Your computer science study years will be full of meaningful learning.
However - it will not only be about learning computer science itself! Your study years open you to a world where you learn to rebuild and re-discover yourself, to become a better you.
Chances are you are like me when I started at university (Sergey here again):
You just finished high school, enrolled into university, and while you're looking forward to your studies - you don't really like where you're standing right now as a human being.
Maybe you DO fulfill some of the common computer-scientist-stereotypes. Maybe you're a bit (or a lot) shy, maybe there is some social awkwardness to you or maybe you really have no big interests or hobbies besides coding all night.
In this blog post, I will give you a quick rundown on how you can start your journey on personal (instead of only software-)development and become the best version of yourself.
Define Your Goals
Start off your personal development journey, the way a true computer scientist would define a problem to solve:
What are the inputs?
That means: Analyze what you are working with. What are your strengths, weaknesses, character traits, your style, your habits, your mindset and beliefs.
Try to find out as much about your current self as possible.
This is what you feed your personal algorithm as arguments for your growth.
What is the expected output?
After going through the steps of your personal change - what do you expect the results to be?
Try to paint a clear picture of who you want to become. It can be ANYTHING you imagine. Don't let anything hold you back - if you want it, you can get it.
Write it down!
Assemble the algorithm
Now that you know where you stand and where you're heading, it is time to think of the steps to get there.
Just like with any (imperative) algorithm, you should have clearly defined, executable steps that you can follow to achieve your goal.
However - while you may be a great coder on the computer - you may not have the right experience to create such code in real life.
The same way you probably watched some tutorials, while learning to code, you now have to do some research from people who know how it's done.
Gather Material
Well - as you'll quickly find out, there are unfortunatly no 20-parts-tutorial on how to learn the Confidence.JS Framework (That's a made up framework btw - just in case. Does anybody wanna code it??)
But what there is, is a whole bunch of personal development and self-help gurus, all trying to sell you their book or product.
Don't let that discourage you. Yes, there is a lot of info and people out there, but most of the big names actually know what they're doing.
You can learn a lot from the free materials and see whose methods seem the most fitting for you.
Some Important Names
Popular names in the self-help space include:
- Tony Robbins
- Dale Carnegie
- Earl Nightingale
- Mark Mason
- And many more...
Do your own research though. You are not going to like all of them, while some will perfectly resonate with you, your values and your path.
Some Good Books
Some of my fave books in the personal development genre include:
Take Action!
Reading books and watching videos is nice and all... but be careful. You may run quickly into something people call "mental m*sturbation".
This is the personal development equivalent to what in computer science and programming, we call "tutorial hell".
This is a state where you consume so much of the learning material that you feel like you're making progress - but you haven't applied anything yet and are still at the same place where you started.
To avoid this state, the solution is simple:
Limit how much time you may spend per day on info-material and schedule time to actually do the exercises or apply what you've learned.
While coding can be done from the comfort of your own home and laptop, when it comes to personal development, you most likely will need to step out of your comfort zone.
That is what makes it so much harder to actually DO SOMETHING.
For now - just focus on taking consistent action and making a little every day. Time will make you a pro. That's a promise ;)
What to do now?
If you've followed this guide carefully, you should now have a solid foundation to start your personal development journey.
And if you thought that our advice was helpful, then let us help give you even more support on your computer science journey:
While your personality grows with time - what you can do now, is level up your style game and show off your passion for CS.
Check out our shop to get some of the coolest CS-designs available in the whole world-wide web :D
See ya!