(Part 2) Top products from r/UIUC

Here is some advice with a degree of seriousness.

• Buy a high quality laptop: I bought a budget device only to regret it all the while. The price you pay for a device which is going to be ubiquitous in your college experience is a small one, if you look at the entire cost of college.
  
  
• Really ponder about your major. I can't tell you what a small fraction of students actually know the fundamental nature of their major until well into their coursework. If you can visit campus, they have many many different books which draw up an outline of what exactly you are going to be studying. If you live nearby, try visiting the college and see for yourself the nature of the various departments. Switching majors early into college is easy.
  
  
• Read college advice books. some would disagree here, but I see no reason is repeating the same mistakes made by thousands of college students before them. There are a thousands things that I would change about my college experience, but I did the best I could as I went in completely blind. I would recommend some books to incoming freshmen.
  
  

1. The Freshman Survival Guide
   
   
2. Been There, Should've Done That
   
   
3. Procrastination was my biggest issue in college. It is only now (well after graduation) that I realize the importance of a proper system of productivity. The best book I can recommend is Getting Things Done - by David Allen. This isn't some cheesy, feel good self help book. This a solid methodology to address productivity in everyday life. If you implement the method even to a small degree, you will have an incredible amount of benefit in your college life.
   
   

• Get yourself in shape: The college experience has a lot to do with meeting and interacting with people. Your choice of major is definitely a handicap right from the start. But you can help yourself by keeping yourself in good physical condition. And mind you, fitness is a lot more than just vanity.
  
  
• Familiarize yourself with support systems. This applies when you get to the end of your summer. UIUC is literally filled with hundreds of departments, all of them there to help you. Be it health, academics, housing or anything else, there are people who give valuable advice. Because I went in blind, it took a while for me to find my bearing around all these support systems. The Counseling Center is an excellent resource that every freshman should make use of.
  
  
• Thank your High School teachers: If you are amongst the group of people who had a fulfilling high school experience, make sure to thank those who made it possible. Have lunch with your favourite teacher/coach. Tell them how you are thankful for their contributions. Believe me, my mom's a teacher. It'll mean a lot to them. I know it will be hard for you to understand this, but the predominant majority of your friends from high-school will become irrelevant in you life through college. So make sure you don't forget the people who really matter like family, teachers and community leaders.
  
  
• Learn something different: You'll have the entire 3-4 years to learn things in your major. So take time out to learn new skills, that have nothing to do with your major. Welding, dancing, painting, photography, etc. Exploring interests is something that you won't have time for later on in life. So make best use of it when you can.
  
  
• Finally, relax! College is going to be a blast. An experience you have no idea of at the moment. So there is little point in worrying about it. Don't get all up in your head and worry about the future. You are going to fall, over and over again. But you will also learn how to pick yourself up, and that is what is going to make a real individual out of you.So savour those things which you will soon start to miss. Explore your hometown, eat at your favourite local restaurant, go on a road trip with friends, spend time with family. Enjoy!

I have an internship lined up, but I'm really excited to be learning outside of that too. You should check out The Elements of Computing Systems by Nisan and Schocken. I'm going to be working through this book throughout spring semester and the summer. I think it will provide a foundation for every low-level part of CS and help fill in some gaps that I'm missing.

If you're excited about web dev, you could make a website with Ruby on Rails, Django, Flask, Node, Meteor, etc. There's always another good web framework that you could learn.

If you're into system programming, programming languages, or compilers, there are tons of great tutorials and guides online. I'm currently working through Learn C: Build Your Own Lisp. I'm really looking forward to doing Implementing a Language with LLVM. If you didn't already know, LLVM was started here!

If you haven't finished core math yet, there's Linear Algebra on Khanacademy. I think Salman Khan is one of the best teachers I've had. The videos are very concise and very clear. There's also a great series on ML on YouTube. It explains the theoretical underpinnings of the algorithms, but doesn't really show how to use them. If you want to use them, your best bet is the Python library scikit-learn.

For reverse engineering, here's a fantastic challenge site, and here's a good book that you can view online.

There's so much to do, and not enough time to do it! If you constantly work on a few things, little by little, it will all start to accumulate. Good luck and have fun this summer!

