Looking back, what's one piece of advice you wish someone had given you during your first year?
It could be about studying, programming, projects, internships, or anything that made a real difference.
Eventually that had me in enough contact with grad students I decided to do grad school too on the same topic as the undergrad lab assistant position. That turned into my career. I highly recommend going to small department presentations and events. Plus there is usually free food involved.
Depending on your school, ACM and IEEE student organizations often put these on as well, which can be a good opportunity for networking and getting involved in regional (and other) conferences as well.
Cross-train in another field. Literally anything outside of CS.
Employers are doubling down on not hiring juniors, especially GenZ, despite the AI pullback. Even four years from now, you will likely be entering the worst job market that the CS field has ever had for new entrants.
My condolences, but that’s how things are. It sucks and it’s moronic but employers can’t handle people who are resistant to abuse and exploitation.
Once you're in the industry no one cares about that and I found in practice people with lower grades than me still ended up at the same or better companies
In retrospect it would have been better to put that time into side projects, interview prep, clubs, socializing
Obviously you don't want "bad grades" but I think there is diminishing returns after a certain point
In grad school, I was allowed to make one B. Any more and I couldn't graduate. Once I had one class left and made all As, I decided I'd be lazy and get a B. I worked 50% less and still made an A. It made me realize how much extra I had been working for marginal improvements.
Try things out. Literally anything. Sports, music, arts, tech. It is so much easier to try out a wide range of things in college.
Find time to reflect. No one here can give you a blueprint for a good life so take some time to think about all the things you are doing, your studies, the company you keep and if these align with your values.
Actually do things. Lots of people sit around talking about their big ideas. Only a small fraction actually do something. It's much easier to poke holes and criticize what other people have done and much harder to stick your neck out and do something.
Learn to use Anki to leverage spaced repetition to intentionally put things into your long term memory. This step comes after understanding though.
Don't rely on AI to do anything you don't know how to do yourself. (You can use it to learn, but then make sure you independently verify and internalize the information.)
Use Math Academy to learn math ahead of time. Then take as much math as you can.
Use pen and paper to do your thinking and problem solving before writing a line of code.
Undergrad is where you learn to learn, learn to think critically, and learn to adapt to changes in the world. Any coursework that fails to focus on those broader learning goals and just teaches vocational skills is an utter waste of their tuition money.
I'm not saying that such info is useless. I fully agree that it can be helpful. But don't burn tuition and college credits on that. Learn things in college that are more complex and require more engagement. Take yourself to a higher level of thinking, so instead of worrying about how some future interview at an insurance company would go, you never even have to step on the path that would make you want an interview at an insurance company in the first place.
Network.
It is better to be liked than smart.
Be a good hang.
Good luck.