(Part 3) 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.

There are actually several reasons more security cameras would be a bad idea. Here are some reasons from the ACLU. In addition to that, security cameras are reactive and not proactive. In other words, they do not prevent crime, they only make it easier to catch the criminal (sometimes). They might make you feel safer causing you to let your guard down thereby making you ironically more vulnerable. Security cameras also create an environment of mistrust which divides not only the University from the surrounding community (already a huge issue in Chambana) but also students from the administration which is always watching (George Orwell wrote a great book on this called 1984.) And finally, to expand on a point made by the ACLU, UI already has a surprising number of security cameras (1028 as of 2014, Source) and monitoring all of that video is tedious work which requires hiring new staff and expanding an already bloated administration and/or police force, which is scarcely something the University can afford, especially without a state budget.

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 was in the same boat recently. I joined STEM mainly because I inspired by the greats (Feynman, Sagan, Hawking, and so on) that I grew up watching and reading about. They explained the big ideas and I got all excited and wanted to solve them. Over the years I got to into the weeds, fatigued, lost passion, and forgot about why I joined STEM. You just have to find that same passion that made you pursue STEM in the first place again.

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Honestly everyone goes through this. Richard Feynman went through this and was "disgusted" with Physics. After doing some soul searching he rediscovered why he loved Physics again. He talks about this in a book of his "[Surely Your Joking Mr.Feyman](https://www.amazon.com/Surely-Youre-Joking-Mr-Feynman/dp/0393355624/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536790260&sr=8-1&keywords=surely+youre+joking+mr+feynman)" and there's a youtube vid somewhere but I can't find it for some reason.

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.

> To me, that is only delaying the inevitable, which is reducing the admission of candidates to Ph.D. programs.

That would be a positive development, wouldn't it? I think universities should stop accepting so many graduate students, who provide cheap labor for their advisors. If jobs aren't available, universities should stop overproducing them just because it is cheap and convenient for them, without taking into account that these students will be underemployed after they graduate, not to mention that they would have spent a large part of their youth poor and stressed out. Instead of hiring cheap graduate student labor for doing research, they should hire people in more permanent positions like tenure-track faculty, lecturers, research scientists, etc.

So What Are You Going to Do With That? is a good book about seeking alternative careers. It is written by two humanities PhDs, but the general principles are applicable to everyone. It is one of the recommended books suggested during career exploration/development workshops conducted by the graduate school career center.

I recommend the cookbook How to Cook Everything Fast by Mark Bittman.. It has lots of recipes with easy-to-follow instructions and suggestions of how to adjust many of the recipes. Local libraries have copies if you want that: link.

I've taken ECE 313 and STAT 410, and I'm also interested in ML, but I disagree. STAT 410 is not worth it if you're trying to improve your base of knowledge for ML. The amount of usable knowledge (from an ML context) is disproportionately low for how time consuming/stressful the class is.

If you ever feel like your statistics isn't up to snuff, you could just read/skim Wasserman, All of Statistics.

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.)

Less convenient perhaps but worth considering. AirPod strap

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.

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.

I think I initially misunderstood what you meant by "people ARE talking about it" ...
When I say that Yingying's family members (father, maternal aunt, and boyfriend) are silenced, I mean that they are in a foreign country beholden to the country's laws, standards, culture and language. As I mentioned earlier, I believe it is only the boyfriend that speaks english.

Did you ever read the book "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang?

https://smile.amazon.com/Rape-Nanking-Forgotten-Holocaust-World/dp/0465068367/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499167525&sr=8-1&keywords=rape+of+nanking

It offers a poignant description of what happens to trauma survivors (those personally or vicariously affected by life-threatening events) when they have no outlet for their experiences / story. I hope that this makes sense. I understand that there might be language barriers that adversely affect communication, especially online.