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[Kazz]

Sooo, I'm 23.  And I'm going away to college this September.  For the first time.   

If you've read my earlier posts on the subject, you remember I had concerns about whether or not I'd get to live on campus.  Well, after bugging the correct people a bunch of times, yes, I'm going to live on campus.

This is the degree I'm going for.

It's a two year program that seems to rush one through about a billion difficult topics as quickly as humanly possible, with a minimum of gen-ed bullshit.  It will be intense, and harder than anything I've ever done (which frankly isn't saying much), but I am excited to finally accomplish anything and learn something I can use to make something awesome (ie Pod, a game about lasering people all the way to death, coming 2010 watch for it)

Here's the really big thing, though.

This will be my first time living away from home.

The school is only about 45 minutes away, but still.  I'll be on my own for the very first time, ever.  (And let me tell you, I've been hurting to get out of this house for a long damned time.)

Also, I'll be in a double, which means I'll have a roommate, who will likely be a total stranger.  That will also be a first.  I'm not antisocial, but I do enjoy my privacy and I definitely enjoy being able to stay up really really late.  Not sure how possible that will be.

Sooo... any advice?  Stories?  Insults?  Help me out here.

[McDohl]

Pray that your roommate isn't a pretentious faux-christian that plays movies really fucking loud while you're trying to fight battles in Mother 3.

[Guild]

Going for my visual communications bachelors starting in July.

We're not cool kids anymore, we're career-pursuing growdups.

[James Edward Smith]

Going for my visual communications bachelors starting in July.

What is that, mime school?

But to address Kazz's post, good job on pursuing post secondary education. Your course load looks very focused in just one direction, so you won't be experiencing the full humbling effect of academia that I personally think everyone should be exposed to who is smart enough to finish highschool, for the sake of our survival as a species, but I'm all for anyone getting more educated.

Honestly, your course load looks really easy to me. But this is coming from the mouth of someone with 5 years of CS and a year of real world work experience as a developer under his belt, so take from that what you will. But honestly, they hardly have you doing any hard math and all of your other courses are either straight up programming courses or fruity game design ones that sound like the biggest bird courses I've ever heard of, especially for someone like you or me.

I never lived in residence because I've always lived close enough to my schools to just drive there and live at home. Honestly the idea of residence and roomates in college always seemed like a huge hassle to me that I'm fairly glad I did without, but I'm sure it's not the end of the world. If anything it might encourage you spend more time in labs doing work and bars having fun than sitting in your comfy house doing squat, so maybe it's for the best.

My experienced criticisms about your program:
All your programming classes are in an object oriented language with no regular C programming first. This means you have less time to understand the more basic principles of programming before you have to start understanding the principles and ramifications of object oriented programming. So they either won't teach you the basics and you'll be a lousy programmer right after graduation, or they will expect you to learn them really fast and that will be tough. I suspect the former. But then what do I know, I'm fresh out of school.

My best advice? There's so much work (lets call it X) that you'll have to do between now and the day you graduate to get that diploma or whatever. It's there, it's not going away and you have to do it. So just do it, get it out of the way as soon as you can, and make sure you have enough time to spend on shit to get it done and really understand it and therefore get the most out of all this.

Anyway, I'm a pretty knowledgable CS student now, someone like Thad is probably even more experienced. So if you ever want help on stuff feel free to ask.

[Kazz]

Geo, I don't expect this to be the end of my education (formal or otherwise) by a long-shot.  But I hope, by the end of the program, to have a foundation that will (A) get me a job and (SUNGLASSES) get me started down the path of makin'-stuff.  I think this is the right direction, and anyway I'm on my way in it, so that's where we stand.

[James Edward Smith]

Well, there should be no end to your informal education, in any field really, but especially in computer science. This shit changes every day.

I wasn't trying to say that your program is crap or something or that I think you should take something else, I was trying to give you my assessment of what you program might be like based on my past experience with all this stuff and what my advice on how to handle it and supplement it is.

