CS373 Fall 2018: Hassan Syed — Week 1
- What did you do this past week?
I spent the beginning of the past week trying to get into classes that had been previously waitlisted. I did some major surgery on my schedule at the last minute, which allowed me to switch into Competitive Programming and this class.
I spent the latter part of this week helping my twin brother get acclimated to UT Austin and the CS program. He is a recent transfer, and is starting with Mike Scott’s 314 class. I introduced him to some people, showed him how to SSH into the lab, and took him to some places around Austin.
I finished up this week with general errands and organizational stuff. I bought my textbooks, got some planners and attempted to make a timeline for recruiting this month.
2. What’s in your way?
The biggest road block I have is diligence (or also know as directed effort). There is a trait called “conscientiousness” that is supposedly a great predictor of success in your career (at least when it comes to business). There are 4 sub traits of conscientiousness. These include organization, perfectionism, diligence, and prudence. Most of these you can change quite easily, except for diligence. Diligence tends to be pretty much concrete by the time your 25 years old. Therefore, I have identified it as the hardest trait for me to improve on and discussed it as my biggest road block.
3. What will you do next week?
The plan for next week is attend some upcoming programming competitions, and to just get ahead in some classes so that I can use it as a buffer when recruiting comes along. I want to dedicate evenings to interview preparation, preferably with a 60/40 split of alone programming and group programming. I also want to learn some new tools quickly because I am attending Rice Hacks on September 14th and I do not want to be a drag on anyone I end up working with it.
I also want to make an attempt on reaching out to some people on advice for recruiting. My first year here (this is my second) I was some what reclusive and attempted to recruit without much thought. This semester I would like to change that.
4. What are your expectations of the class? (this question will vary, week to week)
My expectations of this class is one of practicality. I enjoy the theory classes, but I want to see what goes into making a product. I want to see how applications are actually built and what are industry procedures. I came to CS without any knowledge of software development tools, libraries etc. That still has not really changed, but for my own career and what I want to accomplishI need to learn it quickly.
5. What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My tip of the week would be to learn new tools, languages etc. by doing. I’ve spent countless hours reading textbooks or tutorials only to realize hours in that my learning was only “skin deep”. It may seem slow at first, but it is the only way for most people to really retain anything.

