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Five tips for surviving your first (and second) week of school

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Swoop High Five

I graduated high school with the assumption that college would be stricter and more difficult than anything I had ever faced. I brought along my backpack with all the books for the quarter, about twenty assorted pens and pencils, and enough paper to write a novel.

I used none of that my first day. Instead, we got a syllabus with some expectations for the quarter, maybe a little homework, and often times (especially in smaller classes) we introduced ourselves to the class.

I ended the first week feeling pretty confident in my ability to get through the class. Perhaps I was a little too confident.

By the time the second week starts up, the snooze button on my phone became a huge temptation. Classes were definitely fun but hey, so is sleep.

I end up going to class on time. Because I show up, I have info on the tests that might not be in the book, my homework turned in, and I’ve built rapport with the professor by contributing to class.

First Week

My humorous advice for the first day, especially for shy people? Write down a movie and a book you enjoyed and keep it on you. I can’t remember how many times I’ve forgotten what my favorite book is the first day of class. You don’t usually need to get your books on the first day as long as you can get them before your first assignment is due. If the bookstore is packed the first day, wake up a little early and stop by the next day when it opens.

The first week is usually a good time to explore. Are there any secrets around campus? What are the different places to get dinner? The first week might be a great time to visit EPIC for some outdoor adventures.

Got your homework done for the week? Great! College homework can be more challenging than high school work, but it’s usually a lot more fun too. I’m interested in writing and design, and I’ve done projects ranging from writing short stories to designing lightbulb packaging and booklets.

Second Week

Week two can catch people buy surprise if they aren’t prepared. One myth I hear from parents, high school teachers, and other freshmen is that classes aren’t “mandatory”. I had a CPLA class where we learned tricks in class I wouldn’t have realized otherwise. If I hadn’t shown up I wouldn’t have passed the tests and I would have to retake the class!

Now that you’ve done your homework and attended class, it’s a good idea to build rapport with your class and teachers. Many classes have required group work. It’s great to already have a few classmates you’re comfortable working with.

A brief note—while you might be tempted to work with close friends that already know, make sure you’re working with people you can be certain will help your group succeed as a team!

Showing your professor that you’re interested in learning will help in the long run. Professors are people too, and they want to know they’re doing a good job at generating interest. Once you get on good terms with your professor to start out, you’ll find it easier to communicate with them outside of class.

The first classes that were inside my major was initially a little scary. I ended up in a writing class with nobody I knew. I asked my teacher questions through email and asked a few questions in person. By the end of the quarter my teacher wasn’t just another professor, she was a friend and someone willing to work with me towards my goals.

Recap

1: Write down your favorite book, movie, and a hobby before your first day.

2: Explore campus a bit and see what you can find early on. You might be too busy to explore later!

3: Finish homework.

4: Show up to class.

5: Take part in class.

These tips might sound a little basic … because they are! Here’s a little secret:

A couple years ago I was working in an early design class with some absolutely amazing students, but somehow I had a higher grade. Their work looked professional, but I was still struggling to master Photoshop despite intense effort. I remember asking my professor, “Everyone else has fantastic designs, and I feel like I’m falling behind. How are my grades higher?” My professor smiled at me and said, “It’s because you’re the one doing the homework.”

That’s such a weird secret isn’t it? Doing the work is the difference between just going to college and being academically successful.

Brain (not) at Rest: Olin Anderson’s Circuitous Path to EWU Computer Science

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Ten years after starting college as a running start student, Olin Anderson, 28, is ready to graduate with his Masters in Computer Science. He recently took a break from his thesis to share his story, one filled with a passion for knowledge, for challenges, and picking up new skill sets.
Growing up in the wheat fields of Spangle, just 15 miles from EWU, led Anderson to enroll in running start classes at EWU his senior year of high school. He continued at EWU, earning a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry in 2011. He decided to take a year off from books and work full time on the family farm where he did a lot of maintenance, stuff like painting and construction. After a year of manual labor he found himself back at EWU, this time studying Pre-Med.