If you have some free time, it might be a good idea to take some time to read, journal, and learn new skills.

You can journal about the fall semester and try to brainstorm the reasons for why you got a 2.5 GPA. Were you taking time to study every day, were you spending too much time at Kams, or were you spending too much time alone on reddit and not developing a social circle? There's a lot of reasons that can lead to a difficult semester and identifying them is important to prevent the same problems from happening again in the spring. Also the act of journaling will help you process your thoughts in a more productive way than if you are just ruminating.

Reading would also be a great use of your time because for one, the act of reading helps to alleviate feelings of loneliness. You can also read different books about motivation, psychology, health, or success that can give you some tools on how to think about your problems. Some books that were beneficial to me when I was in a similar situation were, "Change Your Brain Change Your Life (before 25)," "The Defining Decade," and "Mindset." Here's the links to them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Brain-Life-Before/dp/0373892926

https://www.amazon.com/Defining-Decade-Your-Twenties-Matter/dp/0446561754

https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483208928&sr=1-1&keywords=mindset

Lastly, learning new skills will help you increase your confidence and remind you that you are a capable person. Learn how to solve a rubix cube, learn to play a song on some instrument, take a coding class online, or teach yourself how to make an omelette. Honestly, you can teach yourself anything and it will be beneficial. Learning these small skills will make you feel productive and increase your sense of self-efficacy.

Try not to think of your failures as a sign that there is something inherently wrong with you or that you are a failure. You have an incredible capability to grow as a human in all areas of your life and failing is a good sign to show that your pushing yourself to learn. In the words of John Wooden, "Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be."

I'll leave you with one last quote that I found to be inspirational: "Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all." - Norman Vincent Peale.

ILL!

Go out and buy K&R's "The C Programming Language". It's about 50 bucks on Amazon, and it's the definitive guide to C.

C++ is a derivation (and in fact, a strict superset) of C. So, anything that works in C works in C++. The book will get you acquainted with pointers, structs, and all the things that make C totally different than Java.

The best way I can describe C++ is if Java and C had a bastard child-a lot of the concepts from Java (object orientation, a class library, etc.) translate pretty directly, but a lot of stuff (pointers, memory allocation/deallocation, structs, unions) come from C. I find that these topics are much easier to learn through C rather than C++.

C doesn't contain much resemblance to Java because it has no object orientation (i.e. you can't have "objects", nor can you have "object methods" which only act upon the data in that object) which makes it a very weird experience for someone with only Java programming experience, but being able to program in straight ANSI C is an invaluable skill and it will put you WAY ahead in 225.

Here's a link. Trust me, don't rent this book, BUY it. You will use it for years to come.

Also, if you want a book that strictly covers C++ (I would only recommend this after you go through all of K&R), go ahead and get this one. It's easily the best C++ reference I know of.

Edit: I would note that I definitely agree with the other posters' comments on hard work/merit of your work. That's a big element! I just thought I would address your question from another angle, since they already covered the other important elements. :)

Original comment:

Academia + research involves a fairly significant element of relationships and/or politics, which may seem insincere. You could look into books on navigating relationships and/or office politics. Many extroverted or popular people fake it until they make it. That is, treat everyone as if they are already your buddy, and soon they will be.

I’ll list a few books below that are solid regarding navigating relationships and politics... but I would also note that different environments have different politics. (academia has different politics than a corporation, for example)

And if you don't like politics or managing office relationships, you could start your own business. I don't know whether you are an introvert, but I think introverts benefit from owning a business, because there is no stress from trying to anticipate office politics.

Good luck!

Helpful books: (I recommend “How to Talk To Anyone” to start)

http://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Anyone-Success-Relationships/dp/007141858X/

http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034/

http://www.amazon.com/The-Laws-Power-Robert-Greene/dp/0140280197

Introvert entrepreneur blog:

http://theintrovertentrepreneur.com/

Thank you! Yes I have heard only good things about that book.
Does it matter that it is C and not C++? Because I have been told Accelerated C++ is also a very good book and things are seen at a faster pace. But again, if you believe the K&R is a better approach I will by all means look into that one. I mentioned Accelerated C++ because of the time constraint I have.

