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My first weeks at university were also overwhelming. I simply could not follow courses, in part because I had no good study habits. I even failed my first exam.
This did not stopped me from finishing the 5 year course on time, with fairly decent grades.
It is normal that you feel "dumb", although I doubt that you are. Double down on the effort, pick up good study efforts and evaluate again in a few months. If you come to the conclusion that it is not for you, change. There is no shame in it.
The student loan can be daunting, but again relax. Nobody is going to cut-off your head or put you in prison for failing to pay it. Yes, it is a big deal, but not a life and death kind of thing.
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Thanks for reply, sorry I'm late with it 
modified 3-Jun-21 21:01pm.
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Its called studying a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering Math/medicine) aligned subject.
You are meant to read around the subjects, its not like being at school.
Being at University/College is not meant to be easy (or least for STEM subjects) - its meant to stretch you to your limits (and beyond)!
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i think that something is wrong with your country's educational system or maybe with that particular school you're in, if it's a private university.
they are jumping into many technologies at once and too little programming i guess.
technologies will change, but the way of thinking about solving problems doesn't change so fast.
this: Swing, JavaFX, UML... seems to me like chaos.
i believe that learning should be like an exponential curve. at first it's hard to grasp the basics but you need a very strong foundation. when you take the right path then you excel, letter.
for a person that has infinite amount of memory and brain power maybe their approach is good, throwing at you dozen of technologies at a time, but that way of learning has only linear progression. as i said if you have infinite memory...
i don't want to discourage you but i think you should look out for the option to switch the university.
i'm not saying to drop CS, but tho consider a different uni that has at least 30+ years of CS educational experience.
i don't know what you should do about your college money loan/supply. that's another and very upsetting story and maybe your entire generation is in the same shoes as you. maybe everybody is as confused as you with that (i believe) experimental educational system.
apart from mathematics, natural science, hardware and other stuff that you should learn at a CS university, the CS path should be (IMHO): algorithms, imperative language A, data structures, declarative language B, OO language C, functional language D... then go back to data structures in a language E that can do as much of A, B, C and D as possible.
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First, it is no big deal if you take an incomplete in the course, and continue again a second time.
I would still try to stay in the course, doing the work, etc. [After taking the incomplete]
As you said, you might be more kinesthetic and less visual as a learner (Meaning you learn through doing more than imagining/visualizing). It's not good or bad, per se.
A lecture does NOT TEACH a subject, it FRAMES a subject!
A good lecture on Algorithms + Data Structures doesn't teach you ALL of those things. It FRAMES why they are important. That you match the two of them based on your memory, performance and data sizing requirements. If you have 10 Terabytes of information to search through. I would guess an in-memory array that you bubble sort is out of the question!
My recommendation is (and always will be).
1) Read the material BEFORE the lecture. On a blank page, write down EVERY NEW Word/concept (do not look it up, just acknowledge this is new to you)
2) Do any EXAMPLE Problems in the text. Actually do them. Or at the least, rewrite them in their entirety (This familiarizes you to the patterns, and the language/terminoloty)
3) Set it aside for a bit... (Do this the night before the lecture)
4) Watch/Attend the lecture. [But read your list of new Terms Before you do, your brain will fill them in as you watch]
5) After watching the lecture, re-work by yourself ANY examples the lecturer used. Then redo the examples from the book. Review the terms, start checking off the ones you feel comfortable with.
6) Re-Read the book for this lecture.
7) Do the homework. Compare it to the examples. Review the terms, again...
Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
Do this for Math/Science classes. I've seen kids go from literally failing course, who went back to the beginning of the course, and APPLIED this approach end up getting STEM degrees or literally crushing the classes.
You need DECOMPRESSION time, and extra review time. I will guess that your confidence is getting crushed. Then you are flailing on the tests, never quite certain what they are driving at.
For most people, confidence is EITHER going to come from repetition or memory (Just knowing the answer is right). Your #1 job on your test is to manage your confidence.
Before your test, review ALL of those sheets with the terms on them. And this will help. You will instantly realize how far you have come. And at the same time, you will know what you know and know what you don't know. (I tend to calculate risks of TRYING to learn stuff I missed before an exam. I am willing to give up 3-5% of an exam in order to not feel like I was cramming, and risk a 10% failure induced by cramming and the damage to my confidence).
