This post is addressed to male extroverted students. if you don’t literally search for coding/math videos at your leisure time, then here’s some simple advice. Do NOT go for a science or CS degree. If you want to have any social life, a bearable workload, basically a chance of happiness, and if there’s still an opportunity to choose/change your major, then, without hesitation make the wise choice: go into economics/management/business. (Not sure if this is one acceptable science exception: biology). Go into CS only if you’re confident that you will not bear a moderately extroverted lifestyle (if you feel that introverted lifestyle is DEFINITELY what you choose). There is good pay for CS degrees and yes, you always hear how the field of CS has good opportunities for future job prospects. However, if you’re not inherently/traditionally an introvert, drop it. It might save your life with how much mental suffering and toiling you will avoid as a result.
Personally, I just transferred from CS to econ, and I was shocked just how different a humanities/social sciences experience is compared to sciences. It has an actual gender balance as compared to CS/Math/etc; mostly everyone is amiable and sociable; everyone is like YOU, an extrovert. I understood this during the first month of the fourth CS semester I took, where I saw how boring and hard CS will be for me, as I’m a more of a guy who would go hang out with friends than solve math problems on weekends. You will go to parties, social clubs and events, and just generally have a pleasurable lifetyle, if you transfer to Econ.
I really want to help you, as I drudged without rest for 7 years in secondary school and 3 semesters in college doing math and programming, without ever trying out a more humanities-related course. If you chose CS and still have the option to avoid going this route, then please proceed and remove computer science from the list of your registered courses, and change the major/school that you belong to.
Not everyone studying CS is an introvert, and not everyone outside of CS is an extrovert. If CS isn’t the right path for you it’s good that you changed it, but that doesn’t mean that others should follow your lead.
economist421, you’re pretty far off. Boston’s filled with all kinds of colleges and universities right? Explore who has the best parties. It ain’t Harvard! Come back & let us know what you found out!
And excuses excuses…come on…let’s hear what consensus says
(about the drudging…maybe you just weren’t very good at it)
Anything you don’t love is sheer drudgery when it’s hard. OP wasn’t cut out for the major he chose… that happens.
I know many scientists, computer science folks and engineers - both at work and at home. There’s no one personality type that predominates in any of those groups; what distinguishes them mostly is they are good at what they do and they totally get into it. Everyone should be so lucky.
I know this is an old thread, but I kind of find it interesting, so I’m replying to it anyways.
When I read OP’s post, this is the sentence that stood out to me the most:
“if you don’t literally search for coding/math videos at your leisure time, then here’s some simple advice. Do NOT go for a science or CS degree.”
Though I don’t necessarily agree with the “science degree” part because it is too broad of a term, I agree with the “CS degree” part. Most CS major students use part of their free time for learning new programming languages and other technical skills through online tutorials and working on projects that are just for fun (not assigned by classes). I think this is because though the CS major teaches foundational knowledge, it doesn’t teach you all the skills you need for a job in CS. For example, the CS major classes only teach like 2-3 programming languages, so though taking CS major classes will help you learn how to think like a computer scientist which will make it easier for you to learn other programming languages, it is still up to you to learn the programming languages and other technical skills that a CS job requires on your own. Therefore, because it’s pretty much expected out of CS major students to be good independent learners, just being interested in CS is not enough to major in it; someone majoring in CS must have a strong passion in CS in order to get and stay at a CS job, strong enough in which the person is willing to spend part of his or her free time learning technical skills on his or her own and practice programming by working on projects not assigned by classses. And I think that one reason why OP might be finding more time for “parties, social clubs and events” as an econ major was that once he switched to econ and gave up the idea of pursuing a CS job, that expectation of him using part of his free time for doing “optional” CS stuff like watching online tutorials and coding just for fun pretty much went away giving him more free time for things he prefers doing like partying.
Though OP’s advice was that extroverts should not do CS, I actually think extroverts (or introverts with good social skills) have an advantage in CS because people with good social skills may have an easier time working as part of a team (and teamwork seems pretty important in CS). Also, there are some CS students who due to excellent time management skills can manage to spend their free time going to parties and social events in addition to watching tutorial videos and coding for fun. And a CS student can mix his or her desire for social interaction and desire to learn and practice technical skills outside of classroom by participating in CS-related extracurriculars or working on a project for fun with his or her other CS friends.
I think the lesson here is not that CS might not be a good field for extroverts; I think the lesson here is that CS might not be a good field for people who aren’t good at and/or willing to learn things on their own.
Also, I do wonder why OP said “This post is addressed to male extroverted students” instead of “This post is addressed to extroverted students” because he doesn’t say anything about female extroverted students being the exception.
Just realized this is an old thread but the people I know that went into economics are introverted mathy males… Lol… Usually they dropped out of engineering and went into economics…