I took it. The book you will use for first semester is this and I didn't spend too much time on it.

I had no prior knowledge and got an A on all but 2 exams throughout my two semesters.

Homework everyday and once you learn a bit they tack on a journal/essay type assignment once a week. The homework can take 5mins-30mins+ (depends on how well you understand the sentence structures and words). The journal can fit that 5-30 range or take longer as you have to write almost 300 characters and you need to make a comprehensive entry or get docked hard on points.

When it comes to studying the new vocab every week, I spent 3 hours every Sunday and I knew all the words (Pinyin, definition, and how to write the character) for several weeks without review. Other students would study them everyday and still have trouble. So if your memory is good, you won't spend too much time. Also keep in mind that you see the words in your book so you're constantly getting them in your face to remember.

Besides the typical learning in class, Monday and Tuesday both have a vocab quiz. Wednesday has a translation quiz (English to Chinese. One sentence) and Friday has a test on everything you learned that week.

If you have anymore questions just ask. I personally loved the class and I'll be going for the full four years because of it.

I recommend this book

It's been very helpful for me.

The author ran a great blog over the years with related material, here's the archives. I would search in the category tags for items relevant to you.

313's difficulty level is to a large extent dependent on your comfort with previous math classes, and with your comfort with the concept of mathematical structures. If 313 is your first formal experience to mathematical structures, it will likely be much more difficult. If you are already familiar with concepts such as sigma algebras, measurable spaces, etc., it will likely be a significantly easier class.

Linear algebra, though not being necessary to understand the material the way multivariable calc is, will help you understand the material.

Covariance, which is a topic discussed towards the end of the semester and which measures the linear dependence of two random variables, is very similar to an inner product from linear algebra. Covariance shares the bilinear, symmetric, and positive semi-definite properties with an inner product. Covariance also adheres to the Cauchy-Schwartz inequality.

In addition, the class discusses linear and non-linear one-to-one transformations of systems of random variables. These two sections, which were generally considered to be quite difficult, are actually quite easy if you have a solid understanding of linear algebra.

That being said, I don't know how relevant MATH 286 would be for this class. Maybe someone who's taken MATH 286 wants to chime in on how much linear algebra you actually learn in that class. Looking at the MATH 286 textbook's table of contents, it looks like you will likely learn how to find the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a matrix, but not actually learn why or how or what is really going on.

ECE 313 forces you to use office hours due to the "concept matrix". But really, if you take the time to actually learn the concepts - why you're applying a formula, not just how to apply a formula - you should do just fine in the course.

ChBE 321 will almost certainly use Smith Van Ness. It's a McGraw Hill book so it's expensive, but I'd say it's worth picking up. It's a good book (as far as engineering textbooks go) and one I and my classmates actually used sometimes after finishing the class. Also thermo is one of the more conceptually difficult classes you'll take in undergrad, so it's worth having an additional reference.

You can find it used versions, older editions, and international/SI editions for cheaper, especially if you look off amazon like at abebooks or similar.

I would recommend Stroustrup's book for C++. Then, like the other's suggested, hit up Hackerrank or something and then maybe try some projects of your own.

I think it's this: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Mathematical-Statistics-Robert-Hogg/dp/0321795431/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=

But really, if I remember right, they "use" it the same way we "used" the textbook in 400. (I do like both books though.)

May I ask why use that book, and not the older and more popular one by Huston Smith? Your flair says you are a TA, so I suppose you just use whatever book the department instructs you to use, but would you know why they prefer that book?

If you want an actual textbook, I'd recommend the most recent edition of this book. Past editions might have chapters moved around or slightly different problems, but the physics is all there.

But I think you should give the Smart Physics stuff a chance. You're probably just reading the reviews of some salty students who were horrible at physics.

get this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Metal-Rhythm-Guitar-Vol-Stetina/dp/0793509580/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1539307160&sr=8-5&keywords=troy+stetina

https://www.amazon.com/Compilers-Principles-Techniques-Tools-2nd/dp/0321486811

Invitation to World Religions. Second Edition. Oxford University Press (2015)

We provide PDFs for primary sources used.

should be this one

my advice