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Coding Your Future: A Guidebook for Students

15 Organising Your Future

You might find it a bit scary thinking about your future. You might be tempted to procrastinate making important decisions, especially when they are potentially life changing, see figure 15.1. There is a risk of thrashing or getting stuck in a do-nothing or busy waiting loop. This guidebook is here to help you break out of that loop. One way to breakout of an unproductive loop is to organise and schedule some time every week where you work on personal development and job applications. Doing good applications takes time and you’ll probably find you can’t do as many applications as you might like, especially when you consider Hofstadter’s law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

The biggest waste of time is the time spent not getting started on a project. Your future might seem big and unknown but it’s really not as scary as you might think and getting started can be surprisingly enjoyable. New Project? Every time… by Visual Thinkery is licenced under CC-BY-ND

Figure 15.1: The biggest waste of time is the time spent not getting started on a project. Your future might seem big and unknown but it’s really not as scary as you might think and getting started can be surprisingly enjoyable. New Project? Every time… by Visual Thinkery is licenced under CC-BY-ND

Your future is bright, your future needs organising, so let’s start organising your future.

15.1 When and where can I start building my future ?

How you start organising your future will depend on what stage of your degree you are at

  • First year pathway, see section 15.4
  • Second year pathway, see section 15.3
  • On placement or internship pathway, see chapter 18
  • Final year pathway, see chapter 8

In section 11.2.10 and 11.2.10 we discussed the importance of timing in your job search. When you apply for jobs will determine what kind of jobs are available because most graduate schemes and graduate jobs follow a rhythmic recruitment cycle of some kind. How many jobs you apply for is largely a function of how much time you spend doing it. The more time you spend, the more applications you can do.

We haven’t explicitly discussed the timing and organisation of the activities outlined in the preceding chapters:

  1. Designing your Future in chapters 1 to 7
  2. Testing your Future in chapters 8 to 13

Let’s imagine you could precisely specify all of the tests using make in a makefile or specify them somehow in your favourite Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Ideally, you’d like to automatically run these tests, so that you can build your future systematically. You’d like to repeat these tests periodically, e.g. once a day, week, month or whatever your schedule is, similar to build automation in software engineering. Attempts to automate aspects of job applications and interviews have so far had very mixed results. (Schellmann 2022; Dastin 2018) But, as another thought experiment, let’s image it was possible

15.2 Breakpoints

Let’s pause here. Insert a breakpoint in your code and slowly step through it so we can examine the current values of your variables and parameters.

* PAUSE ⏸️
  • So what’s in your make file?
  • How often will you run it?
  • Which tasks can you automate?
  • Which tasks are always going to be manual?
* RESUME ▶️

15.3 Second year pathway

If you’re a University of Manchester student, the live Coding your Future (COMP2CARS) workshops sessions are also here to help, every Tuesday at 4pm. COMP2CARS complements the second year tutorials (COMP2TUT) at the University of Manchester and takes place in the same slot as COMP2TUT when you meet your personal tutor. See your timetable at timetables.manchester.ac.uk. The outline is:

  • Weeks 0: Welcome
  • Weeks 1 and 2: COMP2TUT, meet with personal tutor
  • Weeks 3 to 5: Seminars in Lecture Theatre A, Crawford House
  • Week 6: Reading week - take a breather
  • Weeks 7 to 10: Seminars in Lecture Theatre A, Crawford House
  • Weeks 11 & 12: COMP2TUT, meet with personal tutor

15.3.1 Week 8: Choosing & achieving

Tuesday 12th November, 4pm:

  • Choosing Your Future, see chapter 4
  • Achieving Your Future, see chapter 19

15.3.2 Week 9: Speaking

Tuesday 19th November, 4pm:

Penny Gordon Lanes from the Careers service will be talking about services offered to help you prepare for interviews: www.careers.manchester.ac.uk/applicationsinterviews/interviews/

15.3.3 Week 10: Speaking again

Tuesday 26th November, 4pm: Speaking Your Future, see chapter 13

15.3.4 Week 11: Tutor

Tuesday 3rd December, 4pm: Meet your tutor

15.3.5 Week 12: Tutor

Tuesday 10th December, 4pm: Meet your tutor

Items crossed out below have been completed

15.3.6 Week 0: Experiencing

Welcome week, starting 16th September:

Welcome week activity, welcome back to year 2 with Afroditi Galata and Experiencing your Future: a Q&A panel of returning Industrial Experience students with chaired by Duncan Hull.

* Thank you to our panelists for sharing your expertise with incoming year 2 students, see www.cdyf.me/experiencing 🙏

15.3.7 Week 1: Debugging

Tuesday 24th October at 4pm:

* Either COMP2TUT: Meet your tutor see digital.cs.manchester.ac.uk/student-groups/ ~~* OR COMP2CARS: Debug your CV (self assessment) using section 8.10 and: ~~ + Get robotic feedback on your CV from careerset.com/manchester + Read Debugging your future (chapter 8) + Read Hacking your future (chapter 9) + Complete the CV Essentials pathway if you haven’t already done so at www.careers.manchester.ac.uk/services/ondemand/pathways

15.3.8 Week 2: Debugging

Tuesday 1st October at 4pm

15.3.9 Week 3: Hacking

Tuesday 8th October, 4pm: Hacking Your Future see chapter 9

15.3.10 Week 4: Finding

Tuesday 15th October, 4pm: Finding Your Future, see chapter 11

15.3.11 Week 5: Exploring

Tuesday 22nd October, 4pm: Exploring Your Future, see chapter 2

15.3.12 Week 6: Resting

Tuesday 29th October, Take a breather, its reading week

15.3.13 Week 7: Writing

Tuesday 5th November, 4pm: Writing Your Future, see chapter 4

15.4 First year pathway

If you’re in your first year, here’s five steps you could take to start Coding Your Future:

  1. Join a society, or start your own see section 5.3.2
  2. Attend a hackathon, either as a participant or co-organiser, see section 5.3.8
  3. Contribute to Open Source Software, see section 5.3.5
  4. Volunteer to build your skills, see section 5.3.7
  5. Apply for spring insights in first year, see section 5.3

See chapter 5 for ways you can start Experiencing Your Future in your first year.