The first week of the semester is always the most laid back week of the whole semester. But this can also be the reason why your grade slips. So start studying from the very beginning. What people don’t realize soon enough is that towards the end of the semester, you have less energy, higher levels of burn out, stress levels are higher and over-all, things can be difficult. So it never makes sense to think that you will do your best work towards the end as an excuse for wasting time now. So start now. Read those 2 pages you have just accumulated of coursework.
My name is Mercy Nekesa and I am in charge of the Engineer’s Lounge. The goal of the Engineer’s Lounge is to be a place where Computer Engineering and Computer Science students will learn about things that are important to their future careers and their day to day college experience that they otherwise wouldn’t get from the classroom. I am convinced that there is so much more we can share and learn from each other as scientists and engineers. If you are faculty, or student or an engineer in industry that has anything valuable to share with CE and CSE students that will help them in their careers here at UB and in the future, please reach out. We would love to hear from you.
A lot of people, rightfully so, are nervous about the Computer Science or Computer Engineering classes they are taking this semester because they don’t know what to expect and are anticipating the hardest of circumstances when it comes to the material so things are a bit uncertain. Sometimes, that can be a good thing. I think a bad place to be is when you are overconfident about your capabilities in a course you haven’t taken yourself. I don’t care how many friends told you they took the course and thought it was “easy”, “doable”, “did the bare minimum and still got an A-”. You are not your friends and oftentimes, people can have vastly different backgrounds that might have prepared them better to easily understand the class material which might not be the case for you. They got an A and you might end up with a D-. Bare minimum looks different on everyone. So always do your best. When you are nervous, channel that energy into staying on top of the class material from the beginning of the semester. Don’t allow yourself to fall back in classes you know, and your professor even warned you, will require a lot of work. They are not lying, for many it takes a lot of hard work to excel in these programs. Most times, even much more than you anticipate. So stay on top of it. Here are some basic tips for the start:
- Please do the ungraded homework. Here’s the logic, there is absolutely no reason, a professor will ever give you material that they think is absolutely useless. No. reason. at. all. Ungraded homework is usually a good way to prepare you for the course and even though you feel you are prepared enough and do not need the practice in the beginning, humor yourself and do it. Most times, you might find that you overestimated your capabilities and there are things you thought you knew but not quite well. The longer you do CS & CE, the more you realize that even the simplest of concepts that you thought you knew so well can have so many more details that you missed understanding initially. So more practice with the material is not wasted practice.
- Take every day as it comes and don’t spend time right now worrying about homework 6 that your professor said is the hardest homework when he was going through the syllabus. Your goal should be to do what’s in front of you right now and do it well. By doing it well, here’s what I mean:
I’ve learned the hard way that if I look at the course material thus far when an assignment is given out, I might be able to solve the larger percentage of the problems on my own. 80% of the questions I asked when I needed help on homework were questions that could have been answered by reading the textbook, or lecture slides, or assigned readings materials for the course at that point. Very rarely are you given homework that was far left field from any of this so get into the habit of asking yourself these questions before you ask for help.
1. Did I read the assigned reading for the week?
2. Did I understand the lecture material?
3. Did I read the homework question carefully and understand it well?
If no, what did I not understand about the question? Refuse to accept the answer “everything” from yourself. What does everything mean? Define it. Break your questions into small pieces until you are able to figure out what the actual problem is. Sometimes the problem might not even be about the real question being asked. It might be you don’t understand the definition of the terms used when asking the question. So start from there.
Finally, pace yourself and have realistic expectations. Know when you have reached your limits and it is time to take a break. The most important thing is your mental health, take care of yourself first before anything. You are the most valuable person. Not the courses you are taking. Those grades can be replaced, you can’t. So take good care of yourself.
I hope to have weekly articles for you throughout the semester from myself, faculty and other students who have generously offered their time to write something. Please be on the lookout for them and I hope you have a good start to your semester!