Anderson taking a break from his thesis on the EWU campus (Nick Thomas photo)
Anderson taking a break from his thesis on EWU Cheney campus (Nick Thomas photo)

Anderson wanted to mix in some other classes, “for fun,” he says, and to balance out the tedium of Biology classes, so he started taking a programming class on top of the Biology series. He had dabbled in computer programming since high school, and taught himself PicBasic Pro, the industry standard BASIC programming language to control microchips.
“I took a quarter of Python, then two quarters of Java.” The next fall he enrolled in an advanced programming class with Prof. Stu Steiner. “One day he asked me why I was majoring in Pre-Med if I was taking his programming courses. He suggested that I consider switching to a Masters in Computer Science.” So he thought about it, and then he decided to make the leap. But he didn’t abandon biology entirely; instead he has combined his fascination with brain science and computer science.
Anderson’s Masters thesis project uses off-the-shelf EEG headset to determine relaxed brain state. “Determining relaxed brain activity is usually done through analyzing recorded data,” he says. “But the advantage of this headset is that we are getting real-time data with the Emotiv Epoc, a $400 dollar off-the-shelf EEG headset.”

If Anderson put on the EEG Headset it would surely detect a brain never at rest, always on the lookout for the next challenge.
“This was new to me,” he says, referring to EEG signal processing. His thesis challenged him to learn yet more skill sets. But Anderson is not complaining. “My EWU professors are very approachable,” he says. “I never had to feel bad about asking questions. They would stay and explain concepts to me until I really understood them.”
Friendly, knowledgeable professors, and reliable student partners are essential to any student’s success, but ultimately, personal drive is most important. It is clear that challenges are what Anderson lives for. In fact, his first full-time programming job will have him stationed on projects all over the world. He landed the position after applying for it at the Spokane regional Computer and Engineering job fair.
“The Computer Science department is really good about encouraging us to go to job fairs,” he says. “At the first one I was just checking it out. But at the next fair I handed out resumes,” he says, “and I got a call back.”
He will be working as a database programmer for Fast Enterprises, will potentially take him all over the world. “One of the job requirements was that you have to be able to periodically relocate.” In fact, Anderson says, “They won’t even tell me where I’m going until June.”
Most would scoff at such a job offer, but after staying close to home his whole life, after nearly a decade of hitting the books, and two science degrees from EWU, Anderson finds the lure of world travel impossible to resist.

Kolod Aljohani Finds Strength at EWU

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Kolod Aljohani is an International Student from Saudi Arabia. She and her husband Tariq Alrefai came to EWU three years ago after he researched midsized colleges with reputable engineering programs. He liked that EWU’s main campus was in a small town as this would keep distractions to a minimum during the week, but with Spokane close enough for weekend fun.

When her husband graduated with his Mechanical Engineering BS degree 7 months ago, he returned home to start his career, and Aljohani was forced to make a difficult choice: should she go home and finish her degree in Saudi, and perhaps never finish? Or should she stay on alone at EWU and keep her eyes on the prize?

She had invested too much in her US education to give up—two years of classes toward a Technical Communication major, plus a double minor in Visual Communication Design and German. She decided to stay.

Kolod chillin' on EWU's campus
Kolod Aljohani on EWU’s main campus (photo:Nick Thomas)

Her family, however, was nervous about her staying in the US, and some family members even tried to convince her it was wrong to stay. “Some Saudi’s have old-fashioned ideas about women,” she says, but there is also open-mindedness, she points out, “otherwise, they wouldn’t send us here.”

To make things even harder, new funding restrictions have created more hardships for Aljohani and others who are midway through their American degrees.  Under the new Saudi Minister of Education, and shrinking oil revenue, rules for scholarships for Saudi’s decade-old 6 billion dollar per year study abroad program have changed. “Many Saudi students had to return home,” she says. The new rules said she had to be 70% of the way towards her degree to qualify for a tuition scholarship, so she enrolled in 24 credits, almost double the normal full-time credit load, in addition to working part time.

“I needed to adapt to the situation,” she says, “not give up.” Aljohani is confident she made the right choice, though she emphasizes that a huge part of her strength comes from her parents, husband and siblings.

