Computer Programming I
I started off with CSE on the wrong foot. I had a bit of an attitude about the class, because I didn't think I needed to try hard in it. Looking back, that was a foolish outlook. Little did I know how competitive and difficult the CSE intro classes were. Let's just say it was my first taste of being a little fish in a big ocean.
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I had spent seven weeks at Google the previous summer in a Girls Who Code summer immersion program. We learned several different programming languages including Java. CSE 142 exclusively uses Java. I thought I knew most of the things the class would cover, so I figured I could push it to the back of my mind. That was quite a big mistake. The theme here is little fish big ocean. On the first day of class I got in the wrong line to enter a lecture hall in Kane. It was a sea of people shuffling behind one another, no distinct conversations or faces I could recognize. I had to find a seat at the back of the room. Most everyone who goes to a public university has had this first-time-huge-lecture experience. I had always envisioned myself liking the big lecture experience, but it turns out I was wrong.
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I found the initial homework assignments easy; they involved concepts I was already familiar with, like loops and conditionals. But gradually the problem solving got more difficult even as the concepts remained familiar.
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My first midterm score was a bit of a shock. In high school I was used to scoring in the high 90s on my tests. Anything below that made me feel like a failure. I learned that in order to maintain my sanity in college I must not look at the score itself, but instead compare it against the average.
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I had heard stories about smart kids feeling shock in college when they find out it isn't so easy to get a 4.0 anymore and it's not good enough to simply show up. I didn't think that would happen to me. First off, I was homeschooled my entire years of grade school. Second, I didn't simply "do the minimum" to "get it over with". I thought I was a hardworking deep, pasisonate learner who sought depth and put her best effort into everything she did. Third, I thought I was pretty humble, and so not being the smartest wouldn't bother me. Despite my self-assurances, the shock still hit me, and it didn't hit me fast and hard, rather it seeped in slowly and painfully.