My Computer Science Degree in 19 Minutes

hey everyone how's it going my name's me you go and welcome back to my channel where we talk about tech and career and life so today we're gonna be talking about my computer science degree and we're gonna walk through all the classes that I took as an undergrad at UC San Diego I am hoping to get through everything in under 20 minutes but as I was reviewing my transcript I realized I took a lot of different classes so we will try our best by going through my classes year by year and talking about what I learned in them as well as what was memorable about them and I'm hoping that this will shed some light on what a four-year computer science degree at a university is like I don't know maybe you were deciding between going to a coding bootcamp or going back to school for computer science or maybe you went to school for computer science and you just wanted to know what the UCSD program was like whatever that may be I'm happy to have you and I'm ready and excited to talk about my experience so I went to the University of California San Diego or UCSD for short from the years 2010 to 2014 to earn my Bachelors of Science in computer science I entered college without knowing what I wanted to major in so I simply chose UCSD because it was the best school that I got into a little bit about UCSD college system there are several colleges that you can choose as an undergraduate student which basically determines what general education requirements you have to satisfy as well as which dorms you live in I was in war in college and I chose that because when I read the Wikipedia page for it the values and things that the college stood for was really similar to who I was in my own values especially as a Libra we're in college is really popular among engineering majors because for those majors it slashes the general education requirements in half which is really good because engineering majors at UCSD have so much coursework to get through in order to graduate on time so I didn't really need to take that many GE classes and I also came in to UCSD with a couple of classes done thanks to my AP test scores which obviously I was really glad because it got me out of some math classes I didn't need to take which I know I would have done poorly in I should also mention that UCSD was on the quarter system instead of the semester system so there were four quarters in which you could take classes throughout the year so let's get into the coursework so I've talked in previous videos about how I didn't start off as a CS major at school so this first quarter I was actually considering either becoming a chemistry major or a neuroscience major and this is because I really liked chemistry in high school and neuroscience just seemed kind of cool because it was like brains and thinking about how people think and the science behind all of that so one of the classes that I took was chemistry 6-8 honors now technically I had tested out of this class with my AP scores but I wanted to take the honors class anyways to see if I could keep up with College chemistry spoiler alert I couldn't it was a really hard class and was ultimately why I decided not to be a chem major and then I also took psych 2 which was introduction to neuroscience I never really took any college level biology nor had I ever gotten close to medicine or anything related to that in high school so I wanted to take an intro class to see if it would really interest me another spoiler alert I hated this class I actually failed it it was so bad because I am terrible at memorizing stuff and it turns out that memorization is a really important skill if you want to go into neuroscience or anything biology related I also took this Warren College writing program class which was just a GE and then I took fill 10 intro to logic now this was a key class because this class opened my eyes to computer science because at the end of the quarter when I realized that I hated both chemistry and neuroscience at the college level I was kind of at a loss for what the heck to even do in major in so then I was talking to my friend who suggested that I take a computer science class because he knew how much I was enjoying my logic class so that brings us to winter quarter 2011 where I take my very first computer science class ever and this was CSE 8 a injured a computer science with Java which also had a lab course where you just go to labs and programming Java and stuff I also took chemistry 6b not honors because I won't try to do that again and I just need to fulfill my GE war in college writing program B also GE and then I also took CSE 91 which was perspectives in CS C now I don't remember taking this class at all to be honest so I looked up what was part of the coursework when I took it and what I gathered from it was that it was basically a class where each lecture there was someone else who came in to talk about how computer science can be applied in many different ways some of the lectures look really interesting but most of the lectures were done by people in academia who were talking about complex computer science theorems and equations to mostly freshmen who were just learning how to write a for loop so yeah that was CSE 91 and then I also took math 20 C which was I guess calculus I don't really remember that class either next spring quarter was C SCH B which was a continuation of intro to computer science Java I also took discrete mathematics this quarter and I learned some useful stuff that I still carry with me today because it is useful like boolean algebra Bonacci and number systems and I also learned some stuff that I don't remember what they are at all because I never used them after that class like the pigeonhole principle Gray's code and karnaugh maps I remember I had a really bad professor for this class but to be fair most of my professors at UCSD were not that good you'll see some of that shades sprinkled in here and there because I think UCSD CS program was very theoretical it was very academic and it was really focused on systems architecture and lower level programming which is like the complete opposite of what I'm interested in high editing way you go here I just wanted to stop and clarify a few things so I don't actually think that it was the professors were bad or the courses were bad or anything I think it was more that it just didn't really match my learning style as much as