Transfer Study Skills for CS UCB

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Transfer Study Skills for CS _at_ UCB

• Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the
  stress

Presented by your friends at the CSUA and UPE!
(Aaron McKee, Kaisen Lin) http//csua.berkeley.ed
u , http//upe.berkeley.edu
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PART ONE . . .

• Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt!

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The life you once knew is over...

• CS at Berkeley is INTENSE
• You will program and study more in one term than
  most students at other schools will do during
  their entire 4 years!
  
• You will be expected to learn most things on your
  own
  
• Berkeley teaches computer science - not
  programming languages, operating systems,
  development tools, etc.
  
• The student groups do try to help, however
• You will often feel on the verge of failure

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The life you once knew is over...

• CS at Berkeley is time consuming
• Some projects may take 50-100 hours
• Many classes have overlapping project timelines
• You will learn that, even at 1am on a Saturday
  morning, Soda Hall is often still packed
  
• You are not an exception all of us came from a
  similar background and cockiness is the downfall
  of many first term students

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The life you once knew is over...

• CS at Berkeley is rewarding!
• You will learn more, and become better computer
  scientists, than students from almost anywhere
  else in the world
  
• Your skills will be in demand
• With the right attitude, the right study skills,
  and copious amounts of dedication you will
  succeed!

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PART TWO . . .

• Resources

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Student Groups

• Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE)
• The LS CS honors society!
• Membership is by invitation
• Provides tutoring and advising, hosts faculty
  talks and technical workshops, consolidates
  research information, etc.
  
• http//upe.berkeley.edu
• 345 Soda

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Student Groups

• CS Undergraduate Association (CSUA)
• The main student group for CS majors and those
  interested in the major (or just CS) open to
  any UCB student, no dues
  
• Hosts help-sessions, workshops, and various
  social activities, provides mentoring and UNIX
  server accounts, and helps represent the CS
  student body to the dept.
• Website contains useful slides from previous help
  sessions and workshops
  
• http//csua.berkeley.edu
• 343 Soda

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Student Groups

• Eta Kappa Nu (HKN)
• The EECS honors society (membership by
  invitation)
  
• Provides tutoring and advising, course and
  teacher reviews, and exam files
  
• http//hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu
• 345 Soda
• Assoc. of Undergrad. Women in CS EE (AUWICSEE)
• An support organization for women in engineering
  (LS, EECS)
  
• Provides social networking and other resources
• 292 Cory

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Student Learning Center

• Provides tutoring and hosts study groups for many
  courses (mostly lowerdiv)
  
• Frequently available for CS3 CS61A,C
• Also provides general tips and sessions on how to
  survive Berkeley, how to study, etc.
  
• http//slc.berkeley.edu

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Office Hours

• Your professors and GSIs want to meet you!
• Most students are afraid of office hours afraid
  that theyll sound stupid or feel like theyre
  wasting the profs time
  
• Almost all profs will say that their time is only
  wasted when you do not show up they set that
  time aside for you and put other tasks on hold
  
• Even the very best students here frequently use
  OHs to clear up questions and confusions quite
  simply, its one of your best survival aides
  
• The CS profs here, even more than other Berkeley
  professors, are especially helpful and dedicated
  to their students

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Office Hours

• Come prepared
• Think about your question before hand
• Write down what you want to ask
• Ask about the professors research
• They are often working on exciting things
• Overall, dont be intimidated
• They will treat you with respect and mercy )
• They also are often interested in your opinions
  and views on the class theyre here to serve
  you!

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PART THREE . . .

• General Tips

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Select the right courses . . .

• Although all of our faculty are brilliant, some
  are better researchers than teachers, and some
  are better at certain subjects than others
  
• Different students have different learning
  styles
  
• ALWAYS check the course and professor reviews at
  http//hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu before signing up
  for your classes
  
• This data has been carefully collated over
  several years and is the most exhaustive and
  accurate service available at Berkeley, for any
  department. Its rarely wrong.
• ALWAYS ask your fellow students about your choices

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Lecture

• Attend
• Duh! Probably one of the biggest ways students
  fall behind is by missing lecture
  
• Ask questions
• Its hard and impersonal to lecture in front of a
  silent audience the teachers like classes to be
  interactive
  
• If you have a question, theres a 99 chance that
  someone else has the same one but is too shy to
  ask it!
  
• If youre still too shy, write down the question
  and ask during OH or after class. The worst sin
  is never asking!

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Lecture

• Pay attention to what is emphasized
• Emphasized topics almost always end up on exams.
  (If you skip class, you wont know whats
  emphasized!)
  
