Freshman: High School. Instruction 1.0

It always seemed to me that there is no person more vulnerable and lost in reality than a freshman in his first semester. More precisely, it did not always seem so, but starting from its first course. Then there were the sessions, graduate school, work as a teacher in the unfortunate first year and the opinion only strengthened. Imagine: a person was pulled out of school and placed in a completely different environment with strange features: the group looks like a class, the same desks and blackboard, textbooks and an evil librarian, the same couples, so similar to the lessons. But what the hell is going on? I'll tell you that.

The same, but about engineers - below. 1: 1, boys

This is the “Free Microphone” rubric in which the employees of RegionSoft Developer Studio write not about our CRM system , but can express their opinions within the framework of a corporate blog. Our colleague in August read the post on Habré and comments to it, did not find the time to write a post-reply, then lost the post (apparently, it was hidden), eventually found this very post and time. She was a student three times, twice - a teacher at the university, so that her word.

Hi, Habr! I do not understand what caused so much negativity in the article yurij_volkov. Yes, a lot of text is suspiciously allocated for the conference, a lot of self-study - but most importantly, a lot of valuable and efficient. Comments, of course, are generally fire, but there are also rational grains in them - in particular, about communication and about the list of 19 items (there are a lot of eternal things there). In my opinion, the main problem of the article is that it is not quite about the university, but the topic is interesting. Therefore, let's talk about the issue in detail.

So, you entered the first course of the desired or not very high school. Purely theoretically, after 5-6 years of training, you should be an intelligent specialist who is ready to work, produce, and join the team. But it will be a very difficult path, stuck with extremely strange objects. On him and go. Let's go to?

1. Students are different

Groupmates are the people with whom you will spend the most time. They are completely different: the guys from the village and from the city, from the profile school and from the regular, with and without work experience, olympiads and troechniki. This is an agglomeration of adults with overwhelming youthful maximalism and its reasons to show off. And this is very, very cool! As the author of the first article correctly noted, communications decide. In fact, there are three reasons to join the conversation:

1. From a confused pervak ​​to a solid person - from 5 to 10 years, this is a short period of time. You all have to work in one area, most often in one city, which means that these are future business contacts and opportunities for cooperation, and maybe a joint business.
   
2. During communication, you get interesting social knowledge - for example, classmates already working have a lot of interesting and, most importantly, honest talk about work and their relationship with the employer. When you listen to your peer, not a personnel officer and not a coach, this is a real practice - almost the hard way.
   
3. Collaboration in the educational process is invaluable: someone will rummage around in math, someone in C ++, and she is an excellent pupil in English and fucking concepts of modern science. It is proved by experience: the student will help the student and will explain it much more easily than the teacher.
   

I taught statistics and financial analysis for humanitarian people. It was quite difficult to see 30-90 pairs of empty eyes. I myself began to stir up their hopeless misunderstanding of indexes, indicators and formulas. But, of course, there were clever children, and one day I heard a guy explain something to fellow students: “Yes, you catch the essence! You came to the club and you think that all the girls are there, like Angelina Jolie. You go, and there the first leg is short, the second one has a short haircut, the third one has a fifth size, the fourth one has a zero one, the fifth one has a boyfriend, etc. And none of them are Jolie, but you can collect it from them. But in general, these are young girls with whom you can have a good time. And so far as they are far from ideal, determines the quality of your party. This is the essence of dispersion - deviations of the heap tsiferok from the most important tsiferki ". It was wonderful, lively and fun. I took over the experience and a week later we had a projector with interesting presentations and examples, and the audience did not stupidly write down the chalk on the blackboard under the boo-boo-boo, and looked for examples. It was the best session in 2 years. So a student to a student is a friend, a competitor and a teacher.

