Congratulations! CS3216 hasn’t killed you yet.

Yay. I’m still alive after CS3216 ended.

Okay that sounds a little bit extreme, but I’d say CS3216 did f̶u̶c̶k̶̶ change my mentality in a positive way. Throughout the 13 weeks of exhaustion, stress and despair, there were still plenty moments of joy and relief, which are the takeaways I’d love to remember from this module.

Let’s go all the way back to my first blog post, and see if I have achieved any of the goals I set for myself at the start of CS3216:

Learn more about Product Management

It’s unwise to work nonstop towards something other people might not want.

At the start of our final project 1our, it was hectic. We pivoted several times in the span of only two weeks, as we realized people did not want to use what we wanted to build. What I learned from this seemingly painful process is how to evaluate the usefulness of an idea and improve its relevance.

Reduce my fear of working with other humans

Working with other people is a skill that can always be improved.

After 4 projects, each time working with a different group of people, I realized it was not that bad as I would imagine. In a way, I actually thought it was kinda fun to meet new people after some time, so you could learn new things apart from the people you are currently used to.

Beat Blank page Syndrome

I detest writing.

Not anymore, as I figured out the real problem that prevented me from writing stuff: my perfectionism OCD.

Writing was tiring to me because I kept fearing that my writing was not good enough. Even while writing a paragraph, I repeatedly tried to make it as good as possible, including fixing sentence structures or throwing in words from a thesaurus. Therefore it took me ages to write just one paragraph, and when I finally moved to the next one I had already lost all motivation to continue squeezing words out of my exhausted brain.

After pinpointing the issue, now when I want to write, I just write. I don’t care if I’ve made a grammar mistake. I don’t care if there exists a shorter way of saying things. I don’t care if a paragraph doesn’t make sense. That’s why it’s called a draft.

After I finish the draft, I can go back and have a broader sense of what I’ve written. Then, I’m free to improve it as much as I want.

Thanks to the blog exercise, I was forced to write. And now I’m not afraid of writing anymore.

Finally get down to do something great

I realize I’ve been procrastinating my whole life.

To be honest, I’m still procrastinating. I realize it’s my nature; it can’t be helped. But I learned how to abuse it for my advantage.

More often or not, when I see a big task in front of me, I tend to prefer to do other (more enjoyable) things. However, instead of switching to meaningless distractions, I choose to do stuffs that I wanted to do but failed to allocate time for them earlier. I spend my procrastinating time on practicing the ukulele, learning EDM production, researching on reverse engineering with IDA Pro, etc. In short, I make procrastination worthwhile.

Then, when I go back to my main (postponed) task, since I have less time due to procrastination, I’m forced to work as efficiently as possible, which is surprisingly much better than wasting lots of time doing something halfheartedly.

So, should you take this mod?

If you are reading this, I suppose you are a student, who has just seen Colin’s email calling for CS3216 registration.

Since I feel it’s easier to explain my mood through the course with a graph, here it is:

When I first started the module, I had many expectations. Seeing my classmates were all talented people, I was enthusiastic that CS3216 was gonna be fun. The curve starts at the middle of the enjoyment-axis.

During the first project, I felt like we were working on a pretty lackluster idea. I then questioned the purpose I joined CS3216: to work on some awesome project that would blow other people’s minds.

What I expected was learning a framework to generate good ideas and make them awesome (something like the Lean Canvas). We’d then spend considerable time on coming up with a really good idea, perfecting it, and execute the project for the rest of the semester, including marketing and STePS towards the end.

Knowing that we would be doing 4 different projects throughout CS3216 made me quite unhappy. A span of few weeks is not enough to make something awesome, in my opinion. My enjoyment curve headed downwards.

However, I got back my momentum when we started our 3rd project, Happ. I finally felt I was doing something cool, and I was actually happy that our project went online. Perhaps I wouldn’t have the chance to learn what I mentioned above (because the course wasn’t designed for that!), but during the process I acquired much more, like teamwork and good coding conventions. My enjoyment curve went up considerably.

Project 4 started immediately after project 3 ended. My enjoyment decreased a little, as it was also the time my other modules conveniently decided to have deadlines due together.

After STePS, which is now, I’m happier than ever, appreciating the fact that I’m still alive. The curve shoots straight up, as I joyfully imagine you, the prospective CS3216 student, will suffer the same pain we endured (muahahaha) but at the same time making some great friends and picking up what you didn’t expect to learn.

The choice is yours to make. Have fun with CS3216!