My College Advice for Computer Science Majors (after graduating 6 years ago)

hey everyone how's it going my name's Mei Yuko and welcome to my channel where we talk about tech career and life so I graduated from UC San Diego in 2014 with a bachelor's in computer science now I know it's been a minute since I've been in college and I know that college life in 2020 looks drastically different from every year prior now that I've been out of college for a while I've had some time to reflect on what are the things that I did during school that helped me in the long run so today I'm gonna share some of my sage advice for the next generation of CS majors so keep on watching I want to take a moment to say thank you to our sponsor for this video good wall good wall is a next generation social platform that enables students and professionals to become better together this app is honestly a great one-stop-shop for being able to showcase the work that you're proud of as well as finding a community of people with similar interests and find scholarships and jobs and it's especially good for people who are looking to broaden their network and their horizons past their school their workplace and their geographic area I do really think that it's cool that you can show your achievements and also talk about the skills that you've learned along the way so download the good wall app on iOS or Android and create a profile for absolutely free by clicking my link in the description box down below I'm actually hosting a Q&A session in this app so tap on messages channels and look for myuca Q&A where I'll be answering any questions that you have over the next week good wall thank you for sponsoring and let's get back to the video so my life in college was not a cakewalk by any means in fact it was one of the most challenging times of my life so during college I was a computer science major didn't minor in anything I worked part time the whole way through to feed myself and pay for my expenses I also was really active in to student organizations of which both became vice president for eventually I lived off campus for the majority of my undergrad and it took me a little over four years to complete my degree I'm grateful for the opportunity to have gone and graduated from college and I know that it's made me a better person and has afforded me more opportunities as a result anyways a lot of people talk about the college triangle which is between social life and good grades and good health you can only choose to actually think it's really possible to do all three in fact all of my tips touch on one part of the triangle and also talk about the triangle a little bit more at the end of the video but yeah let's do some advice so here's my advice on how to have a more fruitful balanced and meaningful college experience as a CS major so something that they don't tell you about life after college is that college is literally one of the best times to meet new people and widen your network and that opportunities like this are really hard to come by afterwards I think many wonderful things come together to make colleges magical place to meet new people for one thing there are a bunch of people around you who are roughly the same age as you it's also really easy to find people who share your interests through school activities people who are your major are sitting next to you every single day in class tough classes create a sense of community and camaraderie between you and random people and y'all all live in like a five-mile radius of one another so it's really easy to create and maintain friendships so you got a network in college and this is for a couple of reasons for one college is a great time to establish those lifelong friendships and it's a great chance to make connections with people who are going to be in your industry so join some student organizations and areas that are interesting to you you don't have to join just the computer science club there's also acapella or yoga or a cultural Club it's a great time to explore your hobbies and find people to do them with and make friends in class I was actually always too shy to make friends in my class because the imposter syndrome would get to me because I'm comparing myself to another person but it's one of my biggest regrets about College because those friends will help you get through a tough class together and it's more fun to code with friends than coding alone all the time and lastly make friends with upper-class men people upper-class people who are older than you they can warn you about what classes are hard what professors to take what programming assignments are hard or easy seriously trust their advice and their experiences you'll be glad that you did and once they graduate they're gonna get jobs and when you need that internship or full-time role they can be a great resource and help you out so yeah network now as I've talked about in my CS degree video I didn't really have like the best grades so I'm probably not the best person to give you academic advice but I was able to find internships throughout college and find a full time role pretty quickly and I think what helped me to do this is to have a general plan what I mean by this is to have a plan for both your academics and what you want to be doing after college I knew that my goal after college was to be financially stable and independent so a lot of what I did during college was to help me achieve that goal so make sure to ask yourself what is it that you want to be doing after college and what do you have to do right now to get there academically speaking having a plan helps you to be more realistic about the coursework that you have see as coursework in my experience always takes way longer than you think between programming assignments midterms quizzes other projects and finals these days now that I'm out of college whenever I met with an immense amount of work I sit down and kind of plan what I need to do over the next month I break large tasks into small achievable chunks so that it doesn't feel overwhelming anymore and I know what I need to do to get from point A to point B I think I might have gotten better grades if I actually did this during college and I know having a plan can feel really overwhelming it can start to define you and every failure can feel like you're not making any progress this is where I think it's really important to have some balance and to remember that your college experience and your major does not fully define who you are school is just one part of your journey so make the best of it make a plan but don't lose yourself in the process and speaking of balance one of the things that I did that really improved my quality of life during and after graduation was to take care of I mean let's face it like majoring in CS is really intense think of all like the coursework the time in the labs the all-nighters the stress that you feel from tests and programming assignments in addition to any existing commitments that you might already have like a job or a family but if you take some time and take care of your body it'll perform much better and feel much better during this time of stress so getting to seven to nine hours of sleep every night really did it for me it allowed me to stay awake in class and actually learn stuff as well as just stay more alert during the day so that I'm using my best brain for everything big braids we need the big brain eating as healthy as you can is also really important I say as healthy as you can because I don't what it's like to be really poor during college and I know the cup noodles is like the most economical choice but hear me out if you think about food as fuel for our bodies to create energy if you put in good fuel into your bodies it creates good energy to help you tackle whatever make up and lastly take care of your mental health like I said again and again college is stressful when I was in college I used to suppress and bury a lot of emotions when really the better and healthier thing to do is to let them out and process those feelings in a safe way so go to therapy meditate take your medication do whatever you got to do to feel like yourself so as far as the college triangle goes I think the key is to have a better balance between the three like for instance maybe try making your triangle a little bit smaller than you'd expect as in do your main two things a little bit less to make room for the third thing and have realistic expectations of what it would take to attain all three I mean I don't really think that there is like a perfect college experience College is literally what you make of it and every person will have a very different experience based on their personality limits and strengths but make sure to take some time to reflect and figure out what you need to grow towards the person that you want to be and achieve your goals I think that's the best that we can do sometimes so make sure to be realistic and kind to yourself in the end I think it's about setting boundaries and doing what you have to do during those short four to five years make the best of it and be bold in protecting your time anyway that's it for this video I hope you enjoyed it and if you did consider subscribing my social links are also all in description box down below and I will see you next time bye

Channel: mayuko

Views: 305,897

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Id: DUnjnfcpn3M

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020