Starting this out, what I intend to touch on may seem rather basic, but I feel that I run into many people that don’t fully grasp the seriousness of something like being persistent and open to growth—continuously learning alongside your degree.
When I first began, I felt I could just rely on my courses to tell me what I need to know on my path to post-grad. And while it gives you a great deal of knowledge and resources, it leaves you unfortunately unprepared. I would even claim that most modern degrees are incomplete. Intentionally.
You are given the tools and the baseline knowledge you can then apply yourself after.
Time and time again, especially in the CS space, whenever I go to conventions, conferences, etc., I run into people who aren’t learning, aren’t building, and so on. The industry is ever-changing and always something that keeps you on your toes. Being someone who, for a good amount of time, thought the same way—my first internship really changed my perspective on this.
Things that seemed rather simple and I couldn’t even discuss the cloud, didn’t understand things like sprints, couldn’t use git well, and so on. It made me feel like a fish out of water.