I had hoped for some people it really does match their learning style and their interests I think a computer science degree experience really depends on a lot of factor you know it depends I also wanted to recognize the privilege that I've had of going to an American University and getting a computer science degree because it has helped me to become the software engineer that I am today and it's giving me the career that I've had to this day so with that said back to the video I also took linear algebra and statistical methods that quarter which were also requirements for computer science and then I also took Chamber Orchestra now some of you might know this but I was in Orchestra through all of middle school in high school so I wanted to bring that a little bit into my college experience and it was really fun but I had no time to practice next moving on my second year of college fall quarter of 2011 this quarter I took basic data structures and object-oriented design which is you know the foundation of like all of computer science and then I took class on how to debug which was so useful we learned how to use a scientific method to find bugs as well as debugging tips and tricks and then I took math / algorithms and systems analysis where we learned about algorithm complexity discrete probability and recursion one thing that was cool about this class was that it was taught by this professor named Ronald Graham who is the inventor of Graham's number there's like a whole wiki page about him and his number and it was really cool to have him as a professor and then I took intro to neuroscience again because I failed it and I didn't want an F on my transcript one of the things that I think is really cool about this day and age that wasn't as readily available when I went to college is that the materials to learn computer science fundamentals like data structures and algorithms is available online and that's where I wanted to thank the sponsor for this video brilliant brilliant is a website that has a ton of courses in the math and sciences and computer science they're entered a data structures class is way easier to learn from than my college class with beautiful illustrations and interactive lessons each class explains the concept well to teach you how to think and each course breaks down complex concepts into easy-to-understand pieces go to brilliant dot org slash hello my you go and sign up for free and check out some of their courses and the first 200 people to go to that link will get 20% off of the annual premium subscription I really hope that you take advantage of this and brilliant thank you so much for sponsoring now back to my degree all right winter quarter of 2012 this is when we start going into kind of some of the lower level programming stuff because I took a class called computer organization and systems program aka CSC 30 this is where we learn things like bitwise operations started learning about assembly and the inner workings of a computer aka the ALU buses and caches I remember this class being pretty difficult but it was really just a small hint of what was to come and then I took some easy classes to balance it out I took music fourteen contemporary music I couldn't find the syllabus for this one I don't remember it but I'm pretty sure it was an entire class about the Beatles and then I took Phil 27 which was one of the war in college basic GES about ethics now you'd think that if you're teaching ethics to a bunch of engineering majors then you'd probably teach course work around the implications of engineering technology and ethics but instead we learned things about euthanasia abortion war and aid to the needy which yeah like those are all ethics problems but we wrote papers on those things and I feel like it could have been more useful if we did projects relating ethics and engineering some more now let's move on to spring quarter of my second year so I took a class on advanced data structures which built upon my basic data structures class we learned about binary search trees balance trees various hashing techniques heap Streep's priority queues and graphs I also took a class called software engineering which was taught by one of our beloved professors Carrie Gillespie and this is my very first like project base class in fact this class every order the professor decides that the students will make a different kind of application the quarter that I took it our professor was really into CrossFit and so all of us made a CrossFit app we could choose what platform we wanted to build on and it was really kind of self-directed it was the first time that we learned how to do it heard of development and I learned a lot from that class and is actually you know like the first mobile app that I had ever made I took the second part of the ethics class that was GE and then I took psych 161 which was engineering psychology now this is actually one of my most memorable classes in college because I was really interested in the subject matter the class primarily focused on how human beings interact with technology through audio and visual cues my professor was a huge don norman fan who wrote the design of everyday things which is a very popular book in the world of cognitive science and design and then I realized that Don Norman teaches at UCSD just not to undergrad students so then I just thought about how my professor just completely idolizes one of his colleagues and thought that was pretty heartwarming so that was my second year starting to get into some harder CS classes and now on to my third year so in this quarter I took algorithms in which we learn things like depth-first search and breadth-first search and Dijkstra's and then I also took intro slash theory of computation in this class we learned about deterministic finite automata and non-deterministic finite automata and regular expressions and what's natural and Turing machines and this class was so so hard I really struggled in it and I legit failed I was also taking in class about programming languages where I learned Oh camel and Scala this is really just a cost to help you adapt to different programming languages really fast and learn about all the different types that were out there and then I took race and ethnicity in American politics which must have been a GE but I don't remember taking this class at all next in the winter quarter of my third year I took compiler