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What I Learned In College

blackhole12.blogspot.com

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Re: What I Learned In College

#51

Post by AlexanderMiller »

How would you design the CSE admissions process? What would you change? Have you considered the pressure and lack of resources the admissions committee is forced to deal with? What about the students who received 4.0's in all intro math and computer science classes? Why should the department devote precious educational resources to you, rather than to them?

We all wish that CSE was an open major at UW. But you're ignoring a huge amount of complex practical issues when you blame bureaucracy. You offer simplistic criticism but no solutions.

Re: What I Learned In College

#53

Post by jacques_chester »

vacri wrote: post #12
zalzane wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there was only one paragraph lamenting that the system didn't bend to his needs. If you think that was the theme of this essay, then I suggest you reread it.

For values of one where one equals three intro paragraphs and subsequently sprinkled through the essay, finishing up with a conclusion paragraph that is entirely unsurprising ('kids these days aren't getting the right skills') It's signed off with one of the more banal slogans you could hope to encounter (the bit in bold).

We're in agreement for once, vacri. It started off strong and then veered off into embarrassing hyperbole. The part where he has a solution to the ills of the world but the margin is too small to contain it was my particular favourite.

Re: What I Learned In College

#54

Post by jacques_chester »

arikrak wrote: post #38

>Any task that can be reduced to simply following a set of instructions over and over is being done by robots and software. Agreed. Along similar lines: Any problem that can be solved with clearly-defined steps can be programmed so that a computer can solve it. Many areas of education, especially math-related ones, involve students learning to mechanically implement set procedures and formulas to solve problems. Thes…

Sometimes it takes hundreds of exposures to concrete examples to grasp the abstract principle.

I'm sure we've all had a-ha! moments of the form "it's just like Professor Whatsisname / Coach Thingo / Mrs So-and-so said, I just didn't get it".

Re: What I Learned In College

#55

Post by sopooneo »

blackhole wrote: post #50
navait wrote: post #7

Sigh. Another special snowflake lamenting that the system didn't bend to exactly his needs. What you get out of university is what you put into it. Want to be judged for something other than test taking? Get involved in research. Get involved in one of the many math and CS organizations your campus has. But you have to go get them yourself. Nobody's going to say "oh, you're so smart, please join our team!" Get it out…

Several people seem to get this theme out of the essay, which I think is partially due to the sarcastic tone I take in certain sections. I try to make it blatantly obvious that I disapprove of the system in general and think it's a disaster to everyone, not just me. To be perfectly honest, the system was fairly kind to me. I was able to deal with it. My little brother couldn't handle it and had to go to a special onl…

Realize, please, that many as passionate as you, and with many of the same opinions, have gone into education to try to improve it. Not just now, but for decades.

Re: What I Learned In College

#56

Post by blackhole »

sopooneo wrote: post #55
blackhole wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several people seem to get this theme out of the essay, which I think is partially due to the sarcastic tone I take in certain sections. I try to make it blatantly obvious that I disapprove of the system in general and think it's a disaster to everyone, not just me. To be perfectly honest, the system was fairly kind to me. I was able to deal with it. My little brother couldn't handle it and had to go to a special onl…

Realize, please, that many as passionate as you, and with many of the same opinions, have gone into education to try to improve it. Not just now, but for decades.

That is exactly the point that I raised in the essay. Education is a really hard problem. I don't claim I know how to fix it, but while everyone seems to agree that everything is broken, we are heading in the wrong direction.

Re: What I Learned In College

#57

Post by ritchiea »

Ixiaus wrote: post #22
jmduke wrote: post #15

I graduated two months ago, and I learned a lot of things, too. I learned that the fastest way I'll ever learn a subject (whether or not it's a programming language, a financial derivative, or an era of Hinduism) is on my own, poring over search engines and worn-down books. Professors will never teach me faster than I can teach myself. I learned that, yes, you're more or less paying for the piece of paper (but that d…

A few things formal institution graduates don't realize: When you say "you're more or less paying for the piece of paper" you're taking it for granted (unless you went to a shitty school). As an Autodidact in Mathematics, programming, compsci, and psychology with nothing but a GED; you underestimate the value of rigorous environments. Learning fast is also not the point. Learning thoroughly is the point. Thorough and…

I agree wholeheartedly. As someone who has a university degree that is academic at most tangentially related to developing software (cognitive science), the way I go about educating myself and the analytical approach I take to my work is deeply rooted in my college education. I can learn a lot on my own butI know I'm much better at being an autodidact because I got a great undergraduate education and I took (most) of those four years seriously in the classroom & the library.

Re: What I Learned In College

#58

Post by blackhole »

AlexanderMiller wrote: post #51

How would you design the CSE admissions process? What would you change? Have you considered the pressure and lack of resources the admissions committee is forced to deal with? What about the students who received 4.0's in all intro math and computer science classes? Why should the department devote precious educational resources to you, rather than to them? We all wish that CSE was an open major at UW. But you're ign…

The CSE program does not use its funding very well. This is not something I claim, it's something a CSE professor told me when I pointed out various shortcomings, and he agreed with many of them but was not in a position to do anything about it. That said, the CSE program doesn't have enough funding in the first place, either. That's the primary issue.

Re: What I Learned In College

#59

Post by nahname »

mjmahone17 wrote: post #20

Holy crap, UW's CS only has 200 graduates per year? For a school of that size, that's tiny. That's close to as many as most Ivy League schools these days, and their undergrad population is usually around 1/5 that of UW. This is especially sad, as CS courses should be pretty easy to scale, especially when you have a group of undergrads who want to teach. Not to mention how hypercompetitiveness drives out diversity, es…

650ish enrolled with me when I went to school. It was down to about 250 after the first year. By the third year, only 4 of the 30 or so people I hung around with were still at it. Of all my peer group, I'm the only one currently programming (one's a QA, rest went to sales).

Programming is way harder to learn than any of us can remember.

Re: What I Learned In College

#60

Post by kenferry »

Ixiaus wrote: post #46
unimpressive wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You also live a lonely life and there is no one you can call up who is also struggling or trade information with. Is there some sort of network for people on the outside of the university system? A mailing list or something?

Hacker News. Khan academy discussions. That's about it for what I've been able to find though.

Email me for an beta invite at ken@understudyapp.com. This is exactly the problem we're trying to solve!

With our iPad app, you pick a material (e.g. http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/) and work through it, talking once a week to someone who has already been through it. As you progress, you begin to mentor someone else who is less far along in the same way that you were helped. The collaboration environment in the app is live video (ala Skype) plus a whiteboard - the main surface of the iPad.

The problem in learning isn’t information access: it’s determination. It’s dead easy to put down a book or stop watching a lecture. If you’re talking to someone, you cannot just stop, and when a human asks "what have you done since last time?" you don’t want to have to say "nothing". Think of single founder vs two founder startups - someone else who cares is huge.

On the mentoring side, explaining a concept to someone else is a forcing function for getting things clear and organized for yourself. Also, it's fun to talk about stuff you chose to spend time working on and understanding, and it's fun to help someone else follow in your footsteps.

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