College: The First Month @ IIT

Every book you’ve ever read is just a different combination of 26 letters.
Every blog post you’ve ever read, every gif frame, every video frame, every single thing you’ve done on your computer is just a combination of 2 digits. 1 and 0.


How can a machine based on on’s and off’s change the world? That is why I study computer science.

It is with this sentiment that I start my studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology (majoring in Information Technology and Management, a.k.a. CS with a business focus). Classes began just over a month ago, and have been going relatively smoothly.

My Classes #

• BUS210, Financial and Managerial Accounting
• HUM106, Life Stories
• ITM301, Intro to Contemporary Operating Systems and Hardware I
• ITM312, Intro to Systems Software Programming
• PSYC301, Industrial Psychology

Least workload? PSYC301. Most fun? HUM106.

Getting Started #

The beginning of my days at IIT started a week before the start of classes, with orientation taking place Monday and Tuesday. This was much different from high school orientation, as we sat through multiple presentations about campus life, opportunities available, and academics. The first day was padded by team-building and social events, so you can get to know your orientation group better. The second day of orientation consisted of meeting with my academic advisor in order to register for classes. Thanks to the AP credit I received while in high school, I have already completed my required social science and math classes. Afterwards, I was able to pick up my ID and go on a tour of the campus. That concluded orientation, and I was able to return to work.

Later that week, there was a variety of events I attended, including a citywide scavenger hunt and a meetup with my peer mentor group. That weekend, I attended the Chicago Air and Water Show, an annual favorite. While there was a noticable lack of military prescence, I still had a good time.

Classes Begin #

Hearing about college from older friends, the Internet, and media, I expected large lecture halls, less strict rules, and a wide variety of students. My first class was BUS210, which is located on the 6th floor of IIT Tower. Unlike my expectations, it only had about 20 students, but was quite laid-back. The professor started to lecture exactly as class was scheduled to start, and there was much less teacher-student interaction than I had experienced in high school. This was the same in PSYC301, except in PSYC301 there were 50 students instead of 20.

My ITM classes were more hands-on, albeit still a lot of lecture. HUM106, one of the humanities courses for all first-year students, had the most teacher-student interaction; discussion and writing are the primary focus of the class. In ITM312, we are learning the basics of programming in C++. As I have a great deal of prior [object-oriented] programming experience, I often help out students who have difficulty getting started, and take lecture notes for everyone; I’m sort of an unofficial TA.

Organizations and Activities #

College life would not be complete without all the various student organizations and things to do around campus. Being a commuter student, it is more difficult to take advantage of all the opportunities, but there are still many fun events going on during my time on campus. I am currently involved in, or want to be involved in…

• ITMO, Information Technology Management Organization
• ACM, Association of Computing Machinery (student chapter)
• IEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (student chapter)
• ITR, Illinois Tech Robotics
• AIAA, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (student chapter)

All of the organizations mentioned have some programming component, and all of them are engineering-focused. I’m excited to share my skills and learn from peers during various project meetings for each of these groups. These are also great for networking and just making new friends.

Difficulties #

No experience is perfect, as in this case. Adjusting to a new environment is always hard, having to adapt to the community and learn the tricks to success. Given more freedom and time, it has been hard to manage the extra time and fill it with meaningful activities. However, I have made progress by keeping up with my todo list and focusing on the work at hand. Yet another difficulty has been ensuring all homework gets done - as many of my professors do not check it, it may seem like something to forget about. However, the bulk of the course grade comes from exams, so it becomes vital to complete homework if a great exam score is to be achieved. Furthermore, combining student organization meetings with class work can be difficult to manage, as though it seems there is a large amount of free time, much of that time will be spent on homework or at a job.

Getting aquanited to new people has also been difficult. Being a commuter student, much of the time that would be spent in the dorms meeting new people or hanging out with roommates is spent at home. However, it was the most cost-effective option. During orientation week is when I made many friends - there are quite a number of international students at IIT! Approx. ¼ of the student body is international, and the male/female ratio is 63%/37%. Luckily, there are events at IIT every week, so being able to go to a few of those has made my experience more fun/social.

Future Plans #

Looking forward, I’m thinking about starting my own student organization. Something I discovered recently is a group called NUX Studio at Northwestern University, which is a team of undergraduate student developers who create mobile and web applications for the Northwestern community. Having created many web apps for students back at Northside College Prep, I’m excited to see if I can make this team a reality at IIT. Perhaps it can be a special intrest group within IIT’s ACM chapter, as that is the primary computer science organization at IIT. We’ll see…

I’m excited to see what comes next. Hopefully this post can help other students who are applying to college right now (especially those considering IIT). If you’d like to talk more about what life at IIT is like, I would be happy to go more in-depth; email me at [email protected] and we’ll chat.

For more posts, tech or otherwise, you can follow me on Twitter @EricTendian.