As a 2nd year college student and alumni (now part time mentor)… you’re doing it wrong.
Having a shelf full of projects, another shelf of half completed projects. Freelance work, startup work and a regular job plus all the usual school work I don’t think I can say I’ve been bored in a long time… being “bored” any time in your life is really one’s own fault (and hey sometimes being bored isn’t a bad thing either).
If your school is “easy” and you’re acing your classes with minimal effort, take advantage of your free time do something else! If you are the smartest guy in the room you’re in the wrong room.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a few people throughout college that seem to fit the same description you’ve fit to yourself through your post. I’ll be completely honest, when I began my Freshman year at Clarkson in the Fall of 2012 as an AeroE I was discouraged by that type of student. I was unhappy studying engineering, struggling with calculus-based classes, and generally unbalanced, while some others around me seemed to be bored in lectures and still produced 4.0 GPAs without much effort.
Many of the other posts in this thread have recommended you invest your extra time/effort into mentoring, engineering research/projects, or a second major, but from my experience what really makes these students feel challenged is stepping out of their comfort zone and exploring options that college life offers that are not already familiar to them. As a Freshman I made the choice to only mentor Clarkson’s FRC Team, and it wasn’t until an entire year later that I left my comfort zone and joined a fraternity (I also changed majors and added a minor). Colleges offer a long list of organizations that are only available to you at this time of your life, and you won’t grow as a person if you don’t take advantage of these opportunities.
Since you’ve already had exposure to some of your Freshmen curriculum through FRC, challenge yourself to step away from STEM and find something you want to learn or a skill you want to improve. It takes humility to admit to yourself that although you can ace your engineering exams, you may not possess a certain skill that someone else has. Chances are someone else feels the same way about you in your academic successes; I know I felt that way at times when comparing myself to my peers.
The bottom line is this; As you’re beginning to realize, college isn’t just a time to get your degree and start a career because I’ll be completely honest, that IS the “boring” part of school. As others have mentioned, you’re going to do a lot of “growing up” in the next few years, and this is your opportunity to learn a lot of important things that won’t be taught in your classes. You already recognize that you’re academically talented, so embrace that - Become a teacher’s assistant for a class you’ve taken, become a tutor for your classmates, etc. The next step is recognizing what you aren’t talented at, and after that is deciding what you’re going to do about it. I would be willing to bet that you will make lasting friendships in college if you share your academic talents with students who are struggling in class, and they might teach you a thing or two in return.
In a way I want to envy you. I came out of high school confident that the skills I learned in high school would help me get through college. I made it half a semester and dropped out. To be as far ahead as you are, to have that much of a head start. I can’t imagine it.
If this is your biggest disadvantage in life consider yourself lucky.
Yet there is still one line in this breaks it all for me.
“I am working in a graduate level lab doing computer vision and I am seeing what the grad students are doing wrong.”
You can be the brightest lighthouse to ever have existed, but what use are you unless you guide others?
I’d like to thank all of you for giving me guidance. I needed it.
Here is where I’m at right now. My advisor told me to go for another major (along with comp sci and physics), something that I know nothing about (I’m thinking ee or comp e. I know the basics but that’s it). Or to transfer to somewhere with a more intellectual environment.
I’m rushing sigep. Taking some time out of the lab. I have an interview for an internship with union pacific tomorrow morning so there is that too.
That is basically what my advisor told me. I started doing research with the university my senior year of high school. This school doesn’t have much to offer me, socially or academically. I’m thinking about transferring to Harvey Mudd next year, even though the atmosphere will kill my cf.
I try to mentor other teams. Last year I helped a grand total of 14 teams with computer vision, and this year I plan to solve the vision challenge over winter break as a for fun thing, and have it tested and good to go for anyone who wants it. I might do it in multiple languages, but I’ll probably stick to c++ and python. The kid I left in charge of vision for the team doesn’t need my help. I taught him calc 1 during build season just because I knew he could handle it, he was a freshman at the time.
