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Ask HN: Student with little free time, where should I focus the time I have?

1 points by jdbkv5 ↗ HN
I'm a guy who doesn't have a lot of free time on his hands between work, school, relationship, dog, etc. Life stuff I guess, and I know there are people far worse off than me with real life children and what not. There are so many different ways it seems I could spend the little free time I have that I'm not sure what would be most beneficial.

I'm told to work on leetcode to prepare for interviews when I do have them.

I want to learn python. It seems rather fun, I love how much you can do with it, and I have a bunch of ideas for small side projects I could do with it.

I told a small business owner I know I would look into making an app for them using iOS. Would be a rather simple CRUD app. I don't know any swift yet either. (Obviously something I can learn, but starting from scratch seem would make the process a lot longer).

I'd like to learn some javascript, there are a few chrome extensions that I'd like to make that would be fun and useful.

All I know is C++ from my first 2 classes.

My attention is being pulled in a million different directions and really, I'm getting nothing done. I want things I can put on my resume and overall want to just improve my programming skills and learn new things, but when I don't have tons of time each week to do that I don't know where to begin. I know I have to start somewhere. Let's say I have 7 or 8 hours a week at the very most. Any advice?

5 comments

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znpy
Focus on school and make sure to get out of it as soon as possible.
jdbkv5
Why stress as soon as possible?
znpy
You'll realise that some thing you'll hate studying will be extremely important in your job one day and will be glad you studied them.

On the other hand, university is a tunnel and you'd better get outside in the real world as soon as you can :)

supertramp_
I just graduated this past December. While most of my college buddies were spending their time sleeping or 'enjoying school', I was asking myself the same question you are right now.

I concluded that if I wanted to be one step ahead of other college students, I had to be somehow proficient in a popular programming language. To execute that I did two things during my free time: I chose to develop small projects in python and django. And, also looked for internships to gain some real life experience because I knew college wouldn't prepare me very well. Thinking that way opened several doors for me after school (I graduated with several job offers).

Also, college time is a crucial period of your life that will structure and define most of your thinking process. So make sure you spend time working on that as well. What do I mean by that? Make sure you are spending time working on your becoming a better version of yourself not only career wise but also personal. Spend time exploring yourself finding out what you like and what you want as a person. I hope it helps, you are in a great path already.