I was also trying to assure you that it's completely doable because I know it could be a lot harder than this program looks to be. Again, this is not a slight or jab in any sense, what I'm saying is that as long as you want to do the work, I think you'll be able to handle this just fine, so don't worry so much.

[Thad]

Well, I think most of us here can vouch for the fact that it's tough to get a job in the game industry.  And honestly, the guys in my freshman programming courses who said they went into CS because they wanted to design games were the ones the rest of us laughed at, and who switched to CIS by sophomore year.

Of course, a curriculum that doesn't focus on hard math probably makes a hell of a lot more sense if all you want to do is game development.  I'm still not quite sure why I had to take DiffEq (though a degree that put me one class away from a math minor encouraged me to take number theory as an elective, and that turned out to be extremely useful for crypto as a grad student).

Anyway.  My general thinking is that it's probably a lot easier to get a job with a general compsci education than with one that emphasizes a rather select field like that, and even WITH a CS degree I've been unemployed since September.  (Though I've really only been looking for work for about two weeks at this point.)

That said, any kind of programming course is a potential help to a development career, and any degree is better than no degree.  And hopefully the job market will be looking a whole lot better once you have that under your belt.

That and if your ultimate goal is learning over employment, it looks like a pretty good path.

As for the roommate situation: it's a crapshoot, but I generally had pretty cool roomies.  I DID get one PTSD-suffering alcoholic who once wrestled me to the ground and put me in a headlock, but other than that the worst I had was a guy who went to bed at 9 and took over 2/3 of the room with his shit (and just for a little perspective on how not-a-deal-breaker that was, he and I hung out a few weeks ago).  Worst-case, if you get someone who you absolutely can't get along with, it shouldn't be much trouble to switch to another room.

Another thought: I'm assuming you don't have your own bedroom?  I suffered through that for four years and would never do it again, but I also think it's part of the experience.  You'll both be taking classes so you should have some privacy when he's not around, but yeah, it can be a pain in the ass.  My last year of school I moved into apartment-style dorms and got my own bedroom (and three of my good friends for roommates), and that was a damn good year for that and many other reasons.

The best thing about living in a dorm is that it's really easy to meet people and make new friends.

Anyway.  Enjoy it.  That's my best advice.

[Guild]

Going for my visual communications bachelors starting in July.

What is that, mime school?

Advertising design.

[Classic]

Kazz:
Living with another human being is a business arrangement, and because you're a person I've interacted with before, I'm going to assume you're cooler than whoever it is you room with. You being cool is pretty essential to nobody getting stabbed. If you're prepared to treat your roommate as an unusually moody extra-curricular, you should be fine.
Then again, my only previous roommate was pretty cool (i.e. worst he did was watch a lot of BET and shack up a couple times), and the current roommate is roast beef and I've known the fucker basically forever. So I've been pretty lucky. Additionally, residence hall rooms are served a little slice of hell. If you've got any sense you'll avoid them studiously.

[Rosencrantz]

Sooo, I'm 23.  And I'm going away to college this September.  For the first time.   

I'll be 26 when I finally go off to (non-community) college, so don't worry about it. Good luck!

[Kazz]

I figure, any computery degree will probably get me a job where I can sit down, which is really what I'm after in the short term.

In the long term, of course I want to make games.  I'm not concerned about getting into a game company right away.  My strategy is: make an original, fun multiplayer game, and give it away.  I have seen so much total crap on the internet that gets given away like this, and their creators tend to either get employed or figure out how to make money with their stuff.  Or they make something else.  OR THEY DIE ALONE.  Whatever.

Anyway, yeah, I'm in a dorm.  I don't expect it to be roomy or comfortable, and I definitely don't expect a seperate bedroom.

[Shinra]

I would have some life affirming post about how i'm going to school, but the nearest culinary school is in fucking kansas and i'll be fucked if I'm moving to someplace even MORE boring than oklahoma.

As for traditional education, I never want to work tech support of any kind again, so any career in IT is completely out. I hate people too much to do pretty much anything else.

