College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/opinion/college-advice-professor.html

by devarshar • 9 years ago

100 61 9 years ago

sgeisenh• 9 years ago

I disagree with a good bit of this advice. And I suspect it varies with the discipline of study.

In a field like computer science, time is better spent working on personal projects, hashing out ideas with peers and exploring research opportunities than aspiring to get an A in every class. A's make for boring, one dimensional students. People who make priorities based on more complex factors than an arbitrary letter grade are preferable to interact and work with.

mcguire• 9 years ago

College is the one time you have direct, easy access to all those things that those who didn't go or didn't take advantage of are now struggling to learn on their own. Books, videos, and websites are a poor substitute to having someone who knows sit down and explain stuff to you.

Don't waste the opportunity.

gizmo686• 9 years ago

Classes are the part of college that is most easily replicated with books/videos/websites.

Access to a like minded peer group, and researchers to guide you is far harder to get outside of college.

Alex39172• 9 years ago

Books, videos, and websites are a poor substitute to having someone who knows sit down and explain stuff to you.

For subjects like math and CS, these things are great substitutes. For things like mycology or religious studies, less so. I think there is something to be said for using your time in college to focus more on the subjects that are basically unlearnable via other channels.

For things like CS though, just sitting down and spending a weekend watching Tim Roughgarden's YouTube channel will give you more than enough algorithm and data structure knowledge to get a job as a developer or whatever.

adamnemecek2• 9 years ago

Books, videos, and websites are a poor substitute to having someone who knows sit down and explain stuff to you.

I beg to differ. I wish college was just me in my room for three months and then a final. No hw, nothing.

ACow_Adonis2• 9 years ago

Swapping from IT to economics was one of the best things I could have done to promote my understanding of computer science.

Not because I learnt anything more in economics about CS, but because my first CS courses focused on Eiffel and object oriented programming: it was going to solve all our problems! We all think about objects naturally, so we should all program that way! It's the future of industry and science!

Instead, everything I learnt about CS has now been through trying to solve actual practical problems and applying them to the real world. I now have more experience with stats languages, taught myself lisp, and an employed doing analytics, a field and course that didn't exist and wouldn't have been treated seriously had I raised my objections to the curriculum back at uni.

Academics are more fad driven and fearful than they like to admit, even more so today now that industry dollars and popularity has increasingly permeated the academic system.

My story is a unique point in history you say, and it's unlikely to happen again?

On the contrary, I think it's even more likely to apply to today...

adventured• 9 years ago

A's make for boring, one dimensional students. People who make priorities based on more complex factors than an arbitrary letter grade are preferable to interact and work with.

That doesn't make sense. There's no required connection to getting high grades and being one dimensional. That sounds like your own personal biased world-view more than how things must actually work in reality. If a person is competent, much less brilliant, and can score high in a class, what exactly is the law of the universe that says they can't work on side projects?

ACow_Adonis2• 9 years ago

I believe that law of the universe is called "opportunity cost".

Additionally, our education systems reward repeated success and high marks, not exploration and failure. Thus purely from a stats and analytic perspective, the winning strategy to navigate through such a system is safe specialisation: which again, will trend towards one dimensional students who don't experience or seek out or tolerate failure well. This they stick to what they know, do not push past the limit offered by their graded courses, and tend not to put themselves out there to tackle/expose their weaknesses or areas they view as oblique to their field/strengths.

Show me someone with few failures, and I will show you someone who has never pushed our challenged themselves successfully...

akhilcacharya2• 9 years ago

time is better spent working on personal projects, hashing out ideas with peers

When I was entering college I thought this would be what I'd do in my free time. Instead, it turned out that all of my peers were disinterested in these sorts of things. I still did projects and research and decent internships while having an OK GPA (~3.9) but this definitely isn't possible everywhere.

irrational3• 9 years ago

A's get you academic scholarships. I got through undergraduate school (2 Bachelors and a minor) and graduate school without a dime of debt because my A's netted my academic scholarships every semester.

qntty• 9 years ago

Like most college advice, this is a combination of "what my professors wish I would do" and "what future me will wish I did".

Good advice doesn't just tell you what you will be glad you did later, it directly addresses the real problems that you have now. It's not easy to give because it requires that you step into someone else's shoes. The last one suggesting seeking out emotional support is probably the closest to this, but it's also some of the most common pieces of advice published anywhere.

ianai2• 9 years ago

I remember being told my generation were going to have it rough. One old man in particular seemed to single out my profession (mathematics) as some sort of ultimate cure all that should feel the burden of solving all of societies problems. Pretty heavy to lay that on anyone.