Finally, again, there is NOTHING wrong with having to re-take a class, especially if you are TRULY LEARNING the BASICS and learning them well. As a potential Employer for someone like you, I would LOVE to hear how you struggled, changed your approach, took the class a second time, since you realized how important it was, and then built from there. [To me, that makes you someone willing to question a design, throw away the WRONG design, and work hard to DELIVER the RIGHT design. A VERY Valuable Experience/Skill]
HTH
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Windows 10 does have some built in screen recording capability, and it's probably already installed... Type XBox into search and it should bring up the "XBox Game Bar".
It should allow you to record your lectures, and stop and resume them at your leisure. If that helps any.
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Well if your university is anything like mine was (which was notorious for being the most encyclopedic in the region), then what you're experiencing is normal.
The first 4 semesters are supposed to give you an existential crisis. They are supposed to make you feel small in a larger world. Unlike high school, the university is meant to be a humiliating experience at first. Towards the end you crave knowledge and experience, not good grades. Passing grades give you a smile of victory, but high marks land you in the zone and you feel like Pele after winning the world cup.
To graduate from the university is to come into the world, again, alone, but with the knowledge you have resources you can wield to solve a problem.
I was trained to be a Computer Engineer so our scope may be slightly different (Yes electronics is second nature and the Riemann sphere still gets me dizzy). Just remember that this step is just the first of many endurance races, but the most formative.
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Yup. Welcome to college. It doesn't really get any easier. If you were used to coasting through high school, get over it.
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I would say that their teaching style does not work for you rather than CS is not for beginners.
Different people learn things in different ways. Some learn best by books, some learn best by lectures, others learn best by simply diving into the deep end and having a go. Find a learning style that works for you.
That said I would suspect that many people who do CS typically have years of technical experience behind them (from mucking around with computers after school, to being treated as the families IT support person), thus making CS more the piece of paper solidifying their knowledge than actual learning, but even if you don't have that technical background it really just comes down to approaching computing with the right mindset.
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My son is attempting to do a University course with a lot of CS subjects this year at Monash University. He is really struggling. He was a 94 ATAR student last year - at a good school and is pretty smart.
A lot of the observations he makes are similar to yours. My observation is that the online format does not translate well to University. At least the way Monash seems to be doing it. The large lecture theatre size classes do not lend themselves to deep questions, and the video sessions appear to be by themselves of low value. Along with that - lack of human contact is debilitating for some peoples motivation.
Everyone says that first year University is hard, because it's a mental shift from High School - but I think this year is particularly hard because of COVID and many organisations being caught with their pants down.
Fingers crossed, if you can stick it out - things will improve for next year.
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Sorry for late reply. I like the online format because I like to learn by myself, but what I think is hard is that everything is going to fast and definitly is not meant for a beginner. I feel like it's impossible to make a program in Java Swing or Java FX in object oriented manner after learning OOP one week ago... Well I'm lucky I learn what it is before I started my college courses. I feel sorry for total beginners though... It takes time to understand those concepts and it takes more time to practice them. Like where is time to practice, when I also have to study for exams in PHP and databases and propositional logic and make UML diagrams too... I don't even see my family anymore, because I have to keep up to the material and study seven days a week with some pauses to whine here on the forum  . I didn't even have time to give you all my replies.
modified 3-Jun-21 21:01pm.
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My background is in science, though I did sit an exam in Java (writing code with pen and paper) and I code a little bit as part of my work (Java, JS and some PHP mostly) so I can't speak about CS specifically and so what I write might or might not be relevant!
First of all: have you actually seen any past or mock exam questions? Maybe you are overthinking it, lecturers generally focus exams on a core number of themes as they don't expect students to know everything. Often the same recycled questions are dressed differently. Doing a degree is just the beginning, the real skill comes later when you put it into practice for a few years. Lecturers know this and usually throw a lot of stuff at you but test mainly the core plus their own pet favourite topics (of course they make it extra hard to earn a distinction though). They often also place emphasis during lectures on what they aim to examine. It pays to be 'in-tune' with the lecturers so attending all classes certainly helps. Exam Qs often look harder than they really are. That said, to get a high grade requires more than the minimum asked for. Try to understand what they are really looking for and focus your efforts accordingly.