While her tuition is funded, living expenses are no longer be covered. She could have asked her family for assistance, but she wanted to prove that she could support herself. She has worked hard to establish a new sense of independence, something she says she never had back home. “While my family is not wealthy, I never had to work to support myself. Everything was provided for me. But here I pay for rent, and for food. I just paid a power bill for the first time!”

Being an International Student has given her a love of travel and languages. This summer will find her studying abroad in Germany. It will be her first time in Europe.

Since her second quarter at EWU, she has worked as a EWU Global Ambassador for the Office of Global Initiatives. She helps new International Students interpret, find their way around campus, and visit Spokane, as well as other cities like Portland and Seattle. Seattle is her favorite city; she’s visited about twenty times. She takes friends and students and they stay with an American host family in West Seattle. “I love Alki Beach, and Seattle has a lot of Middle Eastern restaurants.”

Aljohani has also become a real road warrior; besides Seattle, she’s driven to Los Angeles three times, and even cruised down to Las Vegas on a mad dash weekend trip. “I’m afraid of heights,” she explains. “I hate flying, but I love driving! It never gets old.”

Her fear of heights is yet another challenge she’s committed to conquering—three days a week you can find her climbing at the EWU EPIC Climbing Wall. “EWU made me believe I don’t have limits for my dreams,” she says. “I’m thankful that my husband made the right choice and brought me to this school. GO EAGLES!”

 

 

Pinball Hackers

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EWU Computer Science students hack vintage pinball machine, win bonus points.

Each Fall quarter, energetic Computer Science professor Paul Schimpf shares his love for old pinball games in a course entitled “Embedded Real-Time Control,” aka “Pinball Class.”

Using a colorful “early digital” pinball machine called Mata Hara ( from 1978!), STEM students learn the basics of programming software and build skills in hacking retro games, “real-time control,” skills they can extend to other projects and products.

Prof. Paul Schimpf reveals CPU of EWU retro pinball machine
Prof. Schimpf explains EWU students’ modified retro pinball machine (Nick Thomas photo)

Students plug in laptops to update the CPU with their custom code. When the ball rolls around, switches are thrown; they figure out how the machine works on their own. They use the coin and credit buttons to scroll the playfield lamps, then create digital maps of how the game responds.

“The ‘80’s pinball games actually present the biggest challenges,” he says. “They have limited capabilities. For instance, it puts out only 190 volts, which is only enough to light up one digit at a time. Students write code that makes the numbers light up so fast it tricks the eye into thinking its seeing a full display.”if you take a photo, you will only see one digit.”

They also control game logic like scoring and Bonus Points. They trigger updated sound and music via the SD card slot and ATTiny microcontroller. Schimpf also upgraded the CPU. “I took out the original CPU and put in an Arduino Mega 2560,” which he says is easier to modify.

Pinball Class presents challenges they aren’t used to with modern computer games. The many software tasks, from the solenoid-fired bumpers to controlling the lights, make Pinball Class a popular class at EWU Computer Science. Schimpf hopes to increase the number of machines they use.

The professor has a bigger idea he’s toying with: he hopes to collaborate with the VCD Students (Visual Communication Design) to create an EWU branded game. “EWU Football,” he says, his eyes growing wide with excitement. “We could have the red-turf field.” They could sell the game to alumni and fund more student-made games like the pinball machine.

Click here to explore STEM programs and careers.

 

Web Programmer by Day, Novelist by Night

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Burke Fitzpatrick on IT and Creativity

Burke Fitzpatrick has embraced the total dedication required to be a creative writer and work a full time day job as a web programmer. His nights are filled by furiously writing the next book in his series of “dark fantasy” novels called The Shedim Rebellion – building his world and the characters that inhabit it – and his weekends take up the business side of running Blade Books, the press he founded. He describes his books as a mix of “heroic fantasy and Dante’s Inferno.”

“It’s all creative,” says Fitzpatrick, “you are creating something out of nothing.”

Fantasy Author and EWU Programmer Burke Fitzpatrick
Fantasy Author and EWU Programmer Burke Fitzpatrick (photo Nick Thomas)

The trick to self-publishing is keeping the reader wanting more, and then actually delivering on that. Some writers are able to support themselves writing full time simply by churning out the content. “E-book publishing is mirroring the old pulp paperback business model,” he says. His fifth book in the series is in the works.

