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Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

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Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#51

Post by pyropenguin »

makmanalp wrote: post #31
pwnix_rising wrote: post #18

This 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.

Slightly off topic I suppose, but makmanalp is making an AWESOME point here. No one knows you and it's your chance to get out and do what you really want to. I was in the closet for all of high school and fairly miserable because at the time I thought my friends would stop hanging around me should they find out. This fear kept me from making a lot of new friends in my first year, especially since one of my friends from high school was my roommate. It kept me from joining the GBLT club which would have made my transition to university much easier, and let me interact with more people like me.

This is your chance to meet new people who have the same interests as you. Changing from a high school where very few people are interested in technology to a college where your entire program is filled with people who share your same general interests creates an awesome environment to grow and share ideas. The group of friends you meet in classes the first year can lead to an awesome experience in the second year, as you find people who you work well and agree with who will want to be roommates in later years. Can anyone say hacker house?

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#52

Post by pwnix_rising »

run4yourlives wrote: post #37
charlesju wrote: post #8

Here 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…

I'm 34 now. Nobody has cared what happened to me in my early 20's since I was about 25.

I think college is less relevant, in a constantly changing social and technological environment, than it once was.

It used to make sense to front-load one's life with education, concentrating on schooling into the mid-20s and then starting to work. Considering education to be an investment, it was only logical to pursue it as early in one's life as possible. With such a rapid pace of change, however, this model doesn't make sense any more-- much of what you learn in college will be forgotten or obsolete in 20 years. In my mind, it makes more sense to start working at age 14 and spend 1 year out of 5 in some kind of schooling.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#53

Post by run4yourlives »

pwnix_rising wrote: post #52
run4yourlives wrote: post #37

Earlier 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…

I'm 34 now. Nobody has cared what happened to me in my early 20's since I was about 25. I think college is less relevant, in a constantly changing social and technological environment, than it once was. It used to make sense to front-load one's life with education, concentrating on schooling into the mid-20s and then starting to work. Considering education to be an investment, it was only logical to pursue it as earl…

I wouldn't go that far. While I don't think college matters, "work" matters even less.

The beauty of front loading a life with education is that one can explore different avenues without any societal or personal pressures to perform before they are mature enough to do so.

I'm all for personal projects and starting side businesses as early as one can manage, but I wouldn't want that to be the societal norm because it would corrupt the experience, exactly as it has corrupted the college experience.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#54

Post by makmanalp »

pyropenguin wrote: post #51
makmanalp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slightly off topic I suppose, but makmanalp is making an AWESOME point here. No one knows you and it's your chance to get out and do what you really want to. I was in the closet for all of high school and fairly miserable because at the time I thought my friends would stop hanging around me should they find out. This fear kept me from making a lot of new friends in my first year, especially since one of my friends fr…

You might ( won't say will) end up in business with those people too!

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#55

Post by pwnix_rising »

gms wrote: post #42

I 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 ou…

If he wants to go to graduate school, grades matter as a necessary but not sufficient condition. However, if he's a promising student, he'll have no problem getting the requisite grades (3.5+ in-major) while working on independent projects and doing research.

He might also decide he wants to go to law or business school, in which case undergraduate GPA is a significant selection criterion.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#57

Post by javanix »

Try to find some good friends in CS (or whatever your major is). I made the mistake my first year of college of being far too standoffish and irritated with most of the people at my first school, and spent most of my time bored and lonely until the middle of my second semester, by which point I'd already made plans to transfer out.

I considered myself a pretty outgoing person before I left for school, but moving away from all of my high school friends had a bigger effect on me than I'd expected.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#58

Post by noodle »

run4yourlives wrote: post #37
charlesju wrote: post #8

Here 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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#59

Post by nostrademons »

run4yourlives wrote: post #37
charlesju wrote: post #8

Here 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…

"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 universities was around $7000/NZ, while tuition + room & board at Amherst was $20k+). It massively broadened my perspective - not just because I was in a different country in a different hemisphere, but because I was living on my own, with a 14-hour time difference from my parents, studying at a different school in a different university system. And if I hadn't gone, I'd have to have stayed back on campus while all my friends were abroad...

I think I probably would've gotten even more out of the experience had I been brave enough to go to a country with a different language and vastly different culture, eg. Nepal or Ghana or Madagascar. But there's a limit to how many variables in my life I can change at once. If you're more adventurous, go for it.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college

#60

Post by vaksel »

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. Startups start off very slowly, so college is the best time to start, since you can have the 4 years for it to grow big enough, while you have no real expenses.

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