2. "You are no longer a child"

Generally hypocritical phrase that you repeat more than once. At the same time, it is worthwhile for you to smoke up, walk five pairs in a row or naham the teacher (ideally, the dean), immediately find your parents and spoil their mood (and then your parents will hide your skin). But there is some truth in it - it is in your student time that you have to learn how to work, earn money, live for a limited amount (yes, I know about exceptions, and they are not the best examples), survive in a hostel or in a rented apartment, manage your time. Even if you live with your parents and the university is located in the next house, you still feel a significant degree of freedom. Your task is to be responsible inside this freedom and not to take it for permissiveness. A minute of moralism, based on sad experience, is over, then in fact study :-)

3. Teachers are different

And this is the worst thing that you will encounter from the first day of school. This is especially true of technical, engineering, programming specialties. If school teachers still have the remains of patience, correctness and paternalism, then teachers consider you adults, often stupid, often young, and rarely equal. I will give my half-daily (in fact, very serious) classification of the faculty, from the best option to the worst).

1. Former practitioners. The best option - they have recently worked and plunged into the topic, but now they have a lot of time to teach and, it seems, their work gives them pleasure. One has to go to such lectures and seminars, ask questions in and after classes, absorb knowledge. For example, we organized round tables on our course and called such teachers to gain exclusive knowledge in an informal setting, and even more - life experience. Typically, such teachers score on the knowledge of formulas and curc thickness, but they most strictly relate to practical issues, it is important for them that you understand the material and be aware of it, and you can find formulas and patterns in Google.
   
2. Practice. They have all the advantages of the first group, but often do not come to classes and are extremely busy with additional questions. A huge plus of such teachers is that they take the guys who take notice of the knowledge and skills of the guys directly from their students. Do not refuse, go on an internship, practice, half a day - it will give you more than a course of lectures.
   
3. Scientists. Profound theorists and, as a rule, some practices that are engaged in basic science and research, write clever books and articles, strive to involve students in it. This is your option if studying for you is an absolute priority - such teachers can find a lesson for you in the laboratory or in the department where you will receive additional practice and, perhaps, find yourself in science. And all this without leaving the walls of the university.
   
4. Dragons There are among the first three categories: smart, advanced, but very cruel teachers, who are suddenly interested in following certain principles and formalities such as coursework in accordance with GOST, knowledge of certain textbooks, code style, etc. As a rule, they are not loved, but then they are grateful - they form a real internal discipline of the future employee. Believe me, there are also many dragons among the chiefs.
   
5. Serial teachers. In general, harmless, but also useless experts. They have always taught and will teach, and this is their misfortune. They get quite a bit and are forced to work in several universities, so students for them are something like a conveyor belt - they don’t care how you understand that you understand, the main thing is to get something close to the subject on the exam. It was at their lectures - vyshparenny over the years and often irrelevant content, and at the seminars - reading reports on topics from the training manual. Reports, of course, from the Internet. The most annoying thing is that such teachers generate indifference to the subject, and if they have not philosophy in you, but, for example, algorithms, you will lose a lot. Be sure to compensate for such self-teaching teaching!
   
   
   
6. Yesterday theorists. As a rule, university graduates who decide to follow the path of least resistance and teach. Stupid, but sometimes demanding - they are psychologically able to avenge their studies. But sometimes there are young and diligent with them, you can dive deep into the theory - it will be useful to you in your work. And most importantly - learn from them to read books, this is a cool skill!
   
7. Readers and scribes. Teachers who write their textbooks to get a senior or assistant professor, and then lecture on them - that's word for word. There’s nothing much to expect from them. Well, if the manual is not 1998. They also like their books to be bought and recorded in long sheets in the department.
   
8. Graduate students. Evil bastards who were distracted from work and hanged up on lectures. As a rule, they do not try, but they do not lute. With them you can povuhat and smoke culturally eat a pie and ask about the fierce teachers and how to safely circumvent them.
   
