a practical matter, one goes about ignoring grades.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
College doesn't matter at all That's exactly what I was going to post, but I feared the downmod army, to be honest. I'm 34 now. Nobody has cared what happened to me in my early 20's since I was about 25. It just doesn't matter. Sure there are a lot of positives you can gain in those 4 years, but some of the most boring and average people I know define themselves by where and when they went to college and what they di…
my totally unscientific examinations suggest that people grow more after a year of travelling than they do after 4 of college. This makes sense. Data point of one, I grew more by living overseas after college than I did by working my way through college.
I think too that for a lot of people, they travel the year after they finish school, so they're a little older as well.
Mostly though it seems to be that once you realize there is a whole world out there with people of every shape, size and belief, you truly see all the possibilities of life.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college
#501. Remember that you will probably not graduate with a 4.0. Your first C is going to hurt, especially if you were an A student in high school. Just keep going.
2. Don't worry about the impact of switching majors or programs. I started my school in the computer engineering program, hated it ~2.5 years in, and switched around a bit. I'm now graduating with a degree in pure mathematics. Study what you love -- the jobs will come.
I'm afraid I'm starting to ramble, so let me get to the main point -- what you study means nothing after you graduate. Where you study means (almost) nothing. What matters is who you meet along the way, and your actual accomplishments while in university.
Study what you love. Meet facility, upperclassmen, and other students. Work on writing something cool and useful. You will get more out of school than if you spent your time grinding for a perfect GPA.