And yet I don’t know what I would actually suggest people consider. Health care does have good, local growth prospects at least. But that’s very much not for everyone, myself included. It just seems like more than ever that outside of very few localities work and the “American dream” are way off from the realm of possibilities.

Buttes• 9 years ago

Healthcare and tech are basically the two "jobs of the future". "Local growth" pfffft. More people need more healthcare. There are few surer things.

pdimitar4• 9 years ago

You'll have to forgive a more mature person for not wanting to give advice on how do you deal with "what do your boyfriend's friends think about your poetry about your boyfriend". As en example, my wife is fully excused for not being excited about a discussion between two kid girls discussing what outfit should their Barbie wear today.

The "job" of the more mature person is to tell you that you're focusing on insignificant shit right now and that this is a problem. And to also tell you what are more significant issues you should be focusing on. How do you solve your problem however is entirely up to you.

They're not there to hand-hold you, they are there to give you perspective.

Still, if you wish to elaborate, I'll gladly give you my opinion about your current problem -- if your comment included yourself, I mean.

rb808• 9 years ago

I didn't go to college in the US so I'm a bit surprised:

A's come with perks - seriously? Maybe when you're 6 that is a thing, when you're 20 I thought you'd grown out of that.

Asking questions in class - I hate these people, 50-200 people have to listen while some prima donna wants all the attention.

After one of my intro sessions, a freshman from Idaho blurted out: “Awesome class! It’s like you stuck my fingers in a light socket.” I laughed and invited her to speed walk with me around the local park - I guess arse lickers are everywhere.

Rapzid• 9 years ago

I think the class size is a detriment to asking questions.. My high school had ~30 max to a class.. In either case, a smart person asking a question is sometimes good because it's often a question others have but don't want to ask. Same thing in business; sometimes people will ask questions just so others can hear the answers.

mto3• 9 years ago

Well it was up to 700 for me. At least in the first years. Also felt the questions were annoying there. Especially because it was so basic stuff you can find everywhere in the internet. In the specialized courses in the master there were often only 2-20 people and this was completely different, with topics that are state of the art in research and material you can't find online so easily.

hprotagonist3• 9 years ago

My top 3.

1. Show up to office hours. Even if you sit there and do nothing, TA's notice -- and TAs will absolutely spill the beans on what to prep for for exams, even unintentionally.

2. If you're so brainfried that you can't study any more, go to the gym. Not only is exercise generally good, I'm real convinced it's good for memory consolidation too.

3. If you're attending an expensive private university, networking is effectively what you're buying. Exploit ruthlessly.

jsemrau• 9 years ago

3. If you're attending an expensive private university, networking is effectively what you're buying. Exploit ruthlessly.

This is how I got into my job. It's never too late. Bring yourself out and talk to people.

hprotagonist3• 9 years ago

you and me both.

my first graduate school advisor took me on as a full staff member 5 years out of undergrad. It turns out he knew exactly who i was and was keeping tabs on me in industry, waiting for me to reenter the market. I don't know what I did to deserve that, but I'm eternally grateful.

sndean• 9 years ago

3. If you're attending an expensive private university, networking is effectively what you're buying. Exploit ruthlessly.

Even if it's not an expensive school, email / talk to all your professors, classmates, lab partners, etc. I didn't start doing that until my 3rd year.

For me it was: My mentor's friend -> internship -> first job

emodendroket4• 9 years ago

Even if you've already graduated it's not too late to reconnect with people.

emodendroket4• 9 years ago

1. Show up to office hours. Even if you sit there and do nothing, TA's notice -- and TAs will absolutely spill the beans on what to prep for for exams, even unintentionally.

Just showing up and hanging out in the TA's office when you don't have any question seems kind of weird to me.

hprotagonist3• 9 years ago

I've been on both sides. It is a little strange, but even the quiet kids who show up and listen tend to get better grades.

shayaknyc• 9 years ago

2. If you're so brainfried that you can't study any more, go to the gym. Not only is exercise generally good, I'm real convinced it's good for memory consolidation too.

I read a study a while back that showed taking breaks after learning/studying is crucial to efficient memory consolidation. Breaks can be filled with other activities, like working out. Promoting general blood flow, prob doesn't hurt in getting fresh O2 to the brain while it's doing it's thing....

spooky_• 9 years ago

I'm surprised this doesn't seem to mention cost, aside from A's lead to scholarships.

Many community colleges offer guaranteed admission to state schools so long as a GPA is maintained. It can save the student tens of thousands in fees.

adamnemecek2• 9 years ago

I reward those who try harder with recommendations, references, professional contacts and encouragement.

