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2 weeks ago
1
I’ve wanted to write an essay targeted toward Computer Science students, particularly college seniors, for a while. I keep getting stuck, though. Most of my experience as a hiring manager was acquired during the software boom. The bust we’re in makes anything I would say feel out of date and tone deaf. Back then the formula for success felt straightforward: do well in school, complete two summer internships, and learn how to interview. That assumed, though, that internships and entry level roles were plentiful. My LinkedIn feed screams that job competition is now off the charts and it’s hard to get your application in front of a human being.
Oh wait actually that sounds pretty familiar.
Landing that first full time role after college was brutal. I was not a competitive candidate compared to my classmates and had something like a 5% response rate on my applications. Sometimes I would get a response just to bomb the interview so hard that both the interviewer and I were left speechless with no idea what had just happened. So I may not have much to say right now about what new grads can do to get a job from a hiring manager’s perspective but I can talk about how hard it was to get hired as a struggling CS major.
Originally, I wanted to cover all of my undergraduate experience in this one post but I’m long winded so I’ve broken it up across a four part miniseries. Today’s post is about freshman year, the insecurities I held, mistakes made along the way, things I actually got right, and how I began to suspect that CS might be a good match for me. Future posts will cover each year of college after that and the things I did to eventually land my first role in industry. My hope for the miniseries is that someone somewhere will find part of it helpful even if large pieces of the story are no longer relevant.
I went into my freshman year with two big misconceptions: 1) I was hot shit (academically) and 2) I was going to major in Astrophysics.
Hahahahaha.
Astrophysics hopefuls were strongly encouraged to sign up for the advanced version of vector calculus. We were told it was best to sign up for the advanced version of freshman physics, too, but I hadn’t taken the AP in high school which was a prerequisite, so I took the regular version instead hoping it would be enough. On top of all that I naturally signed up for a M-F Chinese class and an introductory course to classical mythology.
Chinese was hard but fun and that classical mythology course was the best lecture I took throughout college. Vector calc and physics, on the other hand, kicked my ass. I was not good at this stuff. I also had no idea how to properly study for these classes, something that I didn’t figure out until very late. The strategies I’d used at my small sleepy high school - obsessive note taking and chapter outlining, figuring everything out on my own - actively held me back. I clung to those ineffective strategies, though, because I didn’t know what else to do. This wasn’t the first time my rigidity held me back nor would it be the last. In retrospect I wish that I had found a better note taking system that allowed me to pay more active attention, raised my hand with embarrassing questions, sought help, and joined a study group.
I didn’t do any of those things, though, and struggling at math and physics rocked my world. A big part of my still larval identity was built around being good at those things; my sense of self was now in crisis. That couldn’t be tolerated so I gritted my teeth and signed myself up for the next two courses in those series that spring. I did relent somewhat by signing up for linear algebra instead of advanced linear algebra and enjoyed it quite a bit. I also liked the second semester of physics (electricity and magnetism) better than the first (classical mechanics) but it was still a struggle and I knew that the next course, a Lagrangian mechanics course unofficially used to thin out incoming candidates to the department, would wipe the floor with me.
I finally allowed myself to consider that an Astrophysics degree might be out of reach.
While all this existential crisis was going on something miraculous had happened: I was making friends. Most of these new friendships were a result of joining the “marching” band which was easily the best decision I made all year. Once a week I would stumble out of my evening physics lab at 10:30PM spent and defeated. Instead of pointing myself toward my dorm and sleep at the other end of campus, though, I would head over to the odd smelling student lounge of another one nearby.
There a handful of dedicated Bandies spent the rest of the night concocting horribly offensive jokes for halftime and various excuses to march in penis formation on the field. I never laughed so hard for so long in my life. Between rehearsal, field practice, show writing, and football games I easily got my Band fix nearly every day of the week. When I am honest with myself I know that, had I spent less time on Band stuff, I probably would have done better in my classes and perhaps even slept more. The tradeoff was worth it, though; I needed to laugh and have friends.
Band was magical. Band was also infested with CS majors and I found myself bewildered by their general lack of misery; they were actually having fun with their assignments. I didn’t even know that fun was an option at that point. I began to wonder if I could have fun, too.
So that summer I looked into what it might be like to switch to CS. My dad taught at the university back home and helped me sign up for a summer course in Java. My school didn’t accept outside credits (thanks, fancy school) but that was okay. I had a great time learning to write my first programs and make all those little tests go green. No transferable credits meant that the pressure was off and I could just learn.
I also spent that summer pining after my first boyfriend and cleaning my neighbor’s pool for $400. That is another story which involves an old parrot who didn’t die, lots of algae, and poor decision making re: a century old prickly pear.
And then the summer came to an end; it was time to go back to my school with all its pressure, friends, and uncertainty.
