I was talking to a freshman from one of my elective course’s group projects. She was struggling with computer science courses and lacked confidence in any task that involved even minimal coding. I sympathized with her and heard echoes of my freshman year’s thoughts from her, so I decided to dive into something a little more personal and serious this time (compared to my last blog on cdrama recommendation).
Throughout my freshman year, I was a Computer Science major. First semester in, I was surrounded by peers who either took AP Computer Science in high school or coded in their free time as a hobby. I was okay with that since there were other people, like me, who had zero prior experience. Plus, apparently it was easier to learn Dr. Racket that way.
Second semester, one of my close friends completely dropped the major and switched to a Data Science combined major. However, it wasn’t long until that was reduced to a minor. This is common. We all hear how Fundies I and Fundies II were essentially–”filter” courses as people called them–removing those who were somehow deemed unfit for this major. If you couldn’t handle those two courses, you obviously couldn’t handle the rest.
I struggled. I was spending 20+ hours every week in Khoury office hours, doing peer programming with someone I usually viewed as “better” than me. Second semester of freshman year was probably the lowest my self esteem had ever dropped. I didn’t see myself as capable. Moreover, I doubt my grades were any better than that friend’s. It was my stubbornness that pulled me through. I still barely scraped by though.
Sometimes I think it’s kind of dramatic to self diagnose imposter syndrome. Nonetheless, whatever the feeling of self-doubt and internalized belief of incompetence is, it carried on to my co-op applications.
Just sharing this because I know other people could probably relate to the freshman from my group, my friend, and/or me.