...and everyone knows that recommendations from writing professors are what helps you land the jobs that make the big $$$.

RhysU• 9 years ago

...aaaaaand learning things takes a back seat to credentialism in the whole article. We should go to college because it is the most cost effective way of learning things, not because our profs bestow favors on the front row.

twblalock• 9 years ago

We have to live in the real world, where credentials matter. It's rational to take that into consideration when making decisions about our education.

pdimitar4• 9 years ago

As mentioned in the article -- "professors are humans too".

If you show genuine interest, they'll remember and favor you. That's how us the humans work.

slackingoff20173• 9 years ago

Nothing in there about money? Here's one I figured out a couple years too late...

You got average grades and nothing unusual about you that would lead to scholarships? If you go to school the "normal" way you're likely to end up in huge piles of debt. Even if you go to community college first.

An open secret is location. Find a place in the country, or even another country, where college is subsidized for residents. Instead of going to community college in your home town, prioritize moving to that location ASAP.

Get a part time job, a crappy apartment, and start community college there. Pay close attention to their residency requirements to make sure you meet them as quickly as possible. Then transfer to the college of your choice and save tons of money

cyberpunk0• 9 years ago

Soooooo fuck over the town for selfish, egotistical means. Got it.

slackingoff20173• 9 years ago

I fail to see how moving to a place with better benefits is either one of those things.

Isn't that the reason that pretty much everyone moves? Better jobs, better schools, less crime, etc...

I guess it can be seen as egotistical and selfish if you're the kind of person that doesn't like anyone to build housing that spoils your view. The NIMBY archetype

wrigby• 9 years ago

This. I did this accidentally - that is, I didn't move to a new place, because my state already had a system that works really well for this.

The Virginia state schools are very inexpensive for the quality, and I did two years in the community college system and then transferred to James Madison with guaranteed admission (because of agreements between the state universities and the community college). JMU wasn't a noteworthy CS school at the time, but I also had the option to head to Virginia Tech or University of Virginia, both of which have great programs (JMU offered a minor in music business, which is what made my decision).

Tuition was <$4k/semester for residents at the time (class of 2011).

throwaway2048• 9 years ago

good luck affording an apartment pretty much anywhere that is anything like that with a part time job these days.

slackingoff20173• 9 years ago

This sounds unreal, but I found a place that was $210 a month about 6 years ago. The area was sketchy and the place was crap. Best thing about it was that it didn't have roaches.

Since college funding is usually on state level you have some latitude with where you initially move. Going to a community college in a farm town doesn't sound like a blast but it's probably the easiest way to make things work from a cash flow perspective.

Your friends/family are likely to think your "master plan" is crazy too lol

irrational3• 9 years ago

I know a guy who did this. He went to a state college for 3 years and then transferred to a super expensive private college for his last year and graduated from that school. So he can put on his resume that he graduated from the prestigious school even though he only went there a year.

ysleepy• 9 years ago

Sorry, but this does not contain any special insights. Reads like platitudes.

My luke warm insights:

- Stay fit, keep your back trained.

- Mitigate risks to your mental well being

- Socialize

- Do the work

- Take advantage of opportunities given to students (travel, discounts, university resources)

CalChris2• 9 years ago

I agree with everything in the article. However, it was written from the Liberal Arts POV and I was in Engineering.

Get all your reading done before class. Class is review.

If you have a paper due get a draft done a week ahead of time. Then you can hammer on it over the week.

Shop for TAs the first week. In a big lecture class, your TA will make the class.

Avoid bad teachers. I never didn't get into a class. But I dropped three classes the first week because I thought the lecturer was weak. There was something else better to take. I missed a class that was only taught once a year but the prof sucked. Nothing is worth that. There is another way, always.

If you're in STEM you'll have to take some LA classes for breadth. Make these count. These aren't classes you have to take. These are classes you get to take.

Hit the gym. A lot.

yeukhon2• 9 years ago

If you're in STEM you'll have to take some LA classes for breadth. Make these count. These aren't classes you have to take. These are classes you get to take.

I regretted I didn't. I consistently find myself unable to have any meaningful conversations with anyone on anything outside of Computer Science (even then I am only comfortable discussing security and infrastructure; ask me about compiler I can tell you the basics and that's about it). Good teachers teaching LA can prepare you becoming more full-stack in life :) Good LA classes are usually more discussion-oriented (but I REALLY HATE WRITING PAPERS).