A lifelong reader, Fitzpatrick devours a wide range of subjects, from mythology to history. It helped that his mom was an English teacher and his dad an amateur historian. He grew up drawing and painting too, and earned his AA degree in graphic design in the mid 90s, surfing the wave of the dot com bubble.

Eventually he came to EWU and pursued a degree in Computer Science. He needed to be able to support his family, but desperately wanted to develop his creative writing, too. So he took as many literature courses as he could handle. Studying programming, calculus, along with ancient British Literature provided a stimulating, if challenging, counterpart to his STEM classes.

Throughout his undergrad experience he made the most of internship opportunities and work study at EWU, first as a graphic designer for Marketing and Communication, then as IT support, and then programming. Upon earning his degree, this experience led to a full time IT job at EWU, where he has been for 16 years.

Fitzpatrick loves learning, and that’s a good thing, with the tech industry changing rapidly with the move to the Cloud and mobile-based devices now making up half of all internet traffic. “In the IT world,” he says, “you are constantly learning new things.”

“A couple years ago I took JavaScript courses,” he says. He was impressed with the computer science department. “They are placing grads in good jobs right away.”

Wanting to further hone his literary chops, he then earned his Masters in Creative Writing over two and a half years of night classes at EWU’s highly regarded Creative Writing MFA Program.

When asked how coding and writing stories are related, he insists they are closely linked. “It’s all creative,” he says. “You are creating something out of nothing.”

 

 

3 Things All College Students Should Know

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We sat down with career expert Robbyn Hoffman to talk college, the real world, and choosing your first career. If you like what you read, you can schedule a meeting with Robbyn or other experts at EWU’s Career Services.

#1: Your major isn’t your career.

“There is still this kind of idea that your major equals your career for the rest of your life,” Robbyn says. Even in 2016 “Students often still think of their future employment as a linear track. This is just not true for many people.”

Degrees don’t always equal careers. You can have an English degree and work in insurance, a biology degree and work in marketing, or a history degree and work in city hall. EWU has a cool website where you can brainstorm alternative career options that are transferable from your major. It’s called  “What Can I Do With a Major In?”

“I ask them to think of their major not as what do you want for the rest of their life, but, rather, what do you want to do for your first career?” Looking at it that way tends to ease the stress, she says.

first career graphic

#2: Real experience matters just like classroom experience

“You have to get out of the classroom!” Robbyn urges. This means internships, volunteering, job shadowing.

You can find internships and jobs locally, regionally, or even with summer study abroad programs. “I’ve had students do internships as far away as Africa and Ireland. We even have students working at the state capital through the Washington Legislative Internship.”

#3: Build your resume while you work on your degree

Making a resume is often overwhelming, says Robbyn. Sometimes students say they are too busy with a full class schedule, plus working part time, but if you wait until graduation, you might end up with a rushed resume that doesn’t impress employers because it doesn’t look good or accurately say what you’ve accomplished and what you have to offer them.

Other times, students worry they don’t have anything to put on a resume. But as a student, you often have more experiences and skills than you realize. It’s all about how you frame it.

You’ll have to learn how to present your accomplishments. You’ll have to learn the standards and conventions. You’ll also have to learn time management: resume building and career networking takes a lot time. EWU’s Career Services can help you with all of this.

“It is not enough to just focus on finishing your degree. You have to have a plan in place for what comes next, for exactly what you will do when you graduate.”

Many websites help you network and can get your name and resume out there even before you graduate, and Career Services can help you identify which websites are most important for the career that matters to you.

The Takeaway

First and foremost: the EWU Career Services website is pretty awesome. You need to check it out, and you need to go back often. There is more valuable information than can be taken in in a single visit. Take the first step in landing an internship, making a resume, career networking, and making a post-graduation plan even if you are a Freshman.

EWU students unsure of your major or how to get your first internship should contact Robbyn Hoffman through Career Services.

Not an EWU student? Many of EWU’s online resources can be used by anyone, no matter where you go to school. And remember: EWU alumni have access to EWU Career Services resources for life. Once an Eagle, always an Eagle. Go Eags!