   
   Here are the graduate students about the same, but still with the work
   
9. People in insanity. And sometimes the diagnosis does not depend on age. Such teachers send students in batches to the commission, they believe that only their subject exists ( for example, the extremely important course “Quality Systems and Certification”, in which the standards for the grain of the board in the audience have to be determined ), they give inadequate tasks, and they believe that it is they who shone university in particular, and Russian education in general. They are always on hand a question capable of overwhelming anyone ( for example, how many spikes should be on the Kamaz bus or p 3. Article 147 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation for a memory (there are two of them, don't google)). They, as a rule, cannot be bought, intimidated, it is impossible to agree with them. But they can be survived - as a rule, everyone knows about such characters and commissions are quite loyal to their victims. But the next semester will be without a scholarship. There will also be no knowledge of the subject, so if you are unlucky and it is a profile one, be sure to fill the gap - in further studies, and on the state it will be useful to you.
   
   Life hacking: if the same subject in another group is conducted by an adequate teacher, you can individually or the whole group request a transfer to it. But you need to demand as soon as possible, in the middle of the semester, such issues are resolved only individually and with good reason.
   
10. The gods of the Soviet IT, they are dinosaurs. This is a profile disease for some specialties, but extremely unpleasant, because we are talking about specialized disciplines. About technology you are told by people who started with punched cards and finished them themselves, having gone into teaching. These may be interesting storytellers, but apart from the story, you will learn nothing from them, and they will resist as much as possible to everything new. For all my life, I only once met a teacher who asked students to tell him about new things (these were finances) and the students tried to justify their trust, searched for information so as not to let it down and help him. However, it still seems that he had such a cunning methodology.
    

Of course, the division is conditional, and I can be mixed types, indifferent practices, and inspirational and inspirational dinosaurs. The main thing is that they should all be experienced, each should find their own approach, conquer their beat, chorus, ex. knowledge or knowledge with cunning in half. No, well, really, do not give some oddity a joy, being expelled ?!

4. Items unnecessary

All the disciplines at the university are divided into the necessary ones (practically valuable or specialized theoretical), auxiliary ones (they give an understanding of the specialty), forgive me by former colleagues, unnecessary ones (political science, sociology, philosophy, KSE, etc.) and English (about him separately). So, about the unnecessary - they are in the standard of education and can not be avoided. Therefore, the first two years you will have to remember that in addition to textbooks on termeh, algorithms, matan and other kibenematiki, you need to remember to roll the abstract on all these -logs and -sophia. However, a little later in graduate school or at work you will understand that these subjects have formed you the ability to speak, to work with a lot of sources and to be in principle a versatile person.

Some tips:

• Do not download ready essays, they are firing. A couple of times learn how to compile the sources - and you will have the best work in the group.
  
• Try to get exemption from the exam in these subjects - actively respond to seminars, attend lectures (sometimes they are only for attendance), ask questions, etc. Techies are very often freed from them.
  
• If the teacher belongs to the last two types, do not get involved in the conflict, but show in every way how you appreciate the subject and how important you are.
  
• Ask the undergraduates about what the specific teacher instructs and follow the instructions ( For example, we had a merry retired dude on the Belarusian Railways, who was hochil and generally seemed nice, and then gave us a full emergency at the test - everyone who had lectures to the , he cut the notebooks and set off the test, while the others sat, the defeat zones calculated ... five approaches. The course following us already diligently recorded its broadcast ).
  

In the end, this humanitarian crap is much easier to learn than the basic disciplines. You should not get involved with problems so that they interfere with the core business.

5. Items needed

Here everything is clear and unambiguous - to learn, understand, delve. This is especially true of engineers, chemists, IT people, etc. (well, medical students - it is interesting, they are on Habré?), because the knowledge gained will be useful in work. There will be no bypasses and lifehacks, there will be only tips.

1. Do not limit yourself to one source - be sure to find books, read Habr, Toaster and other resources available to you (especially in English).
   
2. If you are faced with a choice, go to a lecture or a seminar (for example, you need to go to work), go to a lecture - they are usually more valuable in terms of the quality and quantity of information.
   
3. If the subject is related to programming - write the code, even if it is not required of you. Alas, there are teachers who still write the code on the board and take it exclusively on a piece of paper, shouting at the same time: “Think like a compiler!” This is terrible. A good programmer can only get when he writes, writes, writes code in the development environment, debugs, looks at how the insides work, picks at errors and fixes them himself.
   
