Advice for My "Freshman Self"

If I were to go back in time to talk to my freshman self I would first tell him to relax. There were a number of new things that made me nervous upon starting at a college, but none of them truly worth worrying too much about. I would also tell him to maintain his organizational standards and to keep using the journal method. Every semester I keep a calendar/organizational journal to keep track of assignments and test dates. While I could use an application to keep track of these things, I found that handwriting them down simply felt better and more reliable in the long-term.

I would also be sure to tell them to practice programming over summer breaks. During my last summer break I took the opportunity to practice programming with an experienced Applied Computing graduate in preparation for joining Professor Feng Wang's research team. I learned a lot in the span of just a month and found myself regretting not practicing my programming skills over previous summer breaks.