SCREW THIS

[Sam Kennedy]

<rant>
Just about to go to an exam (Databases, Computer Science), the quality of teaching, the quality of notes and quality of lecture recordings was awful. I'm going into the exam with barely enough knowledge to answer the questions. In all my exams so far this year I've got 80%, some in high 90's. Good marks on my coursework too, overall mark in the high 80's, looking on track for a first class degree.
But now because I'm unable to memorise a metric arseload of arbitrary definitions and explanations which weren't even clear in the first place, I'm going to be penalised.
I'm just going to let the lecturers piddle around in their world of "academia" while I go on to build something in real life, that doesn't require a BS piece of paper to prove I'm "worthy" of success.
</rant>

 

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[BobW78]

If computer science class is still like I remember then I'm not surprised. When I failed out 20 years ago it was mostly theory that had nothing to do with actually programming a computer. To me it was just a big waste of time and money and I couldn't bring myself to sit in class and listen to it.

Having said that, If you've already paid your tuition, I'd recommend you do everything in your power to get the degree / diploma or whatever. If you ever do need to get a job having that degree is going to be HUGE! You can get a very high paying job with a computer science degree. If you're young, live in your parents basement for the next 5 years and invest all the money you're bringing in. Then use that money to start a business. A real estate investment business on the side might not be fast lane but it will get you there a lot faster than getting a shity job because you failed computer science.
I wish someone would have said that to me 20 years ago.

 

[Lex DeVille]

<rant>
Just about to go to an exam (Databases, Computer Science), the quality of teaching, the quality of notes and quality of lecture recordings was awful. I'm going into the exam with barely enough knowledge to answer the questions. In all my exams so far this year I've got 80%, some in high 90's. Good marks on my coursework too, overall mark in the high 80's, looking on track for a first class degree.
But now because I'm unable to memorise a metric arseload of arbitrary definitions and explanations which weren't even clear in the first place, I'm going to be penalised.
I'm just going to let the lecturers piddle around in their world of "academia" while I go on to build something in real life, that doesn't require a BS piece of paper to prove I'm "worthy" of success.
</rant>

So what's the next step for you? Any idea what you want to do, or who you can help with the skills you have?

 

[ExaltedLife]

Who forced you to be there? Your circumstances are the result of your choices. Maybe the material sucked, or maybe your attitude about it sucks. In either case, the responsibility to change your environment falls to you.

 

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[Sam Kennedy]

So what's the next step for you? Any idea what you want to do, or who you can help with the skills you have?

I just need to get through this exam then I can put a lot more time into the SaaS I'm working on. Then in September I start a placement where I can learn real world skills, also the CEO where I'm going encourages entrepreneurship. Going to use the time to find opportunities for problems to solve.

Then for my last year at uni there's an 'Applied Entrepreneurship' course, so I can pursue my own projects while getting credit for it.

Who forced you to be there? Your circumstances are the result of your choices. Maybe the material sucked, or maybe your attitude about it sucks. In either case, the responsibility to change your environment falls to you.

Nobody forced me to be here, my environment is about to change, I've enjoyed the course overall, it's just this one half of one module which frustrates me. You're right though I shouldn't complain about a situation I've put myself in. I'm lucky to be in the position I'm in, I let this one hurdle get to me and posted this thread, but I'm not giving up, no way can I expect success if I throw in the towel each time something gets uncomfortable.

 

[JAJT]

the quality of teaching, the quality of notes and quality of lecture recordings was awful. I'm going into the exam with barely enough knowledge to answer the questions.

What did you do when you noticed the quality of the teaching, notes and recordings was bad?

Did you approach the professor?
Get a tutor?
Study on your own?
Ask questions to other students?
Talked to the department head?

Or did you just complain your way to the exam?

I'm not saying you are wrong - I bet the material was shit. I believe you. But it sounds (based on this very short rant) that you ignored a lot of stuff you COULD have done to ace this, if you wanted to. You relied on outside guidance that frankly wasn't there and did nothing about it.

Entrepreneurs are problem solvers who take matters into their own hands. If there was a problem with the material, you COULD have solved them.

Don't blame others for your problems. Even if they ARE to blame for THEIR shortcomings, it's not their fault for YOUR lack of results.

I don't mean to make light of your situation and I applaud you for the decision to take your life into your own hands going forward. I just think it's important you get in the habit of holding yourself accountable, even when other people are failing to live up to their commitments. Your results should not rely on other people's successes or failures. That's the opposite of accountability.

