Years into college taught me stuffs, in this post we are going to review it together.
1. Read Papers/Thesis/Books
Life is about learning, and reading is a way of learning. It is true that we have search engines like Google, we are one click away from the information around the world, but reading books server information on higher level. Reading papers/thesis/books will give you so much insight on many things, on many perspectives, and way of thinking. I have seen an Art graduate that become a better developer than me (I am a Software Engineer graduate) through reading books. I have seen self-taught developers through reading book. Try to read some books or research papers, one page a day will do. Believe it, you will find some keywords that you have never seen before.
2. Join community to gain more keywords/insight (DSC, MLSA, local community)
Did i mention "keywords"? Yes. Knowing keywords is important. I hate it when people say "just google it".
"Searching in Google is easy, knowing what to search is hell"
Knowing the right keywords to search is key to find answer to our problems. Knowing new keywords let us know that such thing does exist. Therefore, increasing your knowledge.
Where to find those new keywords? join some local communities (Developer telegram group, local developer community) or global communities (Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors, Google Developer Student Club, Reddit, etc). Not necessarily need to be active, just listen to what they talk about and you will learn one or two new keywords.
3. Be curious and research on your own
Only knowing about the keywords is not good enough. You need to search and research about it (this is the right time to Google it), get stuck? ask the communities. Compare one tech with another. For example, today you learn new keywords about "gRPC" and "Kafka". Ask yourself "what is it?", "what is the alternative to this tech?", "when do we use this?", and so on.
4. Join competition/hackathon, you always win either way
Joining competition as student gives you many competitive advantages. We have nothing to lose as most of university/student level competition have free or cheap registration fee, we have nothing to lose as we are about to start our journey into professional career. Either win or lose, we actually win. When you lose, you get experiences, you get knowledge (as some competitions provide workshops), you get to know new friends, you get to see what does a competition feel like. When you win, you get all what you get when you lose and prize money. So, W W situation right there
5. Google keyword => Product name/company + "for students"
eg: "AWS/GCP/Azure for students"
Who don't like free stuffs? we all do. Some big companies provide free account of their service/software for students. For example Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Github Education, and so on. Even Youtube has Premium Discount for students, so.. just try your luck.
6. Have fun and Tinker with your friends
Sometimes, being in college can cause some stress. Have some time for yourself to have a picnic or trips, even better do it with your friends. Other way you could do to relieve college stress is tinkering with the resources I mentioned in the previous sections, even better if you do it with your friends. Growing together.
These all the things i would do if i can turn back time to the good old days. Keeping knowledge only to yourself is probably not a fun thing, share it, tell it, and learn it together. Happy Learning.
what content would you like me to write?, comment down below :D
Top comments (4)
As a student I want to say that very little time is left for my personal life as well as for my hobbies. My teachers often give me a very large volume of assignments and all I do is write them for days. Recently, I turned to the writing service and ask to do my paper. I am glad that I turned to them and I think I will do it often, since I have a lot of free time and I can take a break from studying.
Nice idea there, as you have more free time to explore other stuffs that most likely to boost your incoming career. But i suggest, sometimes do your paper on your own as you might dont want to miss what happen with the class hahah. Still, i wish the best for you.
Nice, thanks for sharing.
7 . Google keyword => Product name/company + "career"