As for student programs, I go to the buddhist temple just about every night. It helps me cope with having CF. We have a lot of student design teams, our school placed second in the mars rover challenge last year I believe.
I have my own projects that I’m working on, but I’m running out of ideas fast. I write the same code in python, c++, and matlab and test to see which one is fastest just out of pure boredom.
I run to fill my afternoons too. I would join the cross country team but cf just recently put me in the hospital for 2 weeks and that can happen at a moments notice, so sports are kind of out of the question. I do intramural soccer here, but it’s not as competitive as I like it. I was captain of my soccer team in high school.
oh boy, I haven’t done tensor stuff in awhile. Let me dissect the question as I think about it:
Some more background: (in relativity) the electromagnetic field is described by a 4D antisymmetric tensor.
quoting my physics professor “An anti-symmetric tensor is a tensor in which exchanging two indices negates the tensor”
By divergence (the antisymmetrized derivative) is zero in a vacuum, and obviously is not zero when there is charge or a current.
I do not conceptually understand why it produces a photon, but it does. I haven’t thought about it that much. But I’m only in the first physics class.
Speaking about physics, it irritates me that the Nobel prize was given to something so simple. Maybe I just don’t appreciate it.
As for the second question, that is a simple Fourier transformation.
Ah, the classic double pendulum question. It is a system of chaos, to give the cop out answer, as you have stated. The system is governed by a system of diff eq. The vision program I wrote my sophomore year of high school solved a system of partial diff eq (camera pose estimation). If you’re really interested, i presented this at ISWEEEP, the international science fair: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5wbgtie9vci2d26/Symposium%20Presenation.ppt?dl=0
Of course my boeing mentor helped me with the math, it was about half and half. Neither of us could have done it without the other.
I have spent a lot of time on the hospital bed due to having cf. I finished the vision program my sophomore year in the hospital at 2am a week before competition. My junior year I missed 2 months of school due to being sick. Senior year was about a month. It has allowed me to develop academically.
Having cf greatly reduces the amount of time I have here, and I want to actually “contribute a verse” and I feel like I’m wasting my time right now.
Edit* forgot about the last question: if I remember right, I believe it is called the magnus effect. It’s very similar to that of an air foil, I believe. I do not believe anyone actually has mathematically explained it, I’d be more than happy to see one if one exists though.
I would have to agree with Damprobot that you may be experiencing burnout so I would advise you not to work on your current personal projects since they seem to be in the areas that you may be burnt out in. Since it is difficult to really “do nothing”, and if you are really ahead of your peers, you may want to consider offering to tutor some your peers. I had one schoolmate who was in the Engineering Physics program (the hardest classes from EE and ME), took graduate level courses and got over 95% in all his courses in all his 4 years. He was also incredibly humble, approachable and more generous with his time helping those of us who struggled than most of the other top students.
If you have a student loan (and even if you don’t), you might consider getting a job. It will give you some cash and some real world experience working for and with other people. That would be as valuable as your FIRST experience when you are looking for employment after you graduate.
As techhelpbb suggested, figure out what gives you fulfillment. If you are doing something you find fulfilling, you can do it with passion. People who work with passion are much more likely to do better work, do something great and go further in life than those who just plod along.
My shenanigans meter is going off, I’m not calling you a liar at all let us be clear. The tone, appeal, wording, just everything seems to have changed through a post…
Enlighten me Faust…
Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?
Anyway cynical side being put out there it sounds like you have been active at taking steps to not just uh state your situation but to change it. Good on ya!
I find this rather disappointing, to be frank. Even moreso because whoever ostensibly felt this thread really would be improved by that post still felt the need to create a throwaway account to say it. If you’re going to be a jerk, at least own up to it.
I agree that people should own up to their posts and not make throwaway accounts, which this one probably is. I also find it interesting that so many CDers gave immediate support for this post. Clearly though, not everyone supports this, since he no longer (as of 1 hour after the post) has a reputation beyond repute.
