Hey, great read as always! I totally related to your point about understanding the "broad logic" but struggling with connecting the "intricate lines of code." That insight is pure gold! It realy captures what so many students, and honestly, even profs, face. It's a common brain twister.
Man, this reminds me so much of my own undergrad experience. I almost couldn’t graduate because my school required a computer science credit and I failed C++ three times. The humanities department on campus offered no majors but all of my electives were humanities classes and I thrived in those. Why do professors make intro classes so challenging? Chemistry and physics were massive struggles for me, and my Intro to Earth and Environmental Systems (basically geology 101) professor, who wanted the class to be simple to understand and wanted us all to do well, ended up barred from teaching it because she made it “too easy”. My whole school also binge-drank on weekends and every semester we would receive several emails about a student committing suicide, though very little was done to change the campus culture. Like you, I don’t regret finishing my degree, but man, I’m still suffering from the psychological effects undergrad imposed on me. It’s needlessly rough and students absolutely do not have the support they need.
Yes the dreams are very real. At least once a week I have a dream I'm back in undergrad and trying to run around and get the exams done. I actually wrote this draft 6 months ago and couldn't even reread it until recently to edit, since it was rough to relive.
Yes, completely unnecessary difficulty and this is really reflected in student behavior. Adderall and other anti-depressants/weed are very common. I went to CVS to get my covid shot a few weeks ago (I live in a college town) and people were like yelling at the pharmacist since there was an Adderall shortage. Lots of vaping and marijuana dispensaries. Cigarette smoking was very common in the early 2010s too. I would say too a lot of students were on the younger side too at my college (like 16/17 'geniuses' who skipped grades when starting) and were much more vulnerable to this anxiety. I was lucky I started college at 19 (I was red-shirted), I think it gave me a bit more resilience. My parents were pretty adamant on building healthy coping skills and stuff and social intelligence when I was younger and not rushing me ahead and thank God they did.
It is amazing how different research life is from undergrad life. I think we should teach how research is really done during the degree...
Also, this post resonates with me so much. I also started programming with MATLAB during my first year in physics, I also hated it with all my soul. With time I somehow fell in love with programming, but not with MATLAB ...
Yes, I have not used MATLAB since, but have surprisingly enjoyed other languages.
Yeah, I was really lucky to get a good undergrad research group and be given grace 'to fail' in coding. I could just sit in the lab and tinker with the computer program, with 0 pressure (if I figure it out great, but if I don't then it doesn't harm the larger project at all). With the pressure off, I was able to figure it out and do fine.
Yeah I mentor a lot of graduate students now who come into the lab with have 0 coding experience who are anxiety-ridden over it when they start. I make tutorials for them or lend them my code, because I get the frustration.
Yeah I think they also need to change the pedagogy of computer classes to be more realistic. Design assignments so students can learn how to tinker with existing code, and learn how to properly debug and assess and evaluate their work and give them credit for properly fixing their code or being able to evaluate it. They don't have to come up with it out of thin air , type or write it down, and then then get penalized when it doesn't work after 1 shot at it.
I've never gotten the hang of coding (English major) but I could get enough of it to tweak some code I needed to do something on Excel. Despite that, I was a web designer for a very small college for about seven year.
Hey, great read as always! I totally related to your point about understanding the "broad logic" but struggling with connecting the "intricate lines of code." That insight is pure gold! It realy captures what so many students, and honestly, even profs, face. It's a common brain twister.
Thanks for reading!!
Man, this reminds me so much of my own undergrad experience. I almost couldn’t graduate because my school required a computer science credit and I failed C++ three times. The humanities department on campus offered no majors but all of my electives were humanities classes and I thrived in those. Why do professors make intro classes so challenging? Chemistry and physics were massive struggles for me, and my Intro to Earth and Environmental Systems (basically geology 101) professor, who wanted the class to be simple to understand and wanted us all to do well, ended up barred from teaching it because she made it “too easy”. My whole school also binge-drank on weekends and every semester we would receive several emails about a student committing suicide, though very little was done to change the campus culture. Like you, I don’t regret finishing my degree, but man, I’m still suffering from the psychological effects undergrad imposed on me. It’s needlessly rough and students absolutely do not have the support they need.
Yes the dreams are very real. At least once a week I have a dream I'm back in undergrad and trying to run around and get the exams done. I actually wrote this draft 6 months ago and couldn't even reread it until recently to edit, since it was rough to relive.
Yes, completely unnecessary difficulty and this is really reflected in student behavior. Adderall and other anti-depressants/weed are very common. I went to CVS to get my covid shot a few weeks ago (I live in a college town) and people were like yelling at the pharmacist since there was an Adderall shortage. Lots of vaping and marijuana dispensaries. Cigarette smoking was very common in the early 2010s too. I would say too a lot of students were on the younger side too at my college (like 16/17 'geniuses' who skipped grades when starting) and were much more vulnerable to this anxiety. I was lucky I started college at 19 (I was red-shirted), I think it gave me a bit more resilience. My parents were pretty adamant on building healthy coping skills and stuff and social intelligence when I was younger and not rushing me ahead and thank God they did.
It is amazing how different research life is from undergrad life. I think we should teach how research is really done during the degree...
Also, this post resonates with me so much. I also started programming with MATLAB during my first year in physics, I also hated it with all my soul. With time I somehow fell in love with programming, but not with MATLAB ...
Yes, I have not used MATLAB since, but have surprisingly enjoyed other languages.
Yeah, I was really lucky to get a good undergrad research group and be given grace 'to fail' in coding. I could just sit in the lab and tinker with the computer program, with 0 pressure (if I figure it out great, but if I don't then it doesn't harm the larger project at all). With the pressure off, I was able to figure it out and do fine.
Yeah I mentor a lot of graduate students now who come into the lab with have 0 coding experience who are anxiety-ridden over it when they start. I make tutorials for them or lend them my code, because I get the frustration.
Yeah I think they also need to change the pedagogy of computer classes to be more realistic. Design assignments so students can learn how to tinker with existing code, and learn how to properly debug and assess and evaluate their work and give them credit for properly fixing their code or being able to evaluate it. They don't have to come up with it out of thin air , type or write it down, and then then get penalized when it doesn't work after 1 shot at it.
I've never gotten the hang of coding (English major) but I could get enough of it to tweak some code I needed to do something on Excel. Despite that, I was a web designer for a very small college for about seven year.