新西兰Thoughts: how to get A+ as an average CS student


在新西兰



先给紫宁小姐姐打call, 101里第一眼就喜欢上的女生,气质超好有没有!

原文写在github里,懒得翻了,请大家多多包涵我的chinglish.

Now I have graduated, time to reflect on the 3 years of learning as a CS student.

Disclaimer: I’m not a CS genius(shame of my github name, knew nothing when I created it.) and this is just my personal experience, may not be suitable for everyone.

Why choose CS?

Mixed reasons.
Before coming to uni I had zero experience in CS and had a lot of concerns if others would be more superior than me. No need. Good if you’ve already had experience and know what you’re doing. No worries if you’re a blank paper because uni will teach you from scratch and most of the people are like you. So have wiped out the concerns, why CS? If I was still in China I would probably choose sth like law or anything irrelevant to Science because I’m simply not qualified to as so many smart students!  Now I took NCEA and had the chance to do a Science subject then why not? OK interest is one thing but as a student who was paying expensive international fee we also had to consider the return from this education investment. What do you want to achieve in a short term? A career you like, a place you want to live in. That’s it.

How to learn?
Personally I don’t think there’s too much difference about my learning strategy throughout the 3 years. Here goes the list:

1.>= 8 hour sleep every day. No need to get up early if you don’t have lectures or homework. Sleep as much as you can because your EYE and brain need rest.

2.Go to lectures. Even if you are sleepy, just go and sleep there and come back to watch the recording. You’ll notice the difference.

3.Do your homework way way before the deadline. I always start as soon as the assignment is released and seldom stayed up late for them. Some genius can finish it in half a day but as a dumb student I know I have to start early.

4.Use as much help as you can.  While independent thinking is highly recommended whenever you see a task, don’t hesitate if you need help. Sometimes you just need a different perspective:
By far I haven’t found anything stackoverflow cannot answer except some highly specialized questions
There’s plenty of resources on Github that you need
Go to labs/tutorials and get help from the tutors. If there are 3 labs a week I would recommend go to two of them and get all your homework done there.
Find some genius around to help you. Very important.


Exams?
Not sure if works for other universities. But what I do for UC:
1.Make a revision plan according to your exam schedule. The plan might be rigorous. That’s fine. You don’t have to follow it exactly. It just gives you an overall picture of how many materials you need to revise, how much time you need to devote etc. General rule for myself:
Review part of the course first if its exam is the last;
Two subjects a day;
Start revision a week before the study break starts.

2.Revision plan: Personally I always do two past papers first. Not necessarily in a set time. The aim is to know what they are going to ask. Then I look at/make notes from lecture slides, do the tuts/labs again based on what I concluded from doing the past papers. Eg. This point is likely to appear again because it was in the past 2 years; They did not ask this point in the past two years, very likely to appear this year etc. While going over the lecture slides,  I’ll still do some extra past papers based on how many are available but always save at least 1-2 for mock. When finished all slides and tuts,  I do mock exams in a strictly set time. That’s usually two days before the actual exam. On the day before the exam, I revise all the mistakes I made during the revision eg.do all the wrong questions again. On the exam day, I do nothing.

3.During the study break, lecturers will usually hold Q&A sessions. Definitely go and not afraid to ask!  Also very important to check your past paper answers with your fellows.  Explaining to others will help you learn as well!

4.Exercise, breaks, whatever can refresh your mind.


Lab tests?
OOOH that’s the scariest part for me because you have to finish everything in such a limited time! What I usually do is just practise labs and online resources again and again. Use prolog as an example, the more you do, the faster you’ll solve it. In the end, all you want to get is a natural instinct that comes up as soon as you see the problem. Same reason for solving Math problems. It’s not a shame that you have to practise so much to get a good result NOT AT ALL. This is how things work for me as an average CS student. And my personal strategy for lab test is: hit 8/10 of the questions correctly in first try and then think about the last 2 questions. Don’t panic if you can’t finish!  Some genius will but most people are like you so try to get as much accuracy as you can within your range! When you see a question you can’t solve for 5 minutes, skip it. Don’t complain by saying that I could have solved it if given more time, as everyone is on the same boat and your ability is just not up to that level yet.


Coding?
Just one piece of advice: Don’t stuck and suck on one question. Go outside for a walk, play some pianos whatever and come back to it. Magic will happen!


Regrets?
If again I would start a personal project from the freshman year.  Just some extra nice things to put on the resume not only your assignments or intern works.

Others, none.  Although not a CS genius I think I’ve tried my best to achieve what I could academically. The hardest time for me was my second year. Got a concussion unfortunately. Slept through most of the lectures and struggled to look at the screen. Only had a clear mind 3 hours max a day. Had to watch the recordings again and again and took me significantly longer to finish the homework as limited by the amount of time that I could focus. Thanks to UC, my family and friends for the massive support during that time. Thought I would have failed but still managed to get an ok result.  Did drag down my GPA a lot though.


Jobs?
Definitely start your intern no later than your second year.  Don't worry about the poor salary all you want to get is EXPERIENCE. When some companies say they want graduate software engineer they still mean some graduate with 1+ year industry experience.
One page CV.  
Github/portfolio/personal web

Best of the luck to all CS students!  CS真的是一个燃烧颜值的专业。一定要睡好,吃好,运动好!




新西兰移民留学

奥克兰雅思学习

新西兰请问大家,雅思高阶课程学习,有哪家机构推荐么?非常感谢 评论 您好,我们机构提供雅思小班保过班,欢迎微信加我Heidi-2014,电话咨询:021-2488850 评论 你好,可以加我微信,Heidi-20 ...

新西兰移民留学

在线RV转PRV申请材料问题

新西兰准备在线申请PRV了,有谁知道要准备什么材料吗?我看好像就提交一个护照照片就完事了? 评论 网站申请,好像就护照和照片而已。无犯罪不需要了 评论 没特别的资料要求,主要是申 ...

新西兰移民留学

关于rv转prv

新西兰昨天刚在Manukau的移民局dropbox亲身递交了rv转prv申请,不知有最近递交的嘛大概多久信用卡会扣款?多久能下来?(看移民局网站写现在处理时间90%的申请是28 weekdays,真有这么快嘛?) ...

新西兰移民留学

父母团聚AIP问题

新西兰父母团聚AIP下来,提交了护照上周一就收款并退回护照。大家知道evisa还要多久能收到? 评论 大概三周左右 评论 那就说的通了。 评论 收到AIP.第二周扣的学费。没有要护照。扣完学费 ...

新西兰移民留学

澳洲要取消父母团聚移民

新西兰澳洲既取消投资移民后又要取消父母团聚移民,他们觉得这移民对澳洲没有好处。新西兰会不会跟进呢 评论 澳洲做得好。 评论 澳洲要反滑新西兰要不要跟进呢? 评论 澳洲还关闭了投 ...

新西兰移民留学

有pr想申请奥大

新西兰不太清楚具体流程 兄弟们有没有合适的中介可以推荐的 评论 可以申请清华 评论 自己跟学校联系最好,既想上学,那么提前开始学习怎么和学校打交道,入学之后需要和学校各个部门打 ...

新西兰移民留学

2021 one off VISA 副申請人轉PR

新西兰目前是2021 one off VISA 副申請人已獲批,請問此簽證有兩年內須住滿緊接申請PR否則簽證會過期的限制嗎?因為我看過期日是無限的,是否只要我在指定日前入境就可以無限使用簽證?我現 ...