A freshman in college asked me what are the most useful and valuable classes that he can take that he will actually use. I told him its more about building a useful skill set. What skills have you acquired over the years that you deem most useful?
The single most important skill I have ever learned is how to take care of myself.<p>When you feel like shit, you won't want to do anything.<p>When you lose your health, you won't be able to do anything.<p>(I've been a professional programmer out of college for over 30 years and I feel like I'm still 25, doing my best work ever.)<p>I remember the exact moment in college I was made aware of the critical need to do this. I was eating a PB&J on white bread in our kitchen when one of my fraternity brothers (a jock and a health nut) saw me and yelled, "Save your life! Save your life!"<p>"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked him.<p>"Don't eat white bread. Read 'The Save Your Life Diet'"<p>So I read the book and have never looked back. I have read many other health related books since then, but it's not their contents that made the difference, it's the mindset I developed that has.<p>College is the time when this appears to make <i>the least sense</i>. You can eat or drink almost anything, go without exercise, and develop bad habits and still feel fine. But it really is the best time to lay the framework for a lifetime of good health. It's the time when you'll be able to experiment and learn the most about yourself and what works and what doesn't. And make no mistake about it: this is stuff you must learn and practice; it <i>does not</i> come naturally.<p>I have and I'm so glad that I did. I have watched so many of my contemporaries gain hundreds of pounds and accept a lifetime of ailments as inevitable, while gradually retiring to the sofa. It doesn't have to be this way! Learn how to take care of yourself now or all the "skills" in the world won't matter when you most need them in the future.<p>Specifically:<p><pre><code> - Learn how to eat.
- Establish your best lifetime exercise habits.
- Learn what to avoid (or accept in small doses).
- Adopt a healthy mindset.
- Learn to embrace fresh air & water & good sleep
- Most of all, do all of the above no matter what anyone else says or does.
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I'm so glad I ate that PB&J on white bread at that moment in that place. Who knows what sofa I'd be sitting on with my TV & junk food & prescription meds instead of doing great work and hanging out with you guys here.
I have found over the years that one of the most valuable skills you can cultivate is being able to read people to figure out what they really want. Through your whole career, and especially earlier in your career, people are going to ask things of you. Senior people are going to give you tasks and assignments, clients and customers are going to give you problems to solve, etc. It is a tremendously valuable skill to be able to talk to people and figure out what is really being asked of you and what the other person really wants and needs. When you can get in the other person's head and figure out what they need, you will: 1) make fewer mistakes; 2) waste less time on tangets; 3) be able to anticipate problems; 4) inspire confidence by asking the right questions; and 5) deliver exactly what is needed, no more and no less.<p>I'm not really sure if you can take a class that will teach you this skill. Socializing at parties is actually a great way to work on this skill--try to meet new people and see how quickly you can figure out where they're coming from. Working on group projects is also a great way to build this skill. As a freshman or sophomore you'll usually be the one getting assignments and as a junior or senior you'll be handing them out, and when you see both sides of the coin in a similar setting you can really develop an appreciation for what good communication looks like.
There are two major types of career skills:<p>1. The ability to spot trends ahead of time, understand people's problems, and come up with solutions. In other words, the ability to figure out which types of skills will be valuable.<p>2. Deep knowledge in one or more areas, such as programming, Math, etc.<p>For example, due to (1) I was able to figure out that Machine Learning was a valuable and growing area, pick up a book, and get into the field. Today Data Science is still a great field, but the bar to break in is higher than it was 3 years ago.<p>My areas of deep knowledge are Math and Psychology. My deep knowledge in Math made it very easy to pick up Machine Learning/Statistics when the time was right. There were other related trends I could have followed (e.g. learning Hadoop, learning NLP) but those would have been harder since I didn't have the right background.<p>In college, your friend should focus on building up the type of deep knowledge that will help him easily acquire related skills later on. Generally speaking, it's helpful to take high-level, general courses as opposed to courses that focus on the tool of the day. For example, a course on Algorithms is more useful than a course on Python.<p>As he advances, he should start paying more attention to industry trends. Eventually he'll get to the point where he can realistically understand the major problems in the industry, and quickly pick up the skills that let him solve those problems.
