My Regrets as a Computer Science Student

going on an extended vacation where should we travel to Morocco in Africa all right done deal actually traveling is one of the few things that I'm not doing there's a lot going on that I've sprinkled throughout some of these videos in the past like this is going to be one of the last few videos in this office over the next about thinking about two to three weeks Maya and I are gonna be gone out of this house into a new house and I try to share as much as possible with y'all I kind of feel like I have two different lives I have my YouTube software engineering life which is my full-time job plus YouTube my part-time job if you will then I have the rest of my life that I like the fishing the going out on the boat the dog a lot of other things that are going on I've always floated with the idea of either starting a whole other channel just so I can kind of post more of non-software development stuff over there or if I want to just start working on integrating a lot of different aspects of my life into this channel let me know what you think in the comments below and I don't care one way or another I'm just gonna try to figure that out but that's not why most y'all clicked on this video you're trying to hear about my regrets as a computer science student if you don't know last May so May of 2018 I graduated from ODU with science degree and in this video we're gonna go over a few things quite a few things that I felt like I should have done better that I've regret not doing better and things that I would do if I had to do it all over again and I also want to talk about a few things that I don't regret things that I did and retrospectively looking at it I did right now I'm gonna be the first to say that there are more things that I did wrong then I did right but I figured out you know kind of try to balance out the video a little bit and I know I specified computer science in the title is very well could be my regrets as a college student but I wanted to specify computer science because computer science is a hard degree to obtain I mean you have to put in a lot of work if my major back in college it was incredibly simple or just overall easy not much problem-solving not much involved work then I probably wouldn't have these regrets so let's get into them first and foremost it is treating college like high school and high school I didn't have any homework if I did I got it done in study block or in class or it was very very miniscule and in high school I didn't study I didn't feel like I needed to and I seemed to pass the classes just fine so I didn't do homework and I didn't study I went to class I did my work that needed to get done in class and when I went home I went home I kind of like clocked out of work if you will and in college it doesn't really work that way while high school you go for let's say seven eight hours a day and then maybe you have one to two hours of homework at home for college you go to class for one to two hours a day and then you have seven to eight hours of homework at home it completely flipped everything around where everything in high school you could do in class your teachers were there to teach you everything while college you needed to be doing everything on your own sure you had the resources of your teacher they just kind of go over things and you have to figure it out yourself at least that's how it was in computer science it's like it's a lot easier to write a paper in class or do a math worksheet in class whatever maybe calc one doesn't matter then it is to write an involved program in class with a language that you need to Google every other thing that needs to get done in that program that's definitely that was definitely a big one I also regretted not completely understanding the the aspect of computer science prior to signing up for computer science degree and attending the computer science classes and all honestly I thought it was more like a software development degree where I was going to go in I was going to learn how to code and that was basically like that was the focus and sure I take electives here and there to make sure I'm a well-rounded student but I thought most of my computer science classes were going to be programming coding but ba ba but it was a lot of theory a lot of math a lot more work and a lot different work than I previously thought and that was my own problem I didn't do enough research going into it I was just naive one thing I don't regret because I remember very vividly my early years of college something that helped me get through my college was when I signed up for Angeles now this isn't necessarily a sponsor but it kind of is in a way for this video I remember back in my early years I signed up for Angelus think of AngelList as a place for startups tech startups or what have you to put their company on this platform and then software engineers software developers or anyone who would be needed in a particular tech space to put their resume similar to LinkedIn but for startups and something that I remember scrolling through my early years of computer science just dreaming about one day maybe I can get this iOS development job I have a potential to get 3 to 5 percent equity and make $80,000 a year and work remotely I just remember scrolling through all of those things down through Angeles and that really helped me drive forward and try to just pursue that dream and if you're someone who is interested in just checking out angellist you're interested in being a software developer and a start-up maybe you are startup I'm going to leave a link in the top of the description it's a free for life account to AngelList you just go there you sign up this isn't a free trial this is you sign up just like you would be signing up to a social media account and you go from there that is a real thing I'm glad I did simply because it helps me get through to the next step if I ever felt if I ever had like you know the impostor syndrome or just kind of felt like I wasn't good enough I just remembered of where I wanted to be I was scroll through that and then I would work in order to hopefully one day get there now we're gonna get a bit more generic this can go for all college students my next regret is neglecting office hours something you got to understand while you have you know your class 1 to 