I’ve been struggling with what I am going to do in the future, I am currently a freshman at a community college in my 2nd semester and am going to take my first Computer Science class (it’s an introduction of sorts). I had taken classes in High School but I did not grasp 90% of the things that were being taught. Whether that was because of my incompetence of the subject or the teacher who I was afraid to ask questions to because he was under the assumption that I should know what I’m doing and I would feel dumb afterwards.
Now I am really anxious but I am trying to start anew at College with the intro class and am planning to do some independent research about the subject at home. The University I plan to transfer to is known for their excellent Comp Sci classes and my dad’s friend works at an organization as a programmer and he is one of the top guys there. So the opportunity is there but with my failure to understand the subject in high school I just feel like I’ll be incompetent at understanding it even if I’m starting over in College.
I also meant to add that I would try to ask the professor for help on things I didn’t understand this time and would try to spend 30 minutes to an hour at home a few times a week doing independent research and studies on the subject as well as whatever homework and class assignments I get. But the sense of doubt is still seriously there and if it doesn’t work out I don’t know what else I could turn too.
I work for a major consumer devices firm (starts with Play, ends with Station) and used to work on the software dev side as a program manager.
With regard to CS as a career, I’m of two minds:
- Pretty lucrative if you’re good, very few decent CS grads go hungry. If any.
- Competition is fierce for the best spots.
So this means that it’s easy to be employed, but also hard to get the “good” jobs. This can mean ending up on a team that’s doing a lot of grind work for a lot time. And that can mean 80+ hour weeks basically until retirement.
Don’t worry about whether you didn’t get something in high school. I was terrible at math until I went to grad school, and even then, I just learned to work harder and smarter. Even then, let’s assume you drop out of the CS program and go into something else-- at least you tried. Plus, having that basic knowledge can be useful for jobs like mine in the future anyway.
Go for it.
This was helpful. I’m not sure if I would be the “very best” in the future and I’m not sure if I’d enjoy working 80 hours a week for that long. So if I get out of college as a CS grad would there be other fields that would accept the degree and not be as time-consuming? Like I’ve heard people can go into IT with a CS degree but I’m new to all of this so I’m not quite sure. I will try to test this field out for a couple semesters and like you said I can have at least the basic knowledge if I feel like I won’t be able to become successful in this degree and decide to switch to something else.
You’re already planning to take the class, go from there. A good deal of people find out quickly the subject isn’t for them. I would revisit this question after said class.