Estimation. If you get into the habit of doing a back-of-the-envelope approximation any time someone mentions a figure, you can develop the fine ability to tell whether they have any idea of what they are talking about. Alternatively, you can get a clue about just how big/expensive/difficult a project is.<p>Basic statistics and probability. You hardly ever need to pull out a T-test or calculate the standard deviation, but knowing what they are and why you should expect runs of good luck and bad can help smooth out your life.<p>Sitting down and concentrating on a subject may not be a teachable skill, but it can be learned and practiced. Highly recommended. Similarly, general research skills are lifesavers. Most people think they have them. Most of those people are wrong. Again, there might not be formal classes (or there might be, if you have a Library Sciences department) but they can be learned.
Learning and practicing the full Common Lisp language. It's a big language for a reason: Greenspun's Tenth Rule is true. If you work on sufficiently large programs in other languages, you will reimplement features already present in Common Lisp. Common Lisp is the careful amalgamation of years of extrordinarily expensive research and learning by some of the brightest minds on how to solve some of the hardest problems in computing. Drink from their distilled wisdom.
Ther are different categories of skillsets that one aquires over the years and are important. For me, the most important one has been People's skills which include communication, negotiations and ability to influence. These might sound cliched but in my experience of almost a decade of professional work, these values are very imporatnt. Technical skills etc. are of course important but you <i>will</i> pick those up over the years once you have a few years of real world experience.
My most valuable classes were my electives.
Philosophy, Anthropology, & English Lit. especially.<p>My major was architecture, and the design classes gave me a sense of organization and elegant problem solving that are useful even as I build web apps for a living.<p>My drafting classes were useless - thank god I taught my self to use a pirated copy of AutoCAD at the time.<p>My classes in concrete and steel used large books of tables to look things up, which I am pretty sure can be easily handled by computers nowadays.<p>Data Structures and Algorithms would be the only thing from a traditional comp sci program I would have benefited from, I think, but I've done quite a bit of self directed learning in those areas, and am not worse off for it.<p>If I had it to do over again, I would've skipped school and tried to apprentice myself to people working on cool things instead. But I love to educate myself, and learn wherever I am. Some people are better off being guided, and those at upper-tier schools will benefit 90% from the connection they make, and 10% from the classes.
Simple answer? Programming and statistics. These are desperately needed in the sciences, and having them makes me very valuable.<p>I work as a bioinformatician in plant genomics. My background is in economics and political science, with a minor in statistics. Jumping into genomics without a background in biology seems impossible, but I learn fast, and programming and statistics are desperately needed. Biologists are typically terrible at statistics, and even worse at programming, so people with skills in these ares are desperately needed.<p>Approaching problems with a social science background is also useful. I was interested in quantitative comparative politics, where observational data is the only data, and one tackles it with advanced models that try to control for confounding variables. Modern-day biology is similar: there may be some randomized experimental design, but confounding is still everywhere. Surprisingly biologists, trained only in randomized designs, don't see it this way.
I dual-majored in CS and Business. I don't think any single class really stands out, but the combination of a broad sampling of classes lets you make connections between various topics. A few classes that have had a lasting impact:<p><pre><code> * computer architecture -- for understanding what's going on at a low level
* digital circuits -- for understanding the next level down
* physics -- yet another level down...
* all the various math -- shouldn't this be obvious?
* statistics -- take the course from the Math Department if possible; the courses offered to Liberal Arts & Business majors were watered down
* organizational behavior -- for understanding how humans interact in groups
* a foreign language or two (and don't just learn the language, learn about the culture) -- for an appreciation of how things work elsewhere
* a course in something you know nothing about that requires a lot of writing (I found this to be better than the actual "writing course") -- to learn how to research, organize your thoughts, and present information
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Also, learn how to get along with people, and keep in touch with the people you meet along the way.<p>Looking back nearly 15 years later, the courses I wish I had taken:<p><pre><code> * more EE
* forestry & ecology (I own some land with a woodlot now...)