4. Unrealistic advice (I never managed to force myself): do not learn everything the night before the exam, teach during the semester, then the session will not add gray hair or pull a few kilometers of nerves. So you memorize more, it is easier to pass, and in the future it is better to learn the new bound material. It is a pity that you understand it at 30, not at 18 ...
   
5. Practice. If you are not able to find a job or an internship at an IT company, open GitHub and look for an interesting project. Opensource makes it possible to shovel a lot of code, see ugly and beautiful examples, learn and even benefit. At first, of course, your contribution will be nothing, but gradually you will be able to participate in any project that fascinates you (whether it is developing a cool game, text editor or operating system).
   

Bad advice. Very bad advice. Works. It's a pity

6. Books are very much alive

Of course, for programming students (and non-students too), the Internet is the best source of knowledge, solutions, elegant features and all the rest. But it is the books that contain the most important details that can be missed in articles and on forums. Therefore, be sure to find books and use them in training. From those that helped me to “get into IT” and understand how programming works, what networks are and how it should be used in work:

• Herbert Shieldt. A complete guide to C ++ (it is divine, beautiful, perfect, understandable)
  
• Bjorn Stroustrup. C ++ programming language (read necessary parts)
  
• Mark Lutz. Learning Python
  
• Andrew Tanenbaum. Computer architecture (Tanenbaum has a cool language and cool translations)
  
• Andrew Tanenbaum. Computer networks
  

Even if you never intend to write on the pros and your beautiful Android project is written in Kotlin, this set gives a deep understanding of the topic. However, there are still a lot of wonderful books - I hope very much, Habr's readers will post their options in the comments.

7. Examinations

Inescapable fact - they will come: with the modular system a little earlier, with the usual - a little later. I will say right away: for any student with any level of knowledge and experience, the exam is a huge stress. For a first-year student, stress goes beyond all boundaries, because such a format of communication with a teacher at a school is almost never encountered. So, if you are not released and you have to pass, some things will be useful to you.

• Ask the teacher for tickets at the beginning of the semester and during the study immediately distribute the information, noting what it belongs to (with a marker) - this is how you spend less of your valuable time before the exam to look for information.
  
• Begin to learn at least a week - technical subjects cannot be learned overnight.
  
• Get enough sleep before the exam, but be sure to leaf through the notebook in the morning.
  
• Take notebooks, tutorials, a textbook with you - quite often during preparation all of this can be used legally or illegally. It is a shame if you are allowed to use a notebook with lectures, but it is not!
  
• If you know well, go at the beginning and do not freak out. If you do not know well, go closer to the end, the exam is a bit boring for everyone and is going more actively.
  
• Remember: it is better to solve a problem than to tell a theory. Therefore, in preparation, pay attention to memorizing formulas and information that is important for solving.
  
• Make sure that for each ticket you know at least something. Do not leave completely unlearned sections, according to the law of meanness they will fall :-)
  

In principle, an exam is a fixation of the fact of knowledge. So tune in and use your entire resource. Do not pursue assessment, the future employer often does not care about the color of the diploma and the average score (but do not give a damn about the existence of this very diploma!).

PS: if you do not pass, do not be rude and do not make a tantrum. Take the record book and calmly walk away - you need to go to the same teacher for a retake.

Tiny life hacking: you can try to find the reason and ask to pass the exam ahead of time. Sometimes teachers easily agree to this and take it much less harshly. In the extreme case, you will just have an extra unofficial chance before the exam. Just do not forget to check then that the assessment is in the statement and the record book!

8. From session to session, students live happily. student life

Every university has student life: creative, intellectual, scientific, trade union committee, etc. This is a pretty fun and cool way to communicate, which delays. The advantage is that loyalty to the “asset” is higher, minus takes time from study and work. The advice is simple: choose yourself something profitable or light: a trade union, a scientific student society, a club of intellectual games, a course advice. So you will be in sight, and without prejudice to the main time. The main advice: do not play KVN, it often leads to deduction, as it takes tremendous time, effort, money, etc.