Second point. When I was learning to code I dabbled with several different languages, which was confusing at the time but paid off later. I went from struggling with the material, to coding but getting frustrated with bugs and other issues, to simply enjoying coding as it became more effortless with practice. Something just clicked one day, but only after many days of frustrating work. 'Rome wasn't built in a day', as they say.
Third point. Once you learn one language thoroughly, others become 10 times easier. Perhaps rather than just learning a bit of each, focus on one you feel most comfortable with first then the others should become easier. You can't learn several until you have learned one. Reading books helps, but in the end writing code to solve your own problems is probably the best way to learn. Online hands-on coding tutorials can be very useful.
Finally, if it really seems too tough then remember you can get a coding job without a CS degree, you just need to be confident with the required skills and tools (and highly skilled in interview techniques).
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Thank you for your reply. As I already told, I took a week of and was programming so I couldn't read all the posts and answer too them.
I feel like I would like to only focus on learning java but I don't really have a choice and have to learn PHP too... and worst with data bases...  But I just ignore it for the moment, maybe I will be forced to retake the course later.
modified 3-Jun-21 21:01pm.
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Most thinks at the University level require a passion. Some people are naturally gifted. I was not one of them. In order to be "successful" in the university experience you kind of have to have the mindset of "what's in this for me"? What I am going to do with this and how can I apply it to achieve the goals the Lord Jesus has set for me. Sadly, I wondered though college without focusing on Christ but I did have goals. I started in Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering and had trouble. I did okay for a while but I could see how to apply the topics to anything useful in my life. I felt the Lord possibly drawing me to music and I tried that for a while but I was too lazy and didn't seek the Lord enough. I found music seemed just as hard as Electrical Engineering (take Aural Perception for Example and how fast those kiddos rattle out their major/minor and other scales), but that I wasn't ready to put in the work at that stage of my life. I eventually got my BS in Computer Science because it came easier for me than the other diciplines.
Why did CS come easier for me? Because I already liked Math and Music and I already had programming as a hobby. That was enough to get me through some of of the material with less effort. I wanted to create my own code and release it to the public. I had a "passion" for programming and it didn't conflict too much with what the professors were teaching. When you find your "passion" and the "why" the how will come. I haven't completed an Ironman yet, but if you have the time or money you might consider training for an ultra-endurance event some suffer. Take some challenge that seems impossible like an Ironman and go for it with some strong committed Christian friends that will hold you accountable. If I keep doing it and don't quit, you will be surprised at the barriers you overcome. As I said, I have yet to finish an Ironman, but I have overcome some hurdles that I thought very well might stop me in the beginning.
The point is, you have to find a passion. Maybe you want to code Video Games and put them on GitHub this Summer. You can get started with SVG, HTML and WebAudio:
SVG.js v3.0 | Other Elements
Personally, I don't like Java or PhP. I feel both languages have "issues" but they are probably good beginner languages since they don't have a lot of "arbitrary" barriers. My favorite language is Haskell but I/O is a royal pain in Haskell. If you're okay with Java. Maybe you sound augment your learning with C# and XNA over the summer. Maybe your professor will allow you to use C# (or a language of your choice) in some of the classes. Getting to pick your own language makes the CS classes much more fun.
A professor once told me that a numerical analysis class that we could use any language we wanted (that worked on our server) for our assignments. Then he said he didn't like LISP because he thought it was unintuitive. To be a smart aleck, I wrote one of my programs in LISP. I had a hard time with it but I didn't have to deal with floating point error and I had arbitrarily long rational numbers. I had a hard time getting that assignment to work but I got an A and most importantly it was FUN!!!
Find your passion!!! Try to find ways to make CS relevant to you and try to learn the virtue of commitment early in life while you are young. I certainly hope you are able to graduate in 4 years but I think it took me 8 years to graduate from college and 45 years or so to learn the art of commitment.
Pray every day for the Lord Jesus to give you guidance. I'm not saying you need to jump school and go be a minister, but you and honor the Lord Jesus as a programmer, but be humble and give *him* the glory.
I need to go. I have a day job...
Sorry if I rambled and didn't proofread.