* compilers (it wasn't offered every year, and I had a scheduling conflict the last time it was available) -- though this isn't that hard to self-instruct as long as you have a solid footing in the basics</code></pre>
I would tell him he is asking the wrong question. In my experience the vast majority of college classes will never have any significant value in the workplace. Instead, I would tell him to branch out, take courses he might never think of trying, and follow a line of courses that he finds most intellectually interesting. People that are passionate and engaged tend to excel at whatever they are doing. There is plenty of free time to learn practical skills.
I'd rather answer the freshman's original question: accounting.<p>I took an accounting class as an adult, and I wish I had taken it when I was younger. I don't look at my checkbook the same way, and while I haven't really done much with my businesses (record label, music publishing), I know how to keep my books.<p>I worked at a startup in 2011, and my boss was very forthcoming about the financial health of the company. At one meeting, he showed the staff a lot of positive numbers about income and growth year-over-year. I was the person to ask about debt because I learned that assets equals liabilities plus equity. (He didn't skirt the question, which is why I still admire him today.)<p>Even if this freshman ends up working for an international conglomerate, he or she will be able to look at the yearly business report and get a sense of what's going on.
I'm a mathematician and an engineer. I have used mathematics to predict weather for the US Navy, to work on nuclear reactors, to win more than 1 million dollars gambling, to do research for a hedge fund, to develop guidance and control systems, to synchronize atomic clocks, and to do machine learning/pattern recognition. Physics and chemistry were also quite useful, but not as useful as the math.<p>If you are into math, here are the 100 most useful ideas and theorems in math according to me --<p><a href="http://artent.net/blog/2012/11/27/100-most-useful-theorems-and-ideas-in-mathematics/" rel="nofollow">http://artent.net/blog/2012/11/27/100-most-useful-theorems-a...</a>
Not a skill per se, but more of a habit: Googling everything first before asking anyone else.<p>For example, I am considering adopting a kitten. Most people's impulse would be to call up one of their friends who have cats and ask them what it is like to own one. What I did instead when the thought occurred to me was going on Google and typing in "should I adopt a kitten?" Within an hour, I had all the necessary information to make an informed decision.<p>Same thing with troubleshooting pretty much any kind of issue, whether or not it is related to computers. My iPhone has an issue where it turns itself back on when I turn it off. Instead of taking it to an Apple store like most people, I Google'd it and within 5 minutes found out that it's caused by a hardware defect. Then I made a decision that I can live with it and don't want to go through the hassle of getting it replaced.<p>Some issues are harder to handle this way. For example, I slept for 12 hours straight once, and woke up with a bad headache. So I google'd "too much sleep headache" and found out that it might be caused by multiple reasons, from hormonal imbalances to dehydration. Next time I want to sleep for that long, I'll see if hydrating myself periodically will prevent the headache. There wasn't one definite answer, but I still learned something.
I'm 20 now, I dropped out of the university a year ago and I never regretted it.<p>I started programming at the age of twelve. Here's what I think was most important:<p>- learning to search the web crazy efficiently<p>- reading classic blogs like Joel on Software<p>- reading classic books, such as Code Complete, Refactoring, Design Patterns<p>- learning to use functional programming primitives (map/reduce/fold);<p>- breaking the habit of abandoning small projects and finally shipping something, and maintaining it for some time;<p>- maintaining a horribly-written application so I will never repeat that guy's mistakes<p>- making all sorts of mistakes (permature optimization, premature generalization) so they would come and bite me later, making me more experienced<p>- having a lot of free time to <i>play</i> with programming: glad I started while still in school<p>But I realized the most important one was to <i>find a community</i>. If not for internet forums, I would never have learned programming. I started by reading a book about Visual Basic, heading to a local forum and trying to help newbies, while still being newbie myself. That's how I learned. I would absorb the forum culture, discover different tools and languages by participating in flame wars, and later explore them and write articles to help other people. I'd translate articles from English into my native language, learning new concepts along the way.<p>StackOverflow disrupted this forum culture and I kind of miss it, although I know it was never efficient.