• Copy down examples done in class (for algorithms,
  processes, concepts, etc.)
  
• The books are often weak at including examples,
  making solving problem sets especially difficult
  
• If available, print out the lecture notes before
  hand
  
• Dont waste time (and attention) copying down
  whats already written, write your
  interpretations and observations about the topic
  

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Discussion Sections

• Attend!
• The sections almost always cover material or
  examples not covered in class
  
• Go to multiple sections!
• Different TAs, and even different sections by the
  same TA, almost always cover different material
  
• If the course is difficult for you, sometimes
  seeing the material in new ways (or even just the
  same way, multiple times) can be invaluable

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Projects

• Projects can be massive
• Start early plan your time well
• Its easy to end up with more work to do than you
  have time to do it in other projects, midterms,
  etc. can kick your ass
  
• Clarify any confusion with the specs early
• The professors frequently make typos and logic
  errors
  
• Check the newsgroups often!
• Specs often change dramatically once assigned and
  the newsgroups are often the only source for
  these changes

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Projects

• Start with design, not coding
• If confused, run your design by your TA
• Work in sections
• Break the problem down into smaller components
  and try to build up modularly
  
• Debug early and often
• Write many, many test cases
• These can be used to automate testing, especially
  regression testing
  
• Most courses will require them
• They will invariably help you catch stupid bugs

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Group Projects

• Try to partition work by files and/or components
• Working on the same file is tedious and
  inefficient
  
• Work together in person, whenever possible
• Its far easier to debug and discuss design
• IM is a distant second and email is unworkable
• Use source control (e.g. CVS, Subversion)
• It facilitates sharing code
• It makes it possible to recover from disasters
  or roll back to previously working code versions

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Homework

• Dont underestimate the homework!
• Many simple weekly assignments can take 10
  hours to complete
  
• Work in groups!
• Some of the assignments are nearly impossible to
  complete by yourself
  
• You cant share answers but you should share
  strategies
  
• You can often meet fellow students to work with
  through student groups many end up working
  together in the offices
  
• Check the newsgroups often
• The incidence rate of updates and corrections can
  be truly mind boggling

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Homework

• If stuck, try drawing the problem out
• Many solutions are hard to intuitively see so
  draw them out, trace a few steps of the
  recursion, etc.
  
• Its sometimes far easier to think on paper
• Work from knowns to unknowns
• Write down everything you know about the problem
  formulas, concepts, etc.
  
• Write skeleton code that works towards the answer
  what is closer to the answer?
  
• Check the textbook, previous term class websites,
  and previous exams for similar problems
  
• Professors frequently reuse questions, either
  entirely or partially
  
• Sometimes a good idea to copy the website down of
  a class you know youll take next term...

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Tests

• Become friends with the HKN exam archives
• Many previous exams (w/ solutions, quite often)
  are available on the HKN website
  
• Many more exams are available in the physical
  exam archives
  
• Teachers frequently use questions that are either
  identical or nearly identical to those used in
  some previous exam study them all!
  
• Answer the easy questions first
• On many tests, large percentages of the class are
  unable to finish the exams budget your time
  wisely
  
• Dont panic if you get a low grade
• 50 is not an uncommon test mean
• Suck it up and study harder next time the profs
  are often more lenient with the final grade

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General

• Sign up for mentoring
• mentoring-director_at_csua.berkeley.edu
• Youll be paired up with an upper division
  student familiar with the bureaucracy and
  resources available at Berkeley. It can be more
  daunting on your own than you expect!
• Attend help sessions and workshops
• These often cover topics you are expected to
  know, but arent taught during class (debugging,
  source control, UNIX, etc.)
  
• Some cover supplemental topics of interest (SQL,
  PHP, Python, etc.)

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General

• Use multiple sources of information
• If the topic is difficult, it can be tremendously
  helpful to see it presented in different ways
  
• There are almost always books available that
  cover the same topic - check out the resources in
  the Engineering and CSUA libraries
  
• Look at slides and material from previous terms
• Google can also turn up some interesting sites
• Be prepared to make sacrifices in your
  school/life balance, if you want to succeed

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General

• If one of your sources is confusing, emphasize
  the others more
  
• Its rare that all of these sources are clear,
  complete, and understandable sometimes the
  teacher, the book, or the notes can just confuse
  you more than help you
• Learn UNIX early itll save you loads of time
  later and you wont really be able to avoid it
  
• Intro to UNIX help session this Thursday _at_ 6pm,
  306 Soda

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And, most importantly . . .
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PART FOUR . . .

• Q A!