 

[Lex DeVille]

I'm not saying you are wrong - I bet the material was shit.

Also sounds like there's a problem needs solving in there.

 

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[ZF Lee]

What did you do when you noticed the quality of the teaching, notes and recordings was bad?

Did you approach the professor?
Get a tutor?
Study on your own?
Ask questions to other students?
Talked to the department head?

Or did you just complain your way to the exam?

I'm not saying you are wrong - I bet the material was shit. I believe you. But it sounds (based on this very short rant) that you ignored a lot of stuff you COULD have done to ace this, if you wanted to. You relied on outside guidance that frankly wasn't there and did nothing about it.

Entrepreneurs are problem solvers who take matters into their own hands. If there was a problem with the material, you COULD have solved them.

Don't blame others for your problems. Even if they ARE to blame for THEIR shortcomings, it's not their fault for YOUR lack of results.

I don't mean to make light of your situation and I applaud you for the decision to take your life into your own hands going forward. I just think it's important you get in the habit of holding yourself accountable, even when other people are failing to live up to their commitments. Your results should not rely on other people's successes or failures. That's the opposite of accountability.

Too true!
OP, seriously although I have a red flag towards computer science,as a lot of Fastlaners have been complaining like shit to me about not only the education in it, but also the employment rates, you should actually ENJOY these times.

Think of it like a game. A poacher's game. Nothing competitive about it.
You look at the other poachers. They are carrying broken arrows or wooden spears to go hunt the buck, and sure as hell they aren't gonna get them
Likewise in your exams, those same peers of yours are gonna carry the crap information from the shit lessons and notes in their brains to splurge on their papers...and I'm betting their results ain't gonna be spectacular.

So listen well. Unless there's some smart nerd crushing it, and you haven't looked at what he did or observed his methods ( which would be another story, because all you need to do is to model and adapt with him, or take some pointers, and you wouldn't be complaining here like SCRIPTED a$$), here's what to do:

Find out where the hell the theory you were supposed to memorise came from.
Did it come from a study, an investigation, a research problem, whatever. That shit came from somewhere, and I'm betting that the stuff you memorised was the framework of a solution to a problem in your relevant industry. Go dig Google, find better notes (I think you can find better computer science notes from Indian colleges online sites...I found LOADS when I was looking for physics papers), pay for them if you need to (usually on the cheap, or requires a notes swap or barter)

Nobody spun shit up to make your academic life miserable. It came from somewhere, from someone who COULD understand it. Do this intense research only for definitions which are super difficult and your teacher refuses to debacle any further.

Find out where in the heck you are supposed to use that shit.
Get as damnit many questions you can put your hands on. I literally raided my school library, online forums, Scribd, any place I could go to, for every scrap of exercises relevant. You might find past years or distributed papers from other colleges. Most of them are usually for FREE.

Go look through the exercises. If you are running out of time, or need time for your Fastlanes, just read the damn answers. I know it's copy-cat or cheating yourself, as they call it. But I READ the damn answers, understand their relationship with the question and complete whatever the gaps the shitty notes or lessons had. It's all about answering the exam questions the way they want it, because well, academics are that mediocre.

But hey, don't blame me! The academic mind and the entrepreneur marketmind work very similarly....they want what we usually don't like to give them, and that's that.

Apply the damn crap.
Don't waste time trying to read the damn notes.
You know what you are doing? You are action-faking.
Now to think of it, people action fake from school times by reading, reading, reading, reading!
And then they plop in the exams and drop dead.

Instead of plopping into your crap notes, plop into the problems. Dive into the fray, the battle, the practice tests. The shorter it takes to make contact with execution, the better. Your peers will only be rushing into application the night before exams, so you are basically making a huge leap.

Just as entrepreneural suckage comes from just reading, academic crap comes from just reading. You need to apply the shit.

I'll give you an example. I have never taken Psychology in my life before, but I took it for my college. It's not easy. It's cubicle work. But I like it because I make sure I score at it while others screw up. Call it revenge, call it competitive, whatever. I just take the pleasure of doing my shit and not giving a F*ck about the course or my peers in general, and still score well.

