wow thx <3 <3 <3

But honestly, literally anyone can be attractive. If that's a major roadblock for you to improve your social skills, do soemthing about it; give yourself a makeover! Following is subjective, I guess, but..

Get a good haircut. 90% of the time, that just means "short on the sides, longer on top". LookAfter on green is really good. You could probably just be like "yo hook me up" and they can give you something trendy. Put this in your hair. Shower in the morning, and blowdry it instead of letting it air dry.

Revamp your wardrobe. Get tighter clothes. A pair of these will get you far. If you can button them without causing lots of physical pain to yourself, they aren't too tight (and they will stretch). Try to avoid washing jeans in the washing machine. If you do, air dry them. If your jeans fit well, chances are they won't after you run them through the dryer.

Stay away from gym shoes. A pair of black and a pair of white vans will take you a long way.

Stay away from overusing graphic tees. Grey is a great colour that looks good on everyone. Black and other dark colours are good too. Sweatshirts usually look p good as long as they are a tight fit. Henleys are easy and lit too.

Stay away from cargo shorts. Tight, coloured, mid-thigh shorts are "in" and look better. Looser but still short & thin neutral-coloured shorts are ez too. Especially for spring/summer.

Most of the stuff from Express, H&M, Zara, sometimes A&F, etc. is good.

Qt, bold briefs/boxer briefs from calvin klein, aussiebum, etc. are lit too. People won't often see them, obviously, but it's an easy confidence boost.

Don't discount the importance of being confident. Milo Yiannopoulos isn't actually that attractive, but he is 110% confident, so he tricks you into adding like 4 points. Fix your posture. Sit up straight, stand up straight w/ your shoulders back. Your body will feel better, and you will come off much more confident. Body language is important. The same is true about smiling more, etc.

Take care of your teeth. Crest Whitestrips can save your life if you are a soda/coffee drinker. Floss twice a day, maybe get a tongue brush.

Keep your body hair under control with one of these and a decent razer. Another thing that people only will see if you wear like a real deep v-neck or unbuttoned Henley or when you are sexing, but a confidence booster nonetheless.

Keep your hygiene up to par. Shower often, wash thoroughly (a loofah or washcloth is a good investment) with some kind of good-smelling body wash, wear deodorant, and get some kind of cologne that isn't axe (one of the < $30 ones from Amazon is fine). Also, idk why straight boys often don't wash their butthole, but wash your butthole.

Take care of your skin. This will save your life. If you have acne and that doesn't work well enough, invest in a proactiv subscription or something. You will look and feel much better. Don't be afraid of concealer to cover up some particularly egregious blemishes. Idk anything about makeup brands, but something like this (except that matches your skin tone) is great because it doubles as a mild acne treatment. This (or any spray product with Salicylic acid) will help immensely if you have body acne.

Get in shape. You will look and feel better! You sound like you don't have much time to go to the gym, which is fine. Muscly, skinny and toned, or super skinny are all "trendy" looks. Just avoid dad bod. Skinny can be achieved just through diet and optionally doing body weight exercises at home (crunches, pushups, etc.) or getting a pair of weights. Most importantly, make sure the fit of your clothes matches your body. All of those 3 benefit from snug fits. Dad bod "benefits" from a looser fit, but that's because your clothes are trying to hide your body shape rather than accentuate it, hence why it isn't ideal.

Before interviews/career/fairs/going on a date/whatever other important event, max all this out. Aside from looking good, you will feel good, and you will have a much easier time being confident. When talking to recruiters, especially during the interview, I find that when you feel good about yourself, nerves dissipate hardcore to the point where even when you are stuck, you don't really get that sinking feeling in your stomach. Smile and nod a lot, sell yourself with your strong, confident energy. If you seem like a fun person to work with (and look at), that can make up for a lot of your "faults".

I got all of my interviews that I got at the Expo this year wearing shorts and flip-flops (went during lunch break at work, so didn't have time to change). Just be a chill, happy, and humble dude/dudette, but own the fact that you feel good about yourself. Ppl dig that, especially when a lot of kids are in the same situation you are (ie. don't feel attractive or comfortable talking to people, or their whole life is just academics).

Edit: Oops also do your eyebrows and keep your facial hair in check.

Here is some advice with a degree of seriousness.

