5 College Survival Tips for Computer Science Majors
These days, most non-STEM students have got it all covered. They have a gap year, academic writing services, and rather abstract things to dwell on. However, when you are to become a software engineer, for instance, obtaining a degree is harder. Taking a gap year may result in huge gaps in knowledge due to the rapid changes in technology. Moreover, you don’t really have opportunities like addressing a college paper writing service that will get your code done. Being a stress-resistant and persevering person is what will help you. But how do you become one? Well, there are some practical tips you may find useful.
Rest
Computer science majors require a lot of thinking just like math. Oftentimes, if you’re stuck with an essay or a research paper, you may skip a passage, make some draft notes, read additional literature to get ideas, and get back to that section. In contrast, computer science belongs to STEM subjects, and if you’re stuck with a particular task, you may not get a choice to skip that stage and work on another one.
Such situations often result in hour-long tortures that leave one exhausted and clueless. Well, to prevent it, it is enough to switch the activity. You may go to sleep for an hour, watch Netflix, wash dishes, exercise, work on another subject, and so on.
This is how you let your brain work over the issue in the background while you are having some rest. Besides, even when you have a tight schedule, taking breaks to relax is a must. It is important to have at least one proper day off and unwind from time to time. Otherwise, you risk losing your motivation and falling behind.
Talk to Senior Students
Knowing what awaits you reduces the stress. And no one can help you with that better than senior students. If you take a personal rapport with some of them, they will give away all the hacks and tips that will help you survive.
For instance, in order not to stretch yourself thin, you will need to know what subjects and topics are really important. Or, you may get to know what teachers to listen to and whose lectures bear little to no value. They have also obviously dealt with similar bugs you struggle to resolve and may even share a piece of code to help you. All you need to do is to win over their trust.
Have Lifehacks Up Your Sleeve
Being a hardworking person is definitely important to succeed at school, at work, or in life in general, but it’s not a guarantee of success. You also have to be smartworking. It means that if you have a crazy curriculum you struggle to keep up with, you’ve got to at least start prioritizing. Be on the lookout for the strictest teachers whose subjects are actually useful, and always focus on them first. You can catch up with the rest of your studies later.
There are also life hacks that can simplify your student years. Pick any trick connected to memorizing information or creating an effective study schedule:
- Pomodoro technique
- teaching other people
- completing online quizzes and tests to check your knowledge (and learn what you don’t know, obviously)
- breaking a ton of material into manageable chunks
- switching to a totally different activity when you can’t find an answer
- creating flashcards, and many more.
All these hacks are the core of effective studies, not cramming or reading material from the first page till the last one or copying someone else’s code. The latter is not actually bad, but it’s feasible when you have time for it. Instead, if you have 5 other subjects with a lot of information, you’ve got to come up with something more effective. Whether it’s about mastering speed reading or talking to the senior students mentioned before to know what material you won’t ever actually need, it’s all up to you to make it work.
Code
Going to lectures, cramming, reading, and watching tutorials and books, and so on – all of this is not enough. Imagine having to study 4 programming languages at college. Of course, such learning programs don’t presuppose deep learning, but still, you should at least be able to differentiate the syntax and not let it get mixed in your head. How do you do it?
You practice. You open the code editor, repeat after the tutorials, mess with the code to find out how it works and what causes errors, and so on. Then you write a small pet project to hone your skills. Sure, all of this requires time, but 2 hours spent on coding and 2 hours spent on reading theory can never be considered equally effective. Whatever you do within those two hours of practice, it is a conscious step. Meanwhile, sitting in on a lecture or skimming through the book or documentation leaves room for distraction.
In addition, some people’s memory absorbs new information better when there are visual materials, some others’ – during listening. But what is similar in every average human is that when practicing something, be it repairing a car or writing a code, one improves their motor memory and really has to think to make something work. Distraction is not an option here.
Join Your Effort With the Classmates
As mentioned above in the lifehacks section, teaching other people helps one process and absorb information better. So, why not teach each other? Basically, it works according to the principle of a speaking club: several people with different active vocabularies help each other to expand those.
Before an exam, it is especially effective because one can be quite nervous to revise all the information alone. Meanwhile, with other students, it is easier to get distracted from your worries, and you can challenge your classmates, find the gaps in your knowledge, and teach them something new. The same concerns brainstorming. A group discussion is always more helpful than going over and over the limited number of ideas in your head.
Takeaway
To sum it up, whatever challenges you will face when obtaining your computer science degree, probably none of them is new. It means that you can always just ask someone for help in person or simply use the internet. There are always loopholes to use. Whether they are about learning tricks or getting help from those who have been there. And most of the latter will tell you for sure that taking your time to get some rest and communicating with other students are the most powerful tools. After all, earning a college degree with best return on investment such as computer science is definitely worth it. Good luck!