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Comment by yellow_viper | Hacker News Reader

What's with all the comics?

For anyone who's completed a CS degree, how much studying did you do per night. I understand working on projects etc can eat up hours but I don't really include that.

Back at college just now and starting university in Sept. I had never studied in my life until college (coasted of natural ability all my life) and I'm finding it difficult to even spend 1hr a night. (Average mark currently is 80%) 5hrs per night seems insane to me.

When studying I either understand the concept fully and fire through it rapid. Don't understand it and spend ages figuring it out/trying to find answers online. Or have no idea, can't find anything in the textbooks/online and resort to crying in the corner.

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I barely put any time into my CS degree and I recommend everyone to do the same if given the opportunity. I studied for ~4-8hrs a week at home, and had ~16-24 hours worth of lectures, and I still graduated with a GPA of 3. The Dutch college system encourages cutting corners, so I did (along with most of the other students). Most of my college time was spent drinking and doing stuff with my fraternity, and I loved every second of it. I haven't worked a day in those 5 years either, just loaned a bit more money. I am of the opinion that if you get the chance to enjoy life like this, you should fully take it. You have more than enough time to live seriously after you graduate.

You have to relearn almost everything they teach you on your first job anyway. The contents of the courses were always horribly outdated, the only things I really needed were general programming skills, research methods and project management lingo.

> how much time

They usually say at least three hours study for each hour of class, I used that as my guide

> difficult to even spend 1 hour a night

The more abstract and mathematical the class, the longer I know it will last and I can use it. The more specific classes like learning C++ were immediately useful.

That said, I did have to kick myself to memorize dozens of species of fungi and their attributes for my science requirement class.

You never know what will come in useful. English writing class seems like BS? Not if it teaches you to write documentation, e-mails etc. better.

> can't find anything

I've been there too. It makes me skeptical of these people who say Coursera etc. will destroy colleges. I can always ask my professor after class or during office hours.

You're going to be rooting around in your work life as well, so aside from the class material, you're exercising this skill as well.

>They usually say at least three hours study for each hour of class, I used that as my guide

That would put me at 18hrs of studying a day :/

Due to years of posting nonsense online, English is easy for me (top of the class). Not looking forward to my 2 science requirements though as thats where I struggle to concentrate.

I believe they meant three hours per week for each hour of class. So if you have 6 courses, each with three hours of lecture a week, you'd spend 3x3x6=54 hours a week. That's still pretty rough but that's what happens if you need to study hard for 6 classes.

I just tried to read the next lecture's readings beforehand so that I'd know what questions to ask the teacher while I had them there.

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