It's about time to provide my overall feedback on my college experience. There are rumors about the college that I have attended being one of the toughest on undergraduate students, in terms of engineering (or applied sciences). While I did not anticipate the journey to be a push-over, I could say that the journey was not all that enjoyable. Overall, the following events happened (or did not happen, but should've happened):

• feeling of competence of my knowledge and skills in the workforce as a new graduate
• rewarding experience from the effort spent on completing homework assignments/projects/laboratories with the best effort
• relevance of training in the courses compared to requirements in real-world (or learn the tools that would help me acquire the required skills)
• lack of fun in general during both school and co-op work terms

In summary, college should be the best few years of a student's life. Instead, these past few years are arguably some of the worst years of my life so far, and I do not want to think about these memories aside from the selected pleasant ones. Reading from a variety of other blogs and newspapers about how college education has been failing students in terms of students' expectations, I thought providing the following suggestions for improvement may be helpful for other students to survive and get the best college experience possible:

• Do not rely on instructors on significantly helping you learn more efficiently. While I have bumped into Rebecca Thorman's suggestion about the reform of tenure structure, I personally doubt it will happen based on typical academic politics that have governed institutional operations since there are college institutions. Recruiting faculty members with rich real-world experience is a brilliant initiative; however, unless they sincerely want to forgone their day job doing what they are best at and teach young minds full-time, or the location being suitable for them to work in their day jobs full-time and teach part-time in evenings, the initiative would not work. Furthermore, professors on tenure track are trained to be researchers, not teachers. Although there is an argument about research findings help make them better teachers, communication and persuasion skills are actually the most important factors in teaching qualities. These skills are not emphasized during undergraduate nor graduate education of many programs. If the professor is a Toastmaster member, it is likely a different story.

Therefore, the only action a student can do would be talking to senior students who have taken certain courses before in the same program for success strategies and practice material so that they can self-study (After all, I felt that university/college is really a measure of how well one can study independently). In addition, if the courses you're taking are math and physics related, there likely exists a Schaum's notes full of example problems for you to study. Buy them. They are usually much better investments than the textbooks (By the way, I also recommend purchasing international versions over the local versions to go easier on your or your parents' bank account). For me personally, although I admit of not learning most of my math, physics, and other engineering courses well enough, I feel that most of them do not help me in life because either a computer program can be used to perform the tasks, or the vague theoretical concepts just are not used often enough. In conclusion, it explains my satisfaction of not attending lectures to waste my time (unless I have no choice due to participation marking schemes) in most situations.

• Start blogging about your personal interests and thoughts about things in life, if not started already. I actually personally regret not starting one earlier. Blogging not only helps you purge the undesired Facebook search results closer to the bottom of the page, but also allows you to expand your networks globally. This can be accelerated by promoting your blog on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Brazen. Writing blogs help intellectual development by reflecting on comments from other bloggers on shared thoughts. With that many benefits, it is a no -brainer to start doing so whenever works time-wise. For example, during a summer when you fail to secure any internship positions.

• Start working on projects that you're passionate about during your spare time. Due to the lack of preparation of college education for handling the real world, there is a need for participating and initiating personal projects during spare time. Furthermore, projects that attempt to mimic the real world often do so poorly, due to many imposed assumptions that must be made to solve problems. The time pressure involved with those course projects often lead to a sloppy, or overly simplistic product. The personal projects often show your genuine interests, as well as your capabilities when not under intense time pressure. They also allow you to show the creativity side, which is extremely important when adapting to rapid changes.

• Read (other than textbooks). If you are talented enough to be admitted into college, then you should be able to read (unless the college you're attending does not teach using your native language, although you should at least be fluent in your native language). Only reading textbooks limit your scope in life. I would like to suggest to read a combination of the following, just like you have done in high school (you do read in high school, or do you?):

• comics: helps you build and retain your sense of humor
• sports magazines: if you're interested in following it, reading it to keep informed about the latest trends often bring interesting topics of conversation amongst your peers and when meeting new people
• news: as a global citizen, you should be informed at least in the high level of what's going on around the world
• novels: decent intellectual reading and discovering writing styles, as well as just stimulating yourself with a good story
• blogs(!): reading other famous bloggers' work may bring you ideas on certain entries you may want to write; here are some blogs that are relevant for personal development and lifestyle that I would recommend:
  • Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist
  • Rebecca Thorman's Modite
  • James Moreau's Not-so-literal
  • Roxy Allen's Young Professional Partners
  • Employee Revolution

  In addition, there are technical blogs that may be helpful for those enrolled in engineering and computer science related programs:

  • Joel Spolsky
  • Jeff Atwood
  • Curious Cat
  • Crappy Engineering
  • Metaphoric Labs
  • Useability Webblog
  • CR4

• Stay physically fit and take advantage of fitness training facilities on campus. Again, I regret not starting this lifestyle earlier in my college career. Staying fit is not only crucial for your physical and emotional health, it also helps you think more effectively and efficiently b/c of improved blood flow to the brain. Physical training at the fitness centre facilities at your college are usually heavily subsidized, as you've likely paid student fees for them already on top of existing fees. To finalize, it is a GREAT method to network with other fitness lovers. You never know how these relationships end up in the future in terms of business and companion opportunities.

• Avoid extending your degree for official co-op education programs unless you see the value in it helping you advance your career. Co-operative education programs usually sell you the illusion about discovering what you love to do related to your formal education, as well as building experience for gaining an edge in competing with other college graduates when it comes time for graduation. While it allowed me to discover what I like or dislike in terms of work, delaying my projected graduation date from previously predicted was too costly when reflected in hindsight. This cost is amplified when I did not manage to improve my employability/job prospects after graduation through the work terms (in fact, I'm in a situation where it's equivalent to starting from zero all over again even after all the work terms). What I'm suggesting is there are much less time costly ways to acquire the same or even better experience to gain employability leverage. Unless you are confident about your chances of landing internship/work terms at reputable companies where they only hire co-op students, I am suggesting to look elsewhere as it is usually too costly in terms of opportunity costs.

Let me know what you think.