• Buy a high quality laptop: I bought a budget device only to regret it all the while. The price you pay for a device which is going to be ubiquitous in your college experience is a small one, if you look at the entire cost of college.
  
  
• Really ponder about your major. I can't tell you what a small fraction of students actually know the fundamental nature of their major until well into their coursework. If you can visit campus, they have many many different books which draw up an outline of what exactly you are going to be studying. If you live nearby, try visiting the college and see for yourself the nature of the various departments. Switching majors early into college is easy.
  
  
• Read college advice books. some would disagree here, but I see no reason is repeating the same mistakes made by thousands of college students before them. There are a thousands things that I would change about my college experience, but I did the best I could as I went in completely blind. I would recommend some books to incoming freshmen.
  
  

1. The Freshman Survival Guide
   
   
2. Been There, Should've Done That
   
   
3. Procrastination was my biggest issue in college. It is only now (well after graduation) that I realize the importance of a proper system of productivity. The best book I can recommend is Getting Things Done - by David Allen. This isn't some cheesy, feel good self help book. This a solid methodology to address productivity in everyday life. If you implement the method even to a small degree, you will have an incredible amount of benefit in your college life.
   
   

• Get yourself in shape: The college experience has a lot to do with meeting and interacting with people. Your choice of major is definitely a handicap right from the start. But you can help yourself by keeping yourself in good physical condition. And mind you, fitness is a lot more than just vanity.
  
  
• Familiarize yourself with support systems. This applies when you get to the end of your summer. UIUC is literally filled with hundreds of departments, all of them there to help you. Be it health, academics, housing or anything else, there are people who give valuable advice. Because I went in blind, it took a while for me to find my bearing around all these support systems. The Counseling Center is an excellent resource that every freshman should make use of.
  
  
• Thank your High School teachers: If you are amongst the group of people who had a fulfilling high school experience, make sure to thank those who made it possible. Have lunch with your favourite teacher/coach. Tell them how you are thankful for their contributions. Believe me, my mom's a teacher. It'll mean a lot to them. I know it will be hard for you to understand this, but the predominant majority of your friends from high-school will become irrelevant in you life through college. So make sure you don't forget the people who really matter like family, teachers and community leaders.
  
  
• Learn something different: You'll have the entire 3-4 years to learn things in your major. So take time out to learn new skills, that have nothing to do with your major. Welding, dancing, painting, photography, etc. Exploring interests is something that you won't have time for later on in life. So make best use of it when you can.
  
  
• Finally, relax! College is going to be a blast. An experience you have no idea of at the moment. So there is little point in worrying about it. Don't get all up in your head and worry about the future. You are going to fall, over and over again. But you will also learn how to pick yourself up, and that is what is going to make a real individual out of you.So savour those things which you will soon start to miss. Explore your hometown, eat at your favourite local restaurant, go on a road trip with friends, spend time with family. Enjoy!

Okay I came in to school like you with very little programming experience. Probably even less than you since I only messed around on my TI. I am going to assume you're only taking ECE110 first semester. If not I recommend getting in as soon as you can. They may give you some crap about it depends on last names, but it doesn't really matter. After a certain point its open to everyone.

Either way, programming in ECE doesn't really start until you take ECE190 which is all C programming and a very simplified assembly language for educational purposes. Like I said I went into the class with practically zero programming experience and still did very well in the class, so don't let anyone scare you on that. If you put the time aside to read the book (really helpful in 190) and doing your MPs/ask the TAs questions you will do fine.

I wouldn't fret too much over the summer with learning stuff, but I would definitely recommend C over Python. Python is pretty easy to pick up, but its also very high level. If you need an introductory language to get familiar you can try python for a bit, but I'd go with C after that. It is worth noting that the other two required programming class you have to take (CS 225 and ECE 391) are C++ and C/x86 respectively. So learning C should definitely be your focus.

I recommend the book written by the creators of the language. The book the school requires is pretty good too actually and would give you a better idea of what to expect. They're kind of pricey, so its your call how you want to get them. As a heads up, codecademy does have Python, but not C as far as I recall. I've never used lynda do I can't comment on them C Book ECE 190 Book

I honestly wouldn't fret too much about it all. Enjoy your summer, depending on how busy your schedule is next semester you can probably set aside some time now and then to study some languages. If you have any more questions I'd be happy to answer.

