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Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

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71–80 of 151 posts

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#71
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pass, grad school is an option. Maybe not the top echelon, maybe not right away, but it's always an option.

my point was that this person wants to do grad school, so they're not going to follow the "college isn't worth it" path and drop out or not go.

I'm not suggesting anywhere he not go or drop out. I'm simply adding the perspective of someone 15 years down the line.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#72
post #13

Go 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,…

Curious, I regret not getting laid in college.

Maybe it's best to accept hook-up culture for what it is, and accept that most college girls (and boys, too) are spoiled, immature, half-formed people. But where else can you find hundreds of hot young women that are looking for no-strings-attached sex?

Then again, this is Olin, which may complicate things because just about every woman you meet is almost certainly someone you're going to see again, potentially leading to much awkwardness.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#73
It's a bit random, but: if you're not already in good shape (and many of us hacker types aren't coming out of high school), find where the gym is and learn what to do there, and go three times a week.

College is one of the first chances where you A) generally have free access to a decent gym, B) have enough control over your own time to set a workout schedule, and C) you're generally old enough that working out will actually do something for you.

Getting in good shape will have a positive impact on your energy level, but more importantly it does wonders for your self-confidence and self-image.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#74
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't necessarily disagree, but the OP clearly stated his goals as wanting to do well enough to have grad school as an option.

If you pass, grad school is an option. Maybe not the top echelon, maybe not right away, but it's always an option.

Don't do this. The name of the school on your PhD does matter.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#75

Don't skip class. College is easy if you actually go to class and pay attention.

Sometimes it's easier to follow the herd. Since you're paying a lot of money for classes, might as well attend.

Keeping up with course material on your own, while skipping class, will result in 3-4 times the effort and lower grades -> you will likely work your ass off, get a mediocre grade, but have learned a lot (this avenue is more befitting for side projects). The main reason: each prof. stresses specific things in the final exam that were covered in his lecture. With a heavy course load, you cannot afford to pursue this strategy, if you want halfway decent grades.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#76
post #17

I'm not sure if it is surprising or non-obvious, but I wrote my postfact list of things someone would've told me at the start: http://metarz.net/blog/17/

I don't know about the do all the problems in a book part. There are a LOT of problems in math and science books!

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#77
post #13

Go 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,…

This assumes that a person is looking for a soulmate in university. I certainly wasn't. There's lots of benefit to dating many different women - just make sure you don't lose sight of yourself. You can't pick out the good ones if you haven't been with a few bad ones. I learned more about myself dating a few crazy girls (and it was never boring) than I did dating the straight-A overachiever.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pass, grad school is an option. Maybe not the top echelon, maybe not right away, but it's always an option.

Don't do this. The name of the school on your PhD does matter.

To whom?

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#79
1. don't watch tv or play video games, find more productive and ultimately rewarding ways to spend your leisure time, like playing a sport (team sport in particular is good, geeky choice is ultimate frisbee, but any team sport is good) learning an instrument, martial arts, theatre production, volunteer work, student government, etc.

2. you won't learn real programming in school. take real CS classes like algorithms, data structures, and object oriented design, they are essential, but recognize that they won't teach you how to be a real programmer. real programming cannot be taught, it can only be learnt. the toy projects that you will be doing in class are too simple for you to get a sense of the type of problems you will routinely face in a real project. they are valuable in teaching specific things you need to know, but if you want to get a real sense of what code looks like, join an open source project or find a good internship.

3. i reccomend taking theory of computation and compilers as early as you can, they will help your understanding of your other classes a lot.

4. take more math, especially statistics and game theory clases

5. take at least a few philosophy classes

6. take the time to learn how to make friends and meet girls, college is the best time to learn these skills, if you put it off later than that, you will get further and further behind other people in social skills and end up bitter and disappointed like pwnix_rising.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#80
post #13

Go 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,…

I strongly disagree. College is a great time to take the next, probably awkward step with the opposite sex. If you don't, you're stuck learning those skills while you're in "the real world", a setting which is generally less amenable to meeting lots of people who are around your age, thus inhibiting your rate of learning.

The goal is not to meet a soulmate at 18, but to become comfortable interacting with potential soulmates.

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