2 hours a day per class and then you have you have your homework that you need to get done when you do your homework or your projects or whatever the heck you want to call it and you face a problem especially in computer science and you're trying to figure out a problem Stack Overflow whatever else your search engine your internet will show you you need to use your office hours when you've exhausted all resources if you can't figure something out go to your nearest not advisor but your professor for that class for that project so they can help guide you through it make sure you have a decent understanding of what your problem is you want to talk to them about the solutions that you've tried and sometimes you'll figure it out yourself like the rubber duckie method if I were to you know talk to this globe right here try to describe my particular problem to this globe I can maybe figure it out because I'm trying to formulate words in order to describe the problem at hand now that may not happen and if that doesn't happen that's where your professor will come into play and say well maybe you got to do XY and Z and that will help you get over that hump and on to the next problem basically so always use those office hours wisely because they are incredibly valuable you're paying for it you're paying a lot of money to go to college regardless of what degree you have that money pays for a lot of different things a lot of which is the curriculum the professor's teaching you the stuff and then your professors office hours just imagine how much money are wasting by not using those office hours now you call something a regret when you still do it to this day like I regret procrastinating so much in school but yet even in my own life on particulars I still procrastinate quite a bit I've gotten better at it it's a it's a process but in school procrastinating was the worst like you would be down to a couple days left or maybe just the night before you have to turn something in and you get stuck on a bug or an error especially if you're trying to write some type of program for class and you can't go to office hours your professor probably won't be responding to emails and if they are how many other people procrastinated just like you until the last night to ask professor via email about the problems all emailing your professor trying to figure out the problems while your professors they don't have much time they may be trying to respond to emails at 11:00 p.m. when your thing is due at 11:59 p.m. but who knows if they're going to get around to you it's a lot better in terms of your grades and in terms of how much you'll learn if you work little by little on these projects that you have two weeks to complete if you start off on it on the second or third day in which it's assigned or even the night of then you're able to use those office hours like I suggested in the preview regret so just make sure you leave yourself enough time don't procrastinate don't procrastinate this is me talking to myself because like I said and I want to leave this on a positive note was something that I felt like I did right and that is getting in on internships early like I could have maybe done earlier but I think it was the summer after my sophomore year where I got my first internship computer science internship and then that following fall I had an internship and then the next summer I had an internship and then that last year my senior year I just kind of did all the work I need to get done so I could graduate so if you're going to college for anything especially computer science try to get in on internships early don't worry about not good enough render like they don't expect much out of you a lot of the work you're going to be doing is typical internship work something that someone from from a computer science degree all the way down to a communications degree you're gonna be doing the typical intern work like Excel spreadsheets building powerpoints basically anything Microsoft Office you could be rewiring a whole entire data center which that's just pulling out plugs and plugging them back in and using new power strips and what-have-you where your company's going to be sending you over to Chicago for documenting a manual process and which needs to be automated but that manual process occurs from 1:00 a.m. to roughly 10:00 a.m. that was another one of mine or you could actually get a coding internship and that could be that would be pretty cool too just don't be worried they know you're an intern your student they don't expect the world out of you just be willing to do the work and ask questions when you run into a problem and that's it those are my regrets as a computer science student and sprinkle it in a few positive things that I think I did right I know I'm going to think of something as soon as I hit that publish button oh um and I should include that in the video I should include that literally I've been adding to this list over the past few days ever since I came up with the idea for this video and I know I'm gonna have so many other regrets for non regrets that I had as a computer science student so in order to fill that void if you all have anything similar to what I laid out in this video leave those down in the comment below comment section below English is a fickle mistress be sure to give this video a big thumbs up if you liked it if you aren't already and don't forget to sign up for your free for life angellist account down below and let me know about the whole vlog thing that I feel like I kind of want to integrate into some of these videos or maybe have their own standalone videos on this channel or if I should just make a whole another whole entire other channel regarding everything else that's going on in my life till next time guys have a good one peace

Channel: ForrestKnight

Views: 1,958,166

Keywords: software, developer, computer science, computer science student, computer science vlog, computer science regrets, college regrets, my regrets as a computer science student, regrets in college, what do you regret the most, regret, software developer regret, what i wish i knew before computer science, 5 things i wish i knew before computer science, 5 things i wish i knew cs, 5 things i wish i knew, things i wish i knew

Id: xa6me8wou_k

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2019