My favorite way to determine whether my skills are up to date (and what to add in the coming year) is to look at the "Who's Hiring" and "Seeking Freelancer" threads, and tally up what people are asking for.<p>It <i>is</i> a diverse field, though, so you have to filter it by what you're interested in or good at.
Let's see... Algorithms and Data Structures classes were probably the most useful for computer science.<p>The Software Engineering class was a great way to learn what happens when you have bad/no management.<p>Technical Writing and the "Job Application and Interviewing" classes might have been the most useful long-term, though.
I was told by a very resourceful man that undergrad is about learning to read, and he hit it. Your student can do that by taking a class in a subject that's pretty unfamiliar and getting an A. It requires reading and finding answers.<p>It's amazing how many problems can be solved by RTFM.
I just wanted to add a plug for a good physics class. A solid grounding in physics will help you think about any phenomena you encounter throughout your life.<p>I have been teaching middle school and high school math and science for 15 years. I have been asked all kinds of questions, high-level and low-level questions. I have been asked many questions that I could not answer; but I have been able to give every student a good idea how to start thinking about their question in a way that would lead them to a fundamentally correct answer.<p>Disclaimer: I was a physics major in college.
If you want a specific class, I would say creative writing.<p>If you're looking for skills in life, mine is being able to let go. Especially at work.<p>If you work for someone else, you HAVE to remember that your work needs to satisfy someone else. So throw away your ego, and listen (and pay attention) to criticism. You should never be afraid to speak your mind and take a stance but at the end of the day, you need to be a team player.
Of the skills I learned in college, the most useful have been 1) spoken Mandarin and written Chinese; 2) data structures and algorithms (as many have noted); 3) reading electronic schematics and digital timing diagrams; 4) proficiency in vi and emacs; 5) Unix utilities and shell scripting (if you'd told me in 1985 I'd still be using this 27 years later I would have been surprised).
1. Managing my health. Includes eating healthy. Refer to the post by edw519 in this same thread.<p>2. I know how to sell. How to really do it under pressure.<p>3. I know when to stop and smell the flowers.<p>4. I can take apart/fix anything and put it back / fix it with no issues. From deep fryers to washing machines and back to motherboards. I can fix it.
Meta cognition... Thinking about how I'm thinking, how I'm programming etc.<p>The ability to take a step back and say to oneself, "why am I thinking this way? Is there a more fruitful approach?"<p>On a related note, preparing for screw ups. Learning to make mistakes, and to assume mistakes will happen.
The most valuable skill I have is literacy. If I didn't have that I wouldn't even be able to know what your question was in the first place. I also couldn't do anything I didn't actually see or haven't been directly written into my genes.
1. The ability to research a topic to any depth. My high school was specially good at teaching this skill<p>2. As someone living in a developing country, learning to speak English opened the most doors
In any group project setting in college, take the lead because more often than not, no one else will due to apathy. Learn what it takes to get shit done for scenarios on the crap end of the spectrum. Break up the work for everyone and dictate precisely what you need and what you expect of them. Give no leniency. <i>Hopefully</i> with time, kids will begin to respond to demands and begin to participate more in the group if they haven't already. Discussions won't be so one-sided. The more people talk, the more you should (as the team leader) make yourself transparent and open to feedback/changes in direction. Yeah, it will suck, your whole professional career will be working with difficult people. Get the skills you need now in an environment that's not going to tarnish your professional reputation.<p>Also, if all goes well, it gives you good ammo to tell in job interviews.