Mohtalim

I've been asked by my advisor to write a short essay talking about my experience at CMU, with a view to giving advice to a hypothetical incoming student.

So what would your advice be? What are you regrets, what you were happy that you did?

Just thought I'd try to spark some discussion.

I'm happy I left...

Be proactive. If you want to do research, contact professors instead of just reading about it. Regardless of the institution you attend, you'll need to motivate yourself to reach anywhere near your potential. CMU has facilities, campus events, movies, etc that are all waiting to be used

Highly recommend joining clubs and other social activities to prevent turtling in oneself, which is all too common. In the end, have fun. If you're not, you're doing something wrong.

Just some randomness that came to mind, kind of spawned from talking to my CMU intern/officemate.

quantus wrote:I'm happy I left...

I don't think CMU was that bad.

I guess the best part about CMU is that when you finish, you know you are good (even if other people doesn't agree with it).

More randomness: The 5 +/- 2 branching concept just got hammered by an officemate for no reason. I told him it was just a guideline, akin to not running his car into a tree, at which someone joked he liked running into trees, hence he quieted down (oops, maybe I should've been more subtle. nah.)

what branching concept?

CMU, more specifically the Software Engineer Institute (SEI), instills the belief a layer of any system should contain 5 +/- 2 subsystems. Any fewer is wasteful, any more is overly complex. Supposedly this is rooted in the number of items a typical human being can handle at once.

I also remember reading a psychology paper debunking this concept within the past two years. Overall though, I still think it's a good idea to promote easily manageable and understandable systems.

FYI, the context was the number of employees under a supervisor, which is typically ~5 at Argon.

Answering these questions is kind of hard. Mostly because I kind of know what I'm doing now and most of my regrets relate to current problems I'm facing. If I was still living in Pittsburgh, I probably wouldn't have any regrets and I would have told the person that the best advice is to find a core group of friends that you can be yourself and find yourself with.

As it is, what I'm doing after college is kind of swaying my regrets. If I had gotten in to grad school, I would have regretted not paying attention in class, slacking off, and not hanging out with more people in my major. Since I'm not doing that, I kind of regret not socializing more and going out more. I'm kind of going the business route and I wish that I didn't keep saying ass stupid things all the time and I would only know that through experience.

I second having activities, like Vinny said.

Take classes that you enjoy, just because you want to. I'm rather pleased with how most of my transcript turned out, and I think it's because I took whatever sounded good to me. I do wish I could trade some of my more useless grad courses for something actually helpful, like OS or MP. However, that would have impacted my ability to graduate, which leads me to my next point.

If you can afford it, don't graduate early. Take the time to understand the subjects you're being taught. I wish I had had more time in college.

When doing research, find an advisor who doesn't suck. Also, fiddle with it every week, even if you don't make any progress.

Dwindlehop wrote:When doing research, find an advisor who doesn't suck.

Where were you to save me?
(definite agreement on this point)

VLSmooth wrote:

Dwindlehop wrote:When doing research, find an advisor who doesn't suck.

Where were you to save me?
(definite agreement on this point)

This is actually pretty hard to do, so I dunno if anyone could really save you before you get hit by the suckage.

VLSmooth wrote:

Dwindlehop wrote:When doing research, find an advisor who doesn't suck.

Where were you to save me?
(definite agreement on this point)

we told you not to, at least the second time around.

Correct, the second time around was just asking for it.