CalChris2• 9 years ago

I used to hate writing papers, especially in HS. But what I was really hating was the night before it was due, thinking somehow the magic would happen. It never did.

The key is getting a draft out, literally a raw simple draft of what you're gonna say, a week ahead of time. It's kind've like pseudo code. Then fill that in.

Then I'd hammer on my papers over the week. They'd start out raw and get better and better. I'd tweak. I'd find a better word. (Is this sounding familiar?) I'd work on it.

When I turned it in, I knew I was getting an A. I had two papers quoted in lecture. Hey wait, I wrote that! I don't think I ever got less than a B+, generally A's.

Writing isn't magic. It's work. In fact, what 'they' do isn't really that much different from what 'we' do.

BurningFrog• 9 years ago

Maybe you need to lower your requirements for participating in conversations. Most of us talk freely on stuff we didn't study at University level.

Why not read a few books and watch a few documentaries and start chiming in?

emodendroket4• 9 years ago

If it's any consolation I feel like an extremely narrow focus on CS and related topics to the exclusion of anything else is a common affliction on HN.

But, anyway, it's never too late to start reading literature or history or whatever else really. I think I've read more stuff in the past few years than I ever did in school.

ThrowawayR2• 9 years ago

If you're in STEM you'll have to take some LA classes for breadth. Make these count. These aren't classes you have to take. These are classes you get to take.

For those who disagree with the above advice, there are a couple of options that will make the obligatory humanities requirements beneficial to your professional career:

1) Technical writing courses, if available, or any course that requires you to analyze text and write essays that require logical structure and argumentation (which covers a lot of options). A key aspect of success in any technical field is the ability to quickly and clearly communicate ideas to others in writing.

2) Foreign language courses. Getting a bit of fluency in a foreign language that interests you can bring surprising opportunities.

akhilcacharya2• 9 years ago

. Recently I learned that my niece Dara, a sophomore at New York University with a 3.7 G.P.A. (and a boyfriend), was offered a week of travel in Buenos Aires as part of her honors seminar. I was retroactively envious to learn that a 3.5 G.P.A. or higher at many schools qualifies you for free trips, scholarships, grants, awards, private parties and top internships

For some reason I don't think this is common.

Tade02• 9 years ago

I barely made it through college and I can tell you what eventually was the most valuable thing I that was doing there:

Networking.

I didn't fail linear algebra because a friend explained one important concept to me twenty minutes before the exam.

I got my first(not related to my education) job because I helped a friend with calculus(his father was a manager in a company and hired me shortly after his son passed his exams).

I got my first paid internship because I bumped into my friend while I was visiting some other friends in their dorm(apparently the said friend's manager was looking to spend his budget - or so it seemed given that the hiring process was a formality really).

I got my first "real" job because a friend of mine ran a company and was in need of devs.

I could go on and on. Basically connections were the thing that jump-started my career.

So my advice would be: try to be likable and hang out with people with grit.

pdimitar4• 9 years ago

Agreed with your whole comment except this:

try to be likable

You can't do that. But showing genuine interest in what people think and do, being a listener and not only a talker, is what gets many people to like you. And that's not something that's easy to fake. You have to be genuinely curious about other people's perspective and context.

Tade02• 9 years ago

I didn't specify how exactly you should be achieving that so I'm assuming you assumed that I was assuming that networking is all about drawing attention.

Anyway I originally went entirely against your advice here and it worked for me. Mostly because my fellow computer science students hated initiating smalltalk and enjoyed a good story, so lifting this burden off them was good.

I guess what it shows is that neither of our approaches are guaranteed to work.

emodendroket4• 9 years ago

Sleep more often.

yters• 9 years ago

ROTC can get you a scholarship and a great job out the door, plus loads of opportunities and leadership experience during your career no one else gets.

Plus you are defending an entire country. And much of our country's leadership class comes from the military, so it gives you a bigger say in where our country is going.

mto3• 9 years ago

Well, apparently being good at college is not a requirement for becoming professor... But I don't get that US GPA system. If B is the second best grade from 5 available grades, and GPA goes from 1 to 5 with 5 best, shouldn't this translate to 4/5 then?

We here usually just average the grades from the courses. But on the other hand, nobody cares about that score and it's not written anywhere officially. Because teachers are different and schools are different, a C with one Prof could still be better than an A with another one.

mto3• 9 years ago

Ok nevermind, seems there is the max 4 and max 5 system.

JohnL4• 9 years ago

Somebody once ran into Vladimir Putin at some diplomatic cocktail party when he was just a mid-level KGB guy, and they asked him what he did. Answer: "I mingle."

College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

Related Stories