Month: November 2021

Pre-Graduation Quarter Syndrome occurs in students either entering or in the last quarter of their degree program.

As the students last quarter nears it’s end, the student may develop a general sense of apathy towards certain assignments. As the excitement of joining the industry looms on the horizon, the student may feel a waning of the urgency surrounding their grades and assignments that irrelevant to their future. This sudden decline may feel foreign and jarring, as grades and the job search have enveloped the students life for the duration of the degree program. The student must now learn to assimilate back into their life before their degree program, in which they had such things as hobbies to dedicate their free time to.

As my job search has been wrapping up, I’ve been getting more and more free time. It’s been a while since my first undergraduate degree, so I forgot what it’s like to be a full-time student with no other obligations. Since I’m taking three computer science courses, it seems like I have so many assignments to do, but I feel have quite a bit of free time on my hands. The days seem to pass by without much productivity on my end because I just can’t bring myself to do what I know needs to be done. I think this partially happens because there’s only so much computer science that one can learn in a week. It would be different if I were taking two CS courses and one humanities course. At least I would get a change of pace when I went to study up on the humanities course. As of this quarter, my brain has just been on technical mode, where there’s not much rounding out of the topics I dedicate my time to. I guess what I’m trying to say is this degree program has made my really appreciate the general education that my first degree program made me go through. Even if I didn’t see the point at the time.

I’m sure when I look back, I’ll miss school and miss having the drive to better myself day in and day out. As of now, I’m pretty burnt out. It’s been a long year and a half of dedicating my weekends and after-hours to learning. I’m pretty ready for a break, and a substantial one at that. Writing this post has made me bit nostalgic though. Looking back, I’ve had some good times, some rough assignments, but mostly good times learning more about computer science and growing as a developer. I honestly almost don’t recognize the developer that I’ve become and the situation I now find myself in. If I had to go back a year and a half, I would probably do it all over again. I’m glad to be where I am now. I’ve had some gripes with the way that some courses were taught at Oregon State, but I can’t deny that this degree program propelled me towards my current situation.

I just checked how many assignments I have left until I’m free from school for a year. As of today, November 11th, I have 20 computer science assignments left. 20 more assignments to push through until I get my second piece of paper that says “You did it.” It almost doesn’t feel real.

Funny, I was pretty unmotivated going into this post, but I guess the nostalgia of recollecting on my progress has put me in a new headspace. I think it’s time to decrease the assignment count to 19.

Pre-Graduation Quarter Syndrome occurs in students either entering or in the last quarter of their degree program.

With the hustle and bustle of school, job applications, and graduate school applications, the student can easily become overwhelmed. As their calendar fills up and their general motivation trends downwards, the student may begin to forget to complete some of their obligations. This overloading of tasks can lead to symptoms such as forgetting deadlines.

I just had an awesome weekend in San Francisco at Outside Lands. For those who are unaware, Outside Lands is a three day music festival hosted in Golden Gate park. Musicians and artists from across the globe (including an indie artist from Norway–looking at you Boy Pablo) and food vendors native to the Bay are gathered to celebrate. The great thing about this festival is that the music spans the whole spectrum, from rap to folk. The festival starts at noon and ends at 10PM. Given travel times to and from the crowded event, the festival can easily consume 72 hours of your life.

For someone who is taking three computer science courses and applying to jobs and graduate school, that’s a lot of time to take off. Not to mention that my girlfriend and I drove up to the Bay from southern California. Set the time consumption count to 96 hour would ya?

Over the weekend I forgot to respond to my team’s standup discussion and actually I had to make my video for discussing my project contributes pretty last minute as well. I’d been in the middle of catching up on my operating systems coursework (thanks to smallsh), when I realized that I had an hour and a half to record, post, and upload my contributes to my group project thus far. To be even more frank, this blog post is due in about 50 minutes here.

I love getting to celebrate and enjoy weekends, especially right after the excitement of getting a fantastic job offer, but this festival couldn’t have fallen on a worse weekend in the quarter. This week I have and had six online assessments to complete for job applications on top of what is considered to be the most difficult programming assignment in the whole OSU online degree program. Talk about a doozy of a week.

You might be wondering why I am completing six online assessments for jobs if I have a fantastic offer in hand. Well, the company that I have an offer for told me last week that they make data driven offers for their compensation packages. Fantastic! Except that apparently, their data has found that Caucasian males and Asian males tend to ask for further compensation. I, fortunately enough, happen to fall under both of those demographics. Meaning that, the company is expecting me to ask for more compensation and has thus altered their offer in anticipation. When I tried to push back with the recruiter for standard compensation levels that I found online, it seemed that the company would be unwilling to negotiate with a competing offer. Thus, six online assessments. I’m hoping to land one of the six to bring the offer up at the company who gave me the original offer.

Speaking of deadlines, it seems like one of those assessments will be expiring soon. I’m off to the races again!