Ryan, have you graduated since summer of this year? If yes, have you found a job yet?

I'm in my last semester right now and finish this month. I can start full time work in January 2004. Haven't found a job yet. :)

Thats good to hear. I fully agree with your rant. Grades aren't everything. Why don't people hire the people that read and are up to date with what's going on with technology. Those are the people that need to have jobs!

But, if you know the game - why not play it to win? So, my advice to a younger ryan would be... figure out how to max out the grades in courses you do not enjoy without wasting that much time.

I'll expand on this in my own blog :-)

My turn :)

Being someone who did not excel in the grades category, but has an Engineering Degree and is very happy with the career situation at this point, I can honestly say that grades do not mean anything to me. After 2 years of working, I still have never been asked for my marks... or if I actually had a degree for that matter.

Sacrificing 4 years of my life was just not worth losing touch with what I enjoy most, people. What WAS worth it was knowing how to play the game, but not necessarily playing it. To Andrew's point, there is NO reason to look down upon someone for having good grades, but it happens... and it happens because "typically" (or stereotypically if you like) the people who got 99% in University got 1% learning in a social environment.

I'm a firm believer that good programmers are a dime a dozen. (I see replies gathering) but that truely well rounded members of a company are hard to find. If I was a CEO, I would want the smartest developers I can find, but I also want the ones that are friendly, optomistic, extraverted, and just all around good people... something I believe my employer has done an excellent job of putting together. I pride myself on knowing as many people at work by name and making sure they know who I am as well. (yes, I have read 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' a few times :)

The NEW game that everyone needs to learn is how to make work, like University, FUN!

Out.

T.

i'll just expand here... think of school like mario brothers - there are a ton of secrets to beat the game... of course if you are playing only to complete the game then why not take the 10 minute route?

K, so each teacher has a style - and the style more often reflects how and what they will grade. Approach every class with the mentality - I want to get the most maximum mark I can... After every quiz, every assignment, every test - go back to your notes (and rack your brain) about how the teacher gave you hints about what was on the assigned work.

When analyzing your prof you will figure out how to best spend your time....

1) Do not attend crappy teachers that have all their notes online... they probably know they are crappy - so to make sure peeps do well, they will give you what you need to know two days before the exam

2) Attend boring classes where the teachers awards its students with *hints* about upcoming stuff. Make sure to bring other work to keep you busy and mark down all the *winks* from the prof.

3) Attend classes (regardless of whether it is boring or not) where the prof is much better than her notes... that hour and half would be worth either like four hours at the library or a couple percent on your grade

I could go on for a while longer - but I will end with a little story. In first year of university - all engineers had to take a C programming course (and most peeps had never programmed at all - including me). To this day, I still think the assignments were hard, so I would slave away trying to get them done... only to have the prof pretty much give away the answers a few days before the assignments were due. I liked the class, so I continued to slave away.... but had I not - then obviously I would wait until the last minute to scam the answers from the prof...

k, posse out.

Excellent points Travis. Once school is over, does not mean you stop playing...

And, I think there is a difference between being a programmer that can do coo sheeat (tons of these crackers) and being a good programmer (much, much rarer based on my limited experience)...

Andrew, I agree ... and I "played the game" too, I just wasn't aiming for straight A+ or even A's. The time investment just wasn't worth it for me personally, I had better things to do. :) That's not to say that it doesn't suit other people.

I also agree with Travis. The best co-workers are the balanced ones: solid technical and communication skills and good teamwork. Someone who is excellent in one and poor in the other usually makes a poor teammate.

When I switched to software engineering I realised that teamwork was more important than grades, and adjusted my priorities accordingly. Software engineers, unlike computer science folks need better communication and social skills ... and most of us 'computer geeks' need practise with that, myself included. Those kinds of things you can't learn from a textbook but for software engineering are absolutely essential.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

When not being able to calculate the rate at which the perimeter of an oil spill is expanding hurts my job performance, then hey, I'm in the wrong damned job! :)

Ryan,

I want to hear your opinion on offshore outsourcing. Write a blog post on it.

Heh, OK.

Me, I liked to play sports, party, be aware of my social environment and the rest of life. I'm a typical B/A student, I knew about the game, but didn't care too much about it.

Then again, my upbringing was different than everybody's here. I learned my survival skills earlier than most, and so university just emphasized to me that bullshit, hypocrisy, and bureaucracy exist at all levels of education.

Btw, everything I leared that got me all my jobs early on was due to the skills that I taught myself, not university. I hacked away at what I liked and it brought me some fun jobs.

P.S. I'm not a great programmer, but I'm good at fixing other people's shiat. Now if you put me in a team, I know my role and will do what it takes to take the team to a better place. I'm also a generalist (and proud of it), and not a specialist. Although I do know some fields far better than most.

It's all about knowing your role - what you can and can't do. And no, this does not mean I've conformed.