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Coming into Speed School as a freshman was a bit daunting. The sales pitch was: instead of having any summer breaks, you would work full time as a co-op after back-to-back semesters. This wasn't very convincing for high school me. Still, Computer Science seemed exciting, and the careers were plentiful, so I was willing to give it a chance. As expected, the first two semesters were challenging, and after, Speed rewards you with a week of recovery and two more back-to-back semesters. The semesters wore on, and more and more people I knew were dropping out of Engineering/CS to pursue degrees in other fields. No one said Engineering school would be easy, but this started to sow some doubts in me.
As classes grew increasingly technical, so did the frustration around questions like "why do we need this?" I found myself and my remaining peers having difficulty mapping what we were learning in the classroom to what we thought we would eventually do out in the field. This part should have been evident because, well, none of us had worked in CS. None of us knew what the field would even be like. All we knew was that we would not want to spend the rest of our lives inverting binary trees and writing 3-D tic tac toe applications. So, the question that every college student asks themselves came up: What if I don't want to do this for the rest of my life? Well, I'd have to graduate late, and what would the cost of that be? What else would I do? What would I do as a career? These were just some of the things floating around my head as I went in for my first day of co-op.
When I joined my team, the learning curve was overwhelming. I knew going in I didn't know much, but I was surprised by how little I actually knew. The problems that I was given to work on were not assignments in a class with a set solution but real business problems. I found learning in this new environment compelling since the things that I learned could be directly applied to a product that impacted the "real world." The people I worked with were passionate and willing to help me if I was stuck. Ultimately, the goal wasn't to just survive another semester but to actually do a decent job along the way.
Reflecting on my first co-op in the semesters following, I noticed a few things. Firstly, my classes made much more sense. While they were highly technical, the "why do we need this" was contextualized. Doing a deep dive into something specific became much more welcome because I could see how it fits into the world outside of class. Secondly, I learned more in that one semester than I did in my first four semesters of courses combined, and that's okay. After finishing my junior year and approaching my last two semesters of class, I can say that college hasn't been about learning content. Instead, it's been about learning how to learn what you need to know and developing the persistence to pursue a solution. College hasn't been about building a house of knowledge, but rather a foundation that one can build upon throughout one's career.
Finally, I realized that I was really thankful for having my questions and doubts answered after four semesters, rather than after eight semesters and an entire degree. I was lucky that I enjoyed the company I was at and the field I was in. I had friends who found out the opposite. For some, the company didn't fit; for others, the field just wasn't for them. Despite the frustration, I'm confident they were glad to find out sooner rather than later.
That sales pitch that had freshman me skeptical included a bit more than just getting rid of summer breaks. It included career counseling, resume workshops, mock interviews, and a career fair. Speed School would send resumes to businesses on your behalf and even set up a time and location for you to interview on campus. Speed School understood the value that an internship or co-op can add to a college experience. I feel every college student should be encouraged to do an internship during their degree. At its worst, an internship can show you that a field isn't right for you, but at its best, it can point you towards your passion.
Kieran Waigel is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2022. He is studying computer science, computer engineering, and political science at the University of Louisville.