[Kayma]

I just got my information sciences and technology degree in may, so I think I'm qualified to install printers or some such junk.

I recommend the dorm your first year, it's far and away the best situation in which to make friends fast. Like was said before, roommates are like rolling dice, but as long as you remain cool it shouldn't matter much. Anything beats living at home, as far as I'm concerned.

[Mothra]

I've had two different roommates during my dorm days, one goth, one jock, before moving into the city and transferring to a commuter school without on-campus housing. Just treat the guy like you'd expect him to treat you, and there really shouldn't be any problem; best case, he's cool and you can hang out instead of hang... alongside. At worst, you just don't really talk all that much. Remember to give him privacy every now and then, studying in the library or going out for shenanigans, and he'll probably do the same.

Communicate problems. If he's being a douchebag, ask him what the fuck is going on. Casually explain yourself if it seems like he's being passive-aggressive. Issues usually arise out of ambiguity. Fart on his pillow if it seems like it would be funny.

[MadMAxJr]

I lived at home all through school.  I made some friends, but only one I still talk to.

Focus on your studies, and remember that you're the one paying for them.  Things will get hard at times.  Looking over your course schedule, I might be able to help you out with the C and some of the math, if you need a hand.

[Bongo Bill]

I would have some life affirming post about how i'm going to school, but the nearest culinary school is in fucking kansas and i'll be fucked if I'm moving to someplace even MORE boring than oklahoma.

I enjoy linking to The Onion.

[MadMAxJr]

By the way, since I am a handler of sensitive information in a university, I would like to advise ANYBODY going to or currently enrolled at a college to elect to have your personal information flagged with a FERPA restriction.  This federally protects your personal information so that ONLY YOU have access to it.  This comes in handy if 3rd parties want to force more information about you, or if your university does things like provide 'marketing' information to 3rd parties.

[Kazz]

Thread revive!

I move in two days from now.  It's not a double, it's a triple.  One of the roommates seems fine, the other I haven't been able to contact due to Things.

My concern at the moment is that the one thing I hate more than anything else in the entire world is lying in bed doing nothing, unable to sleep, but unable to get up because I'd feel guilty for bugging other people.  So let's assume that I've already resolved not to lie in bed.  Here are the options I can think of:

1. Having determined that my roommates don't care as long as I'm quiet, I get up when I'm up and get on my computer when I can't sleep.  This option is preferable, but entirely dependent on how they feel, and subject to them changing their minds if it does end up bugging them.  Note that I currently plan to face my monitor away from the center of the room, such that when I'm seated at the computer, my back is against the wall.  This, in addition to the lofted bed overhead, would hopefully keep my monitor's light from bugging anyone.

2. As 1, but I hang up a big black sheet (I have a nice one) beneath my lofted bed, surrounding my desk area.  I also run a fan, purely for the white noise (I might do this anyway).  This may make me the weird kid who hides in a tent and they'll probably assume I jerk off under there (I could never spank it in a room with other people, just not going to happen).  Or maybe they'll think I'm clever and considerate.  This option still doesn't rule out the possibility that they'll get bothered by me getting up at odd hours.

3. I fuck off, leaving the room and going to the nearby lounge area, probably alone.  I'd have my laptop, hopefully also TV, but nothing else.  This would totally suck for me, but my roommates would probably think it was keen.

Who has dealt with similar situations before?  What do you recommend?


EDIT: I hope my roommates are half as fucking awesome as the guys described in this blog

[jsnlxndrlv]

Option 3 worked for me, but then that was the biggest, most active dorm on campus.  There were people coming through the lounge at all hours every day of the week.  Plus we had 90 fire alarms just that first year, which meant I was going to have to get up and get out sooner or later anyway, and it just made sense to keep clothes on.

I went with option 1 my second year at KU.

I, uh.  Didn't get to enroll in a third year.  GPA dropped too low.

(These things are not unrelated.)

[Detonator]

Option 1 should be fine as long as your keyboard isn't painfully loud.  Laptop keyboards usually aren't, fortuantely.