Wish I had seen this post sooner, not sure if you'll still see this but I was pretty much in the same situation as you this past year. Statistics student trying to get into data analytics (insurance/finance). Most of these tips have already been mentioned but they are definitely valuable if you are trying to get an internship and don't have any other experience.

• Go to career fairs. Career fair is a MUST if you don't have anything that stands out in your resume. If you don't have a perfect GPA, any internship/research experience, or noticeable personal projects then your resume won't stand out much against the hundreds of others that are submitted online. Going to a career fair gives you the chance to stand out or at least be memorable for recruiters. I applied to probably over 50 companies as well for my internship but the majority of my interviews came from career fairs. Also make sure to not limit yourself to just the Statistics/Actuarial career fair since this one is fairly small compared to others and options are much more limited. I researched some of the companies that were at the Business and Engineering fair and the positions that would be relevant for a statistic student; I got more interviews from these fairs than the Statistic one that happens later on in the year.
  
  
• Update/Review your resume. You mentioned you only got one interview (that wasn't even relevant) out of ~50 applications which is pretty low even for someone without prior experience. Make sure your resume is formatted well and have others review it. I'm on r/cscareerquestions a lot and they have some good daily resume threads on every Tuesdays (even if you're not cs the formatting can be similar in that you should list languages/technology along with personal projects). There's also an LAS resume review office on campus available for students. When I went the professional reviewing my resume didn't know much about STEM related careers but he was able to give me some general resume tips (e.g. consistent spacing, action words, typos/grammar, eliminating white space). Also make sure your resume is always in PDF format when you submit it; resumes submitted as DOC files were usually the worst resumes at my previous job.
  
  
• Learn and apply languages/statistical packages related to your field. Earlier you said that you are interested in learning Python and R which are very popular in most data analytic roles. Depending on how far you are in your STAT courses I wouldn't worry too much about R since it'll be used in a lot of STAT 400+ classes. Codeacademy would be a good start as an introduction to Python along with the other resources people have mentioned. After going through some of those online resources I'd also recommend you to take a look at Python for Data Analysis, it can be a difficult read but you will learn a lot about important packages that are used in the industry (NumPy, Pandas, Requests, SciPy, etc).
  
  
• Work on your soft skills. I'm not sure if this applies to you but make sure you've practiced ways of approaching recruiters and interviews in a confident and professional manner. Many of the recruiters at the career fair are employees that work in which ever field they are trying to recruit in. On top of finding students that are qualified they also want interns that will be a good fit to their work culture. Being genuine and professional seems go a long way for interviewers/recruiters.
  
  All this being said, this should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm not a recruiter or a full time at a fortune 500, but these are some of the steps I took to get some internship offers this summer.

I have an internship lined up, but I'm really excited to be learning outside of that too. You should check out The Elements of Computing Systems by Nisan and Schocken. I'm going to be working through this book throughout spring semester and the summer. I think it will provide a foundation for every low-level part of CS and help fill in some gaps that I'm missing.

If you're excited about web dev, you could make a website with Ruby on Rails, Django, Flask, Node, Meteor, etc. There's always another good web framework that you could learn.

If you're into system programming, programming languages, or compilers, there are tons of great tutorials and guides online. I'm currently working through Learn C: Build Your Own Lisp. I'm really looking forward to doing Implementing a Language with LLVM. If you didn't already know, LLVM was started here!

If you haven't finished core math yet, there's Linear Algebra on Khanacademy. I think Salman Khan is one of the best teachers I've had. The videos are very concise and very clear. There's also a great series on ML on YouTube. It explains the theoretical underpinnings of the algorithms, but doesn't really show how to use them. If you want to use them, your best bet is the Python library scikit-learn.

For reverse engineering, here's a fantastic challenge site, and here's a good book that you can view online.

There's so much to do, and not enough time to do it! If you constantly work on a few things, little by little, it will all start to accumulate. Good luck and have fun this summer!

Must Have Kitchenware:

• Measuring cups. Until you get better at "eyeballing", stick with measuring cups. Additionally, it gives you a good starting point if you see a recipe online or such.
  