1. Look at the questions I found.
2. Scratch my head.
3. Review notes or textbooks.
4. 'Eureka moment'...so that's the damn definition or answer!
5. Realise I don't have the damn nogging in my head.
6. Compare both the question and answer.
7. Find out that they have links to earlier chapters or stuff I know at the present. Use the first step I mentioned if you need to. Once you understand how the pieces fit in, your brain will stop fighting and will accept the arguments. Make sure that your brain will accept the arguments of the question and answer with good understanding of the basics and prior knowledge, which you can pick up easily even from your teacher's rants, a Youtube video flash, anywhere relevant.
8. Reanswer the question. Think about their relationship.
9. Move on to the next five or six questions. Then come back and retry it. Retry it as many times as you like. Usually, you only need two or three false starts before you don't need to come back to the questions very often because you have a link, a connection.

Just dive right in to the exercises...it's a test of execution. It may or may not take lots of time. For me, I'm a slow learner, so I take more time...at least much of the mornings or afternoons after lunch. More time than the usual average student, but it's my job as a student.

My friends were scratching their heads at why I scored better on my essays compared to theirs. I'll let them wonder. They chose to stick with the SCRIPT that Psychology is hard af. Even the teacher drilled into them Psych is hard. It is, but I decided to UNSCRIPT and make it at least comfortable. And I did.

EDIT: While I may sound like bragging, but I went through a lot of mistakes and slip ups and embarassment in academic circles to perfect this. But who the hell cares. Learn on your own, apple it own your own. Get outside help if it is available. College may be SCRIPTED institution, but its often the seedling of a Fastlane mentality.

 

[Argue]

You forgot to add <!DOCTYPE html>

Just kidding.

I might get flamed for this but being self taught is better. Use what you did learn and apply it in the real world!

 

[Kid]

I might get flamed for this but being self taught is better.

It might be seen as this:
Those who self-learn become entrepreneurs.

Those who learn in schools ... become their employees!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

My first major was CSCI but promptly changed it after one semester. What I remember is they were teaching antiquated code languages -- Fortran, Cobol and other stuff not used then, and certainly not used today. Is it still that way or do they teach real world stuff now? Like PHP, Rails, Python, or C#?

It might be seen as this:
Those who self-learn become entrepreneurs.

Those who learn in schools ... become their employees!

Featured+

 

[Millenial_Kid5K1]

If computer science class is still like I remember then I'm not surprised. When I failed out 20 years ago it was mostly theory that had nothing to do with actually programming a computer. To me it was just a big waste of time and money and I couldn't bring myself to sit in class and listen to it.

I always imagined that in actual usefulness of information learned, CS would be better as a minor than a major.

 

[Utopia]

<rant>
Just about to go to an exam (Databases, Computer Science), the quality of teaching, the quality of notes and quality of lecture recordings was awful. I'm going into the exam with barely enough knowledge to answer the questions. In all my exams so far this year I've got 80%, some in high 90's. Good marks on my coursework too, overall mark in the high 80's, looking on track for a first class degree.
But now because I'm unable to memorise a metric arseload of arbitrary definitions and explanations which weren't even clear in the first place, I'm going to be penalised.
I'm just going to let the lecturers piddle around in their world of "academia" while I go on to build something in real life, that doesn't require a BS piece of paper to prove I'm "worthy" of success.
</rant>

Learn a memory palace.

 

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[scottmsul]

I earned dual degrees in CS and physics and actually did pretty well academically. I basically taught myself everything by reading textbooks or lecture slides. For the big-lecture-hall math classes, or the classes with poor professors, I usually stopped going to class but still did well. The point is you're there to learn, so you should use this time to learn how to learn. Also for CS is much of the material is skill-based and not knowledge-based, so you might do better by practicing the material instead of memorizing.

 

[luniac]

you can always cheat on your test. Think outside the box brah!

 

[7.62x51]

Learn a memory palace.

I'll second this. Simple but powerful memorization technique.

 

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[Digamma]

Weak. Take responsibility for your failures instead of crying like a child.

You didn't understand the subject because you didn't learn it correctly.

If the definitions weren't clear, why didn't you start from the first principles and derived the concepts yourself?
Why didn't you write example over example until you understood the point?
Why did you let yourself get to the exam without having mastered the material?

Everything is your fault in life.

Does college sucks? Absolutely. It sucks balls. Especially a course like Databases.
But you know what? As you do anything, you do everything.

Everything is a game. Plenty of games have absolutely f*cked up rules.

You still need to play them. To refuse and fall because the rules are dumb is just ego.
At the end of the day, if you F*ck up the exam, it's you who loses, not academia. Academia don't give a F*ck about you.

 

[ZF Lee]

My first major was CSCI but promptly changed it after one semester. What I remember is they were teaching antiquated code languages -- Fortran, Cobol and other stuff not used then, and certainly not used today. Is it still that way or do they teach real world stuff now? Like PHP, Rails, Python, or C#?

