Sometimes, it's better not to cross the finish line in the short run if it means you'll cross it in the long run.

Imagine what I assume to be a common scene for many computer science students:

Every semester, I’m required by my honors program to take a one hour seminar. This semester, by a combination of late registration times and a small array of interesting seminars, I ended up in a seminar on animal domestication. Now, I am not the slightest bit interested in animal domestication. I have nothing against biology (in fact, I prefer it to physics), but this very specific topic— domestication of animals— is not intriguing to me. I only signed up for the seminar because I had no choice; it was the only open seminar that fit my schedule.

In my experience, there are two types of college schedules you can end up with after going through the nightmare that is registration. The first type of schedule is the balanced schedule: you have a few classes every day, perhaps all in a row or evenly spaced out through each day. The second type of schedule is the lopsided schedule, with all of your classes on two or three days and multiple days during the week when you have little or no class. Here are some positive and negative aspects of both kinds of schedules.

The Balanced Schedule

Thanksgiving is a good time as any to think about everything that has gone right.

Around now, the bigger CS companies are making their internship decisions, leaving many students either ecstatic that they finally got their dream job or disappointed in their lack of success. As someone who had no success last fall in finding internships, I know what it feels like to watch everyone else succeed and wonder if you'll manage to net an internship at all.

I have always enjoyed helping others. There's something exciting about seeing the happiness on someone's face when you help them get through a really tough homework problem or give them advice for a tricky situation they're in. I especially like giving advice to people who are younger than me because I feel more qualified to solve those kinds of problems having already been through those earlier stages of life.

This was my first time at a hackathon.

What role should college play in shaping students?

It can be hard to stay optimistic as the semester wears on.