A college student’s individual analysis of productivity of four years (2016)
I think a but source of this issue is the house amount of unrelated classes I must take in college. I&#x27;m very lazy when it comes to things I have absolutely no interest in. I think I can provide some useful insight.<p>Right now I&#x27;m at New Jersey Institute of Technology. I am in the Ying Wu college of computing science. After this semester (at the start of the third year) I will have no more computer science classes I need to take for my degree. I personally believe I am very competent with the skills required to be a computer scientist in the real world (Software engineering, system design, managing, etc).<p>The remaining classes I have are as follows.<p><pre><code>   * &quot;Software Architecture&quot; where you don&#x27;t actually need to write software. I think you just learn about PHP or something from what a friend told me. (One of my professors said you didn&#x27;t need to write any code for the class)

   * Proofs where you just learn discrete math. 
   * Calc 1, 2, Linear, Diff EQ (in that order)
   * Physics 1 &amp; 2
   * ~ 2 hum classes 
   * 2 PE classes 
   * 4 Non-CS courses in lower level (easier like EE100) and upper level (harder EE300) course numbers 
</code></pre>
The only CS related thing I need to do is my senior project which is just to write some software and hand it in with a write up. This will be very easy for me. I&#x27;m not going to name names but one of my friends who did this submitted something that I was able to write in a weekend. Theirs was less polished and broke during the presentation (mine is still running). Their write up was good though. So they passed and got their degree.<p>I&#x27;ve basically got a laundry list of projects on my github page of projects I&#x27;ve done that would work as a senior project (let alone what I&#x27;ve been writing for the research group I&#x27;m working for).<p>I&#x27;ve also TA&#x27;d for a CS class here. Both times my class was in the top 10% scoring similarly to the honors sections. Not all my work but I like to think my explanations of the topics helped.<p>So why am I still here? Why do I need those check boxes? I&#x27;m basically stuck doing BS that I suck at because they want me to be &quot;well rounded&quot;. I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s 1) a reasonable goal to expect, 2) what college is for, 3) what im paying for.<p>The reason I have to take calc 1 and physics 1 still is because I failed my first year. Only those too classes. Even with 2 Fs on my transcript my CS classes kept my GPA at a ~2.9. Funnily enough I&#x27;m working in the physics department writing software for physics PhDs and talking with them on a reasonable level of understanding about their research even though I couldn&#x27;t pass Physics 1. I&#x27;m also the treasurer for the Ham radio club (I&#x27;m KD2JAO and I&#x27;ll be at Dayton or wherever this next hamfest). I have a pretty ok understanding of propegation and radio and I&#x27;m currently studying for my general. But I couldn&#x27;t pass Physics 1.<p>Why? I think a large amount of reasons.<p>The first and most prominent one is I don&#x27;t care about what was taught. It was all projectile motion which is asinine and boring.<p>Second was I have a life and other classes I cared about that were far more interested. I could either do well in my classes I liked or do meh in all my classes. I also had a lot of family troubles (death, divorce, moving, etc)<p>The final is more technical and out of scope for this conversation.<p>If we removed unimportant classes from the curriculum we wouldn&#x27;t have this &quot;I never get to sleep BS&quot; and the times you would loose sleep would be because you love what you&#x27;re working on. (I stayed awake in bed staring at my cieling some nights thinking of better solutions to my CS programming assignments assignment)