A day in the life of a Computer Science Major

If you’re wondering what declaring a C.S. major will look like – read onward. Turns out, you’ve already figured out you want to work on computers, not toilets. No offense to toilet fixers, but it’s just not my cup of tea. The same goes for doctors – it’s great they save lives, but, there’s just too much trauma involved. Well, you’ve made it to school, college, university, pick your name of choice. And here is what a day in the life of a computer science major really looks like.

You go to class, like everyone else. And if you’re at a liberal arts college, you got to the same classes as a everyone else. There’s only one or two classes a semester you really care about – the other classes are all just ‘there’ as part of the program. So we sit through the superfluous classed, get down enough information to pass whatever test it is, then hold out for the interesting class that involves some kind of coding. Pretty similar to anyone going to a credit filler class.

Now, it’s time for a real class. Professor gets up, starts off with a crazy story about how his commute was <insert generic story here>. 5 minutes later, everyone has straggled into the classroom. The talk now shifts to a Q/A session – quickly followed by a round of projected code – then 20 minutes of the class trying to do what the professor asked. Homework handed out, and that’s it.

Now, some C.S. majors take the down time for doing the assignment. Most skip and hangout, watch trending and relevant stuff – or play games. The gamer stereotype has slowly been fading – but it is still quite prevalent. In other words – a C.S. major has pretty much the same college life as any college student – it’s just the extra curricular activities not covered here that are truly different.