

Ask HN: So, Who's Graduating From School This Spring? - samratjp

Fellow HN'ers,<p>Anyone graduating this Spring? What are your plans?<p>(Extra credit if you can explain in a tweetable, digestable size :-)
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ehsanul
BS in Mechanical Engineering here, with 10 days to graduation. Then I'm going
to trying out everything: applying for jobs, trying to get a research
assistantship for grad school (hopefully RoMeLa), starting freelancing, and
working on a web app which will hopefully be startup material. Let's just see
what sticks.

~~~
mikeknoop
I have 2 semesters left, but I'm in the same boat as you. Mechanical
Engineering undergraduate, looking at a graduate program, already doing
occasional freelance development, and a strong CS background even though I
opted against that as a degree.

Is this common? I haven't run into anyone in my department that is doing
something similar, and often get asked why I did not simply get a CS degree.

~~~
ehsanul
I get asked the same all the time, and my standard answer is that I would hate
CS if I had to take classes in it, doing tedious homework problems in C++.

I don't think it's too common, though I did get surprised once by a classmate
of mine turning out to be a freelance website designer.

By the way, how do you get clients besides friends/family? Having a good
portfolio is an obvious way, but have yet to build that up for myself.

~~~
mikeknoop
That is my exactly response as well. Mechanical Engineering really interests
me, and usually what I say is this: "If I can get an ME undergrad/masters
degree AND self-teach myself CS/programming (effectively getting a "CS"
degree) on the side and handle client work, etc. that should be twice as
impressive."

Recently, I read an article here on HN which proclaimed that the best use of
CS/IT knowledge is in non-CS positions. Use it as your secret weapon; use it
to gain an advantage in your everyday life. Now, most ME majors nowadays have
some rudimentary functional programming experience but I'm hoping that
sentiment will still hold true.

As far as client work goes, all my development work is through the Facebook
Platform (apps and whatnot) so I've built up a reputation on their developer
forums and can pretty easily secure work based solely on that. I think the
main hurdle with web development is that nearly everyone has a website these
days. You might consider checking out some of your local companies and seeing
which have poor websites and going from there. Otherwise, try to become a well
known and reputable member somewhere online.

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devotion
About to leave University (BSc Software Engineering. 3 exams left, all this
month).

I have a job secured in the security field and have a personal wiki full of
projects that I want to do on the side. One of which is in the planning stages
as I type this.

Looking forward to see what the next 12 months hold.

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jiaaro
I'm graduating with a BA in Economics.

Plans: I'll be writing software... like I have for the past 2 years ;)

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kobs
BS in CS. Graduated about a week ago from UF. Going to work for a bookstore.

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adam-_-
Graduating in June. Perl developer for an ecommerce company in London.

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shadowz
Graduating in June from high school. Going into computer science.

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stjarnljuset
working on enterprise web applications