construction this class was really really infamous at UCSD and people told me that you spend at least 40 hours a week on the programming assignments and was like a major reading class which I don't believe in waiter classes because that's when a lot of my friends especially women dropped out and they got discouraged from being in computer science I just I just hate wieder classes and I wish they didn't exist in that class we basically made a completely functional compiler and I was like my first time doing a 48-hour coding session which I will never ever do it kid and then I took a class called field study which was basically a way to get credits for a part-time job that I was working where I was coding super super easy and then I apparently took life sciences in the 20th century which seems like it was about like evolution and stuff again I I don't remember taking this class so luckily I barely passed my compiler class and then I moved on to Spring Quarter in Spring Quarter I retook theory of computation because I failed it the first time and it was just as grueling as a second time but I was gonna make sure that it wasn't gonna fail it again I also took server side web applications which was basically talking about relational databases and how to create sequel queries so I remember that one being pretty easy and then I try to take intro to AI and machine learning but the course work was really intensive so I ended up dropping it and then as part of the CS coursework I took a class at the management school about business project management the group project was actually kind of fun the end goal was to make a marshmallow and spaghetti tower that would get really really high and it was all just around kind of going through the motions of scoping her project and researching a project delegating things it was a fun class and that was my third year and then in between my third and fourth year I had an internship at Intuit at the San Diego office working on TurboTax which basically got me my offer to work there full time after graduation and even though I had an offer I still had a lot of course work to get through my fourth year so I definitely could not slack off so in the fall quarter of my senior year I took operating systems learned about FEMA for ease and such and then database system principles which was kind of more of the same stuff as my previous database then apparently I took a class on eating disorders which like I don't remember again at all this was the quarter in which I took some of those lower level programming classes again that were requirements to graduate and because I was like so uninterested in these classes I don't really remember them except I do remember we learned about logic gates and I think the project that we did in this class was to create a Bitcoin mining program and in the winter quarter of my final year I took the second part of those lower level programming classes which was around computer architecture we learned about modern processor design and operation and there was also a lab - this one - again I was so uninterested in this topic that I don't really remember the course but I needed to do it to graduate I also took intro to computer vision that quarter which was actually pretty interesting because Scott and I went to the same school except he was majoring in electrical engineering and knew a lot about computer vision so he would help me out on programming assignment which was kind of like a cool moment for the both of us because yes we were dating then because we've been dating since we were in college I did another field study class for my internship to get some free credits and then apparently I took a class called corporate social responsibility but it looks like I dropped it probably because my computer architecture classes were really demanding and then in the spring quarter of my final year I took mobile programming which kind of was like a big deal because that's what I ended up doing for a job this was kind of the key class because this is the very first time that I did iOS programming which you know became the rest of my career but in the class we made an iOS app that basically would replace I clickers which were these kind of remote control devices that you would use to vote on things during class which were always way too expensive I also took product marketing and management which was really cool because we basically as a group decided to make a marketing plan for a product or company that already existed my group chose sriracha from - foods because they never market their stuff and we thought it would be interesting and so I learned a lot about sriracha that quarter and then Jess which was totally GE but I do remember this one as we learned about big steps so then I only had one class to take over summer which was webclient languages which basically was just making a website my professor was kind of a troll and wanted us to make a meme maker website because memes were all the craze back in 2014 and I remember this was a group project and there was like seven people in it and me and one other person ended up doing all of the work and it sucked so then we left the group and made it on our own what you know group projects during college am i right anyways that's my computer science degree I looked at the current curriculum for CS students at UCSD right now and it's largely the same with the removal of compilers getting that degree is one of the hardest things that I've ever done and honestly if I could go back in time and choose another school and be able to pay for it I would probably choose somewhere else knowing what I know now about myself I know what learning style fits me best I know what interests me and I'm not sure that UCSD CS program was great for that but honestly I don't regret it I met a lot of friends there I met Scott there and while I didn't like the coursework I think making me realize what I didn't like led me to what I do like I hope you liked this video if you also went to a four-year degree program for computer science then let me know what your experience was in the comments down below and make sure to hit that subscribe button and notification though I will see you next time and hope you have a great day wherever you are bye

Channel: mayuko

Views: 575,666

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Id: CTcG81FK9xs

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020