No, MJ. Well, they might touch some basics. My girl's engineering foundation programme did touch on some C+ programming, but I doubt they ever used that as I have never heard any engineer talk about C+. Usually the senior engineers talked more on communication and making deals with the management teams or contractors.....I think C+ is for some grunt work....for fresh graduates on the low payroll....

But that being said, there's a lot of complaints on C+ are being very rigid although very powerful. IMO, the Python and Ruby programs are some of the best choices of language as they are damn simple to learn and close to programming hacks as they can get. They use more English words that you can understand, and you can even download whole scriptings or frameworks, especially for Ruby on Rails. On my first lessons of Ruby on Rails, a web framework language based on Ruby, I was impressed to find out I could spawn a web page in less then one hour, given that I had some CSS prepared beforehand to insert. But yup, colleges are very less likely to offer them, and I found lots of free materials on code languages here and on self-education sites. And sometimes there are code bootcamps offered all around.

I'm sorry, MJ, schools are still SCRIPT organizations. Even if they updated their syllabus, they'll teach you only enough to have you work like a screw for the rest of your life. I mean, why should they teach us more? To get out of the SCRIPT and stop earning dough for them?

But somehow I sense that there will be lots of money chasing behind programming in general. The amount of coding tutorials and online schools have increased rather dramatically (or should I say dangerously), with nearly next to little differentiation....signs of commodization, I fear. I decided to get out after learning the basics....I was in danger of being swallowed up by the coding crowd.

 

[JAJT]

Fortran, Cobol

For what it's worth, there is huge demand and money right now for these antiquated languages (from what I hear).

Apparently a lot of really, really crucial infrastructure for huge companies and government relies on these ancient languages. They built their foundation upon them and don't dare migrating them to something new because "it works".

It would be total slowlane work working for these companies and doing the coding yourself. A straight time for money play. But it's still worth noting that these obsolete languages are still very much alive in more places than anyone would like to admit.

 

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[PedroG]

When I was in school for computer science, the most important things that I learned I learned during the summer when I bought books to learn things they weren't teaching us in class. I would create my own mini projects and since then I've always known that I want to build my own company with a product that I created from scratch.

Over a decade after graduating you can still tell who the engineers are who relied on the university to teach them what they needed to know. And you can even see this in their salary. Those who stand out, the good ones, were the ones who were always learning on their own.

There are engineers that have been in the industry for over a decade who still would have no clue how to architect an entire product from scratch. It's quite sad.

Now having said that, computer science degrees are probably one of the few that may still be worth getting.

 

[Andy Black]

Does college sucks? Absolutely. It sucks balls. Especially a course like Databases.

I didn't even study computing. I fell into IT and ended up being a DBA. I always suspected databases was the most boring subject. Thanks for confirming.

(Sigh... 15 years doing duller than dull work - interspersed with the stress of mission critical outages and disaster recovery scenarios.)



Anyway, OP, I remember a story of a manager who was sick of everyone finger pointing. He kept a note in his desk to pull out whenever something went wrong and he wanted people to concentrate on fixing it.

It read: "It's my fault."

 

[Sam Kennedy]

Thank you for the replies everyone, given me a lot to consider. I'm mostly self taught, there have been a few things which I've learned at Uni which were somewhat useful, but I've yet to need what I've learned for my current fastlane pursuit.

Uni is more useful in terms of support for entrepreneurship. There is a organisation called "Rise Up!" which helps with things like funding and legal things like registering a LTD company. It's who I received a grant from.

I've learned far more from "I need to build X, so I need to learn Y and Z first" than from books and lectures.

 

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[Aimee]

As someone also studying computer science at university, can confirm, databases suck.

My first major was CSCI but promptly changed it after one semester. What I remember is they were teaching antiquated code languages -- Fortran, Cobol and other stuff not used then, and certainly not used today. Is it still that way or do they teach real world stuff now? Like PHP, Rails, Python, or C#?

Yes, they do teach some real-world stuff. I learned Python in my first year. But CS isn't meant to teach you how to program. It's meant to teach you the theory behind computers, how/why programming languages work etc. Learning to program is a trade skill -- you learn it by practicing. You don't need a degree to teach you how to program.

I empathise with your frustration, but you're already part way through. I suggest sticking it out. Make the most of it, take advantage of the resources you have access to, focus on business and side-projects in your spare time -- which, I'm assuming you have plenty of. CS is a hard degree but it's also interesting and rewarding.