9. Self-education

We all live in a world of intense competition for good work, which means for money and a good life. And the employer will choose a more experienced, educated or at least purposeful and promising employee. The university will finish everything (well, almost), we need the university ++. To do this, you need to give yourself a little more attention and shove your laziness and procrastination a little deeper.

• Practice, look for practice, work with open-source - find the opportunity to communicate with experienced specialists, to see the real work, to watch how the theory falls on the realities of labor. So you can completely differently perceive the learning process and be ready to work in a team.
  
• Go to adult conferences and meetings, speak at the student. At first, you will absorb new knowledge, learn from speakers to hold on in public and understand that you are in trend in a professional environment, and at the second you will hone your skills. Do not miss such opportunities, especially since tickets for students are always cheaper or free in principle.
  
• Find a summer school in some IT company (they are in large cities) and be sure to go through it - it is fun, interesting, useful.
  
• Read articles, forums, ask questions, study Habr - so you will get an accessible explanation of very difficult questions.
  
• Write code, write code, write code.
  
• Learn English - without it in the IT field is very difficult. In essence, you voluntarily cut yourself access to valuable information, projects, original books on development and engineering that have not been translated into Russian, to a whole block of free and cool university courses. How to teach, no matter what, but it is better to combine some kind of offline language school, toys in a mobile phone such as LingvaLeo and personal lessons (via Skype or offline - just look for the interlocutor with your professional interests).
  

Believe me, to study, especially in IT, is very interesting. And most importantly, after a year and a half, you will feel how much cooler you are than your fellow students and how much more career opportunities appear.

10. Work

That's a very difficult question. Employers do not like students, teachers hate workers and recommend zaochku. Work during full-time studies is not an alibi, but an aggravating circumstance. But it is necessary to work - from the 3rd course is already iron. Many IT companies love to “grow a student for themselves” and will gladly take you half a day. Take advantage of this chance and try to gain a foothold in the company, show your interest, be useful. Probably, you will be able to decide whether you want to beat labor with a programmer, tester, or system administrator. This allows you to select the desired narrow specialization and pay more attention to aspects of future work. Well, money, yes.  

A few more tips

Student years - if not the best, then one of the best is for sure. And you should not turn them into that hellish burden, which was the school. Take learning as a way into a profession, as the beginning of a professional way.

• Do not believe the stories about those who quit Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. First of all, these are geniuses and they left the university to build their business ideas (and not coffee houses and short stores). Secondly, in Russia, experts without higher education are not welcome and will not be welcomed for a long time. Thirdly, look at the stories of Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google), Ilya Segalovich and Arkady Volozh (Yandex), David Yan (ABBYY) and many others. These are people with an excellent education and often with scientific degrees. That is what determined their visionary and ability to create services and programs that help millions. And yes, Steve Ballmer Gates met it at Harvard University.
  
• If you decide to go into science, be sure to clarify what it is now: look at dissertations on the topic, study research centers and innovations created, try to understand what you can do inside the scientific community. Sometimes in business you can be much more popular and useful. And science sometimes ends with the defense of a dissertation and a disgruntled supervisor, who does not want competition in the form of a young, ambitious student.
  
• If you did not like the first job, do not hold on to it - it is better to change the place, draw conclusions and start anew, than to be in the place that you don’t like.
  
• Learn to speak in public and articulate your ideas coherently.
  
• Do not be afraid of anything: an institute or university is not mega enemies, but your assistants who will lead you into the world of real comfortable work.
  

In general, it takes five years to strain, so that later it is quite easy to get used to work, which is much easier to study because it requires only a few functions from you. The denser and deeper you learn, the easier and more interesting this time will seem to you. Moreover, the first two years you work on the record book, and then it is on you, and this is a repeatedly verified fact.

A request to Habr's readers - let's add this long notation with your experience. Tell us what you finished, how you studied, what helped you a lot, what books / courses / lectures and whom you recommend? Get a good cheat sheet.

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