May The Lord Bless You,
Shawn
EDIT: I don't care for JavaScript either but it's a decent way to get started with Video games if you combine it with SVG and WebAudio. I think the *best* way to write Video games "might" be C# with XNA or C# with Unity but I haven't personally tried it. Don't even go there with DirectX right now. DirectX is a pain... I would probably save DirectX for when you are highly comfortable with C++, multithreaded programming and GPUs. Sorry if there are errors. I really need to get to my day job. Would love to talk with you.
modified 10-Nov-20 9:17am.
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Hi! Thank you for your great reply. Sorry, that I reply today, but I took a week off just to program and read books on programming games. I didn't even watch my lectures. I started to program a simple strategy game in java on a console (so far). And it's funny because you gave me an advice to do something I'm passionate about, and I actually did and it helped a lot. I learned more than from lectures and from reading usual books so I'm happy and I feel so much better, even if I didn't send my school assignment on time, I gained some confidence.
I would like to thank you for your spiritual support too. I'm an athesit and a former christian, but I appreciate your prayers and kindness 
When it comes to programming languages I like java and object oriented principles, but what I don't like are books on java. I learned some basic syntax and concepts in c++ (I don't program in c++ though.) just to be able to understand the books on c++ because they are way better. There are more books on problem solving and game development written for c++ programmers than for java programmers. Java books tend to focus more on prewitten libraries and bank applications and that's not as fun as learning by making games. When it comes to PHP and SQL, well... I'm not that passionate about it right now, because I still learning java and I feel is too much for me at the moment.
Okay, so that was it Thanks again.
modified 3-Jun-21 21:01pm.
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I'm glad to hear you are doing better. Hopefully, you will be able to use your passion in a Special Problems or capstone class someday. The foundational knowledge you are learning now is important, but as you go higher up in your learning, you may find out that the ability to creatively apply your foundational skills is more important than merely being able to reiterate the material. I'm just a staff programmer, but I believe creativity and passion are the key components for successful graduate students and the future leaders in the IT industry.
I'm confident in your effort and pursuit.
Please remember to find ways to keep Computer Science study relevant to you. I understand CS can be unnecessarily theoretical at times but appropriate coordination with your advisor and professors should allow you to find a learning path that both meets university requirements and allows you to flourish.
modified 16-Nov-20 9:13am.
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Probably in these days, college CS programs assume you know how to use a computer and have some programming skills. In my days, it wasn’t the case. We started with basic and wrote for a command line interface. The command line was all they had then. Now, the classes may expect you to write for a windows type user interface and that will demotivate a beginner quickly. And, that’s wrong. Too much catch up.
My daughter faced the same when she had her first class in programming where the expectation is that the class would go immediately into programming for Mac and IOS operating systems (windowed experience) using swift. She and the rest of the students in the class were miserable. Now, she is taking a python class and they are teaching her to program to a command line window (the old-fashioned UI). It is much easier and not overwhelming.
For you, what ever class you are taking is wrong and the expectations are too high (assuming you are new to programming). Take a single language (basic, python, C) to learn the basics of programming. Then try another language. Then take some classes that focus on program/structural design. Get the basics under you. With a class on one language, it should build on itself. First, you discover the I/O functions so you can communicate with the program and see its behavior. Then you learn more concepts, variables, arrays, functions, other structures. After a couple of programming classes, you can take the class you’re taking now.
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Well I learned some basics in java before I started my studying CS but it helped me to survive but still isn't enough because everything is going so fast 
modified 3-Jun-21 21:01pm.
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I'm planing a small family gathering for the weekend in my house.Shh don't say anything about COVID. It appears that my Toastmaster has a wiring issues and need a replacemwnt. Is there anyone that recommends other brands?
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul Valery
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Maybe you can lend Griff's sous vide 
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I don't know about brands... but one advice... take a long one where both toasts are in serie not in parallel.
If you need to do only one toast and you have a double place (parallel) then one side of the toast will get half burned because it gets overheat from the other empty toast place. In the long toaster you put it in the middle and it is perfect.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I like my Dualit - it is made of real metal, held together with screws, and has a clockwork timer and a manual eject lever. So there is little to go wrong, and when it does you can buy all the spares on fleabay and fit them with just a screwdriver ...
They make one that does bagels, which would be nice. But mine just does bread*
* VB code comes out the bottom into a little metal tray for disposal.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: held together with screws
as opposed to the all too common "plastic rivet". Good for you. 
Metal anything is always nice.
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Did the catastrophic Shakespeare Convention suddenly go from bard to verse?
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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