5 regrets and 5 wins - reflecting back on attending university as a mature student.

University offers a lot of opportunities for social interactions - whether it's interest clubs, study groups, volunteering opportunities or just general social gatherings.

I've tried to participate in a handful of clubs, most memorably - the engineering society that helped me get the basics of Fusion 360. This really helped me with my 3D printing hobby over the years.

However as the semester went on, I tended to find more excuses not to go to weekly meetups, and preferred to just head home to rest or study.

Another, more casual social event - a pub quiz night, was a place where I met a good buddy of mine, who I still am in contact with. He, like me, was an older student, so we had a lot in common.

Building this habit also helps later as there are many community-ran meetups and user group. There are great opportunities to get new ideas, perspectives and meet new people.

Regret 2 - Nutrition and exercise

Most IT jobs are generally not very physical. As such, there are two paths you can go by - get fat or work hard to stay fit. Studying in IT was very much similar to that. During the 3 years of my degree, I managed to get a fair bit of weight, back and neck pain, as well as an unhealthy Monster Energy habit (coffee nowadays).

What would have I done differently if I were to go through it all again? Try to eat less food, drink a bit more water and less Monsters. Try move a bit more. If your campus has large grounds, go on a walk! Explore the buildings you usually don't go to. Most areas are publicly accessible and you never know what you will find!

Regret 3 - Tackling weak points

Among many topics in IT that I have little experience with, standout two, that to this day are my weakest areas - networks and database systems. These topics had a whole class dedicated to them. I struggled to get a pass at both, and reflecting back, I think I could have done better. There were many great resources available at the time like Cisco's Packet Tracer (incredible networking simulator and while it is vendor locked, still is an incredible teaching tool) and Manga Guide to Databases, I just failed to grasp the topics as well as I should have.

Today, I am playing catch up and continuously study on these topics as well as many others.

Regret 4 - Get more feedback and ask more questions

You will encounter this situation a lot, a lecturer asks if there are any questions - a call left unanswered. Most of the time student's don't want to appear stupid by asking a question and it's fine to feel that way. If you are too shy to ask the lecturer during class, ask them after the lecture (if they have time) or book a meeting during their office hours.

I do however, encourage you to ask questions during class. If you don't understand something, chances are there will be many others in the same situation.

Get feedback from tutors, ask them questions too but remember that generally, course coordinators and lecturers are the source of truth and other teaching staff can make mistakes.

These days, I have adopted an attitude of not being afraid to ask questions, and would rather look stupid once, than be stupid forever.

Regret 5 - Skipping on sleep

Sacrificing sleep was a necessity at times but certainly not all the time. Sometimes I stayed up late because of a deadline, but sometimes staying up late did more harm than good. Even a short nap during the day can help with processing learning materials, and give a boost to productivity.

I write this while it is 2am on a Monday morning, I guess some fools never learn...

Alas, we are done with regrets and let's finish up this post on a positive note.

Win 1 - Perseverance, trusting the process

Studying, in most forms, yields no immediate, material return. For example, work gives us money, eating satisfies our hunger, drinking... well you get the idea.

Studying at uni definitely gave me a sense of accomplishment. Getting a program to work, or understanding a complex concept felt amazing, and yet, I often question what was it all for. I knew that the pay off would be in 3 years time, when I will get my first IT job. But it all felt so, distant, so unachievable.

And yet, something in my mind always told me to keep going and to persist. Sometimes it was my study mates encouraging me, sometimes it was me encouraging them. There were times when I wanted to drop out, but after 2-3 semesters, I knew there was no point in giving up, and I always believed that the pay off will be there.

And yes, looking back at it after finishing uni, and working in IT for over 2 years, getting paid more than I did, every single struggle of uni was certainly worth it. I feel proud to have stuck with it and seeing it through.

If you are serious about IT as a career that you want to do for the rest of your life, if there are more reasons than just money for doing this job, then drop any doubt, see this thing through, and see whats on the other end.

It is certainly not the worst of things if you walk out of your degree without internship or some other work experience in your selected field, although it will put you far above many other candidates.

I managed to find a tutoring job at uni mostly by chance. A bunch of tutors were let go in the previous year due to revised requirements - one of them being a requirement for a university degree. Luckily, I had a psychology undergrad (the only time it came in handy for work so far), and so during my second year of uni, I was offered to tutor first year courses.

The pay was much better than my part time job as a pharmacy assistant, as well as being a good opportunity to refine my understanding of first year fundamentals. It was also kinda fun to get some of my tuition money back.

I have worked in teaching roles before, so that side of things was fairly easy to pick up. However, preparing for workshops did take up some time, eating into the valuable study time. Nevertheless, I feel that it put me into a strong position for things that came later.

The thing that came later

During my penultimate semester, I was starting to feel the pressure of finding a job so I started to look for internship opportunities. I applied for a few opportunities, and did some initial interview tasks. However I didn't have much luck progressing to the later stages, let alone getting accepted. At one point, I got an email from our course coordinator, mentioning an internship opportunity in the university's IT department.

I applied, and a few weeks later received an email, requesting an interview. With this came some relief, and worry at the same time. I now had to make sure to present my best self, as time was running out. The timing was also somewhat fortunate, as my last semester was only part time (I was able to get 2 classes credited from my previous degree). Therefore I knew I had enough spare time to study and do my internship. The internship was also paid, so I decided to quit tutoring around that time.

Impostor syndrome will be real when you will be applying for internships and jobs. Start applying early (second year), be honest with yourself when identifying your weak points and address them. Getting a job or an internship won't happen overnight and consistent effort will give you the big wins over long term.

Win 3 - What doesn't kill you

At times, it feels like studying at uni was much trickier and harder than having a full time job. I have worked from around the age of 14 in various jobs, yet none of them felt so demanding and draining as having to study for 3 years.

The upside now is that I know what I am capable of, which helped me build confidence in my abilities. This is certainly not how it felt at the start of the journey.

Working full-time and having other life commitments makes it easy to slip into the complacent life and not study. But this means death in the IT industry. Even in my short two years, I've seen drastic changes with frameworks dying and new ones replacing them.

Win 4 - Time speeds up as you get older - use it to your advantage

If you are past the age of 25, you are probably beginning to notice how much faster time seems to go by. It feels like Christmas was only a couple of weeks ago and yet it has been almost two months now.

Routine takes over the present, it feels like someone clicked fast forward on a curved remote with a round LCD display. Can there really be an upside to this? Well, good, bad, boring, exciting - it all goes by quickly. Even studying for 3 years will go by quickly.

Realising that I could let 3 years of my life zoom by doing something wasteful, or let those 3 years zoom by while getting my degree was a big win.

Win 5 - Understanding the purpose of attending university

The undergraduate degree, generally offers a shallow introduction to a broad range of topics and concepts. There are simply not enough operational hours in the 3 years to do a proper deep dive into knowledge, without sacrificing visiting the many concepts of computer science (and probably every other discipline).

Additionally, as sad as it might sound, you are unlikely to get many real work skills at uni. I also witnessed a lot echo chamber type of conversations about what the "real world" of IT is like. This generally came from people who have never worked in IT, but presented themselves as an authority on the topic. Generally, university exists in a bubble, so many things you hear about the real world, might not be accurate. This doesn't mean that you should dismiss every single word from your lecturer, just because he has never worked in IT. They are there to give you the knowledge, theory and foundations, it is then up to you to apply it.

Hope this will help you to avoid some mistakes I did and help you make big wins of your own.

Regret 1 - Forgetting about social aspects