Why I am a CS major 🤡 / Why I switched from SymSys to CS

summer 2022

Damn I’m about to expose myself fr. If you have read my past article on Why I chose SymSys, I am sorry I have betrayed you. You guys deserve to know the truth.

Hello! I’m Kaylee, an incoming junior-senior-ish studying computer science. I wanted to write a self-exposé as it seems that my past SymSys article has reached a relatively broad audience. Long story short, I am now a CS major and this is why.

If you are looking for the short-and-sweet version, here it is: College is an intellectual playground. Explore, find what you are passionate about, and challenge yourself accordingly. Don’t be afraid of challenging yourself, embrace risk sometimes. Longer version below :)

Disclaimer: In this article, I won’t be going into life advice or how to make the most of your Stanford social experience, you can figure that out on your own. I am strictly focusing on academic classes and your major — very exciting, I know. Further, this is not a piece on why CS is better than SymSys or why you should switch to CS. This is simply advice on how to craft a fulfilling academic experience using my own experiences as a case study.

With that said, let’s begin. At a high level, I think it’s important to know what you want to get out of your college education early on (in regards to academics). Think deeply about this (I certainly did not give enough thought into this early on). These are four of the most special years of your entire life at a very special place. Stanford is a magical playground for you to learn and explore whatever you please. You have a nice cushy safety net where no matter what your GPA is (assuming you graduate), you will have graduated from the Stanford University. Like it or not, this means there is no excuse for you to not intellectually challenge yourself from time to time.

Intellectual challenge comes in many different flavors depending on who you are. For a very technical person, that could look like taking a humanities class on Greek history or French film class. For a semi-technical person (like me when I was SymSys), that could be taking a tough CS class that you are topically interested in but is notoriously difficult. Further, challenging yourself academically should still be topically exciting for you. There is a difference between not liking a class because it is hard and not liking a class because it is not intellectually stimulating. Don’t opt out of a class due to the former (unless of course it is a case where you have too much on your plate, it’s affecting your mental health, etc). Buzz-wordy as it sounds, I like the idea of intellectual stimulation because I view it as a combination of academic challenge and enjoyment (i.e. something that piques your curiosity but you’re actively learning).

I guarantee that you will come out of Stanford feeling more fulfilled if you adopt this thinking. It might suck in the moment, but later on, you will be more proud of yourself and you will have grown more as a learner, whether that be more multi-dimensional or gaining more grit. You will appreciate other disciplines more and find beauty in academic struggle (I know it’s hard in the moment, but try to separate learning from the grade — they are different). When you look back at your Stanford experience, you will most likely remember the classes that pushed you to grow in new ways instead of the ones you breezed through.

Let me tell you a little story. I was relatively confident that I was going to be a CS major coming into Stanford. But then I took CS106B and had hella imposter syndrome (Side tangent: yes, freshman fall is hard. You just came from seniorities where you didn’t give a fuck about anything because you already knew you were coming to Stanford. Everyone is smart and they were all at the top of their class at their respective high schools. I don’t think this is something that a lot of people talk about, but trust me, it’s something that a lot of students go through and you’re not alone in feeling this way). Anyways, the class made me think that I couldn’t succeed at or be as good as my peers in CS so I deferred to SymSys, which has less CS requirements. I then somewhat convinced myself into thinking that I was really into SymSys because of reasons X, Y, and Z — when in reality, I was just scared of facing intellectual struggle.

Again, this isn’t to say that SymSys is ‘lesser’ than CS in any way. I really admire the interdisciplinary nature of the major, the people in the major, and the kinds of thinking SymSys fosters. All of points in my previous article hold true about the SymSys major itself.

I switched because I reflected on what I wanted to get out of Stanford (learning-wise), and that was to simply go ham on dope technical shit (this is also a symptom of being at Stanford — CS majors are lucky that we’re at the Mecca of tech innovation learning from world-class professors that are hella passionate about what they do). And CS would allow me to do that more than SymSys. CS also allows you to actually build (and break) things in practice versus SymSys lends itself well to the ideation process, design thinking, users, etc (these aren’t mutually exclusive, just a matter of main focus). Both are important, just different. You get to choose what speaks to you.

I still think taking diverse classes is great (and something that I would highly recommend), but I didn’t want to do that within the constraints of SymSys anymore. For example, I enjoyed my philosophy class. However, I felt like for me, taking further philosophy classes would have diminishing returns (I am not super interested in any of the upperclass philosophy classes topically. Skill-wise, I learned how to construct logical and tight arguments using existing frameworks of thinking — yes, I could definitely improve those skills, but I think I would get more out of and rather learn about a totally new nitty-gritty technical topic. Again, I am just sharing my own thoughts; this is not prescriptive).

I think one problem about coming to Stanford is that when you put a bunch of high-achieving kids in one room who are all used to being at the top, and all of the sudden they’re not at the top, people get all soft. But it’s just a fact of life that you are not always going to succeed. Yes, you have in the past — that’s probably why you made it here, so that’s why it feels sucky because it’s a new feeling you’re not used to. A class is challenging? You got a C on a test? Suck it up and move on. It’s college, it’s supposed to be hard and it’s supposed to challenge you. It’s not supposed to be a walk in the park. If it were, then what would be the point of even going to college? Taking hard classes makes you grow. Sometimes you have to grind to get to where you want to be, e.g. character-building, and that’s perfectly ok (more than ok).

My point here is that you should be taking classes and choosing your major for the right reasons. Whatever decisions you come to are completely justified as long as you think deeply about them and are honest with yourself about what intellectually stimulates you. This doesn’t mean you have to have it all figured out and certainly don’t make a four year plan (as you take more classes, you’ll learn more about what you like and don’t like). As long as you are checking in with yourself from time to time, I’m sure you will be fine :)