  
• A rice cooker. This one (EDIT: I lied, I meant this one. For $7 more than the above one, it has a slow cooker function) doubles as a crock pot as well, if you're smart about it. Leave some veggies and let the rice go, easy meal. Which leads into the next point:
  
  
• A crock pot. If you want something more extravagant than rice and beans, try learning how to use a crock pot. It's easy to make ribs or pulled pork: just leave some bbq and pork in the pot and go to class. I know I had some trust issues leaving a kitchen appliance going for hours at a time, but once you get past that it's a life saver.
  
  

  Places to Shop:
  

  
  

• The Meat Lab (scroll down to the bottom). Great prices, and great quality. It's food right from the farms at school. As the name might suggest, you can get meat and eggs from there.
  
  
• Far East Grocery. Fave place to get my oriental groceries and everything you could ever want. It's cramped, very confusing, and has sketchy lighting-- reminds me of home.
  
  

  General Tips:
  

  
  

• Clean while you cook.
  
  
• Don't buy ramen because it's "the college kid food." One cup of (filling) ramen is ~$1, maybe 60c if you're lucky, or 40-60 bucks assuming you eat 2 meals a day. In comparison, 20lbs of rice is $10, and a month's veggies+potatoes+eggs is $15, and soy sauce is $5.
  
  With all of that, you can make a month's supply of some really damn good fried rice.
  
  
• When shopping for a recipe, write out what you need. Nothing sucks more than coming home and realizing you forgot turmeric.
  
  When I'm super lazy, here's my go-to meal-- Rice, salt and pepper, cumin, with a tomato sitting at the top, and maybe some carrots. I just toss them all in the rice cooker and watch some TV.

I have SAD, so feel free to message me if you'd like to talk more about this!

Here are things that have helped me:

1. Light therapy. You can get a lamp for pretty cheap on Amazon and it has really helped me get going in the mornings during the dark days of winter. Use it in the mornings or in the middle of the day while you're studying. This is the one I use: https://www.amazon.com/Verilux-HappyLight-Lucent-Bright-Therapy/dp/B079YBGPM5
   
   
2. Diet. I know it can be hard if you're a student, but doing what you can to eat a balanced diet in the winter is super important. Make sure you're eating enough, getting enough lean protein and vegetables and avoid sugar and caffeine when you can. Try to avoid alcohol when you can, too. The caffeine thing is the hardest for me, because I'm so sluggish in the winter and feel like I need it to function. I've found that using my SAD lamp helps me wake up without coffee. Look into supplements/vitamins. When I was diagnosed with SAD, I was living in France and my psychiatrist was BIG on supplements and suggested I take some magnesium, Omega-3, and Vitamin D supplements. I encourage you to do some research and talk to your doctor, of course, but I've personally found Vitamin D supplements to be very helpful. I did a blood test when I was seeing that psych and it turned out I had crazy low Vitamin D levels at the time (like, just slightly above "your body is in shambles" level) so I've made it a point to make sure I'm getting enough Vitamin D every winter.
   
   
3. Exercise. If you're a student, try to take advantage of the ARC/CRCE. I know it's hard when you're not feeling energetic/motivated, but even just 20-30 minutes on a stationary bike might be helpful. If you can't get to the gym, get some cheap resistance bands online and spend some time each day when you get home just moving your body around.
   
   I know a lot of these things are easier said than done - it's hard to force yourself to cook a healthy meal or go to the gym when you feel like you can't get out of bed. But making these things a habit has done wonders for me. I still experience symptoms and I doubt it'll ever go away, but these small lifestyle changes you can incorporate into your routine that will make a huge difference.

Get him an

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Elegoo-EL-KIT-003-Project-Starter-Tutorial/dp/B01D8KOZF4&ved=2ahUKEwj0kseq4aPaAhUGca0KHd_bAk0QFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw2Q9Q8GbH_DBg62eJVVtDYT

It let's you build electronics and program them in C++. It comes with a PDF guide with lessons and examples. And it comes with a bunch of electroncos to get you started. It's amazing.

It's an Arduino off brand. It's exactly the same as an Arduino, since it's open source, and it's way cheaper. He will love it.

Search for Arduino projects on YouTube to see some things people have made. You can make almost anything with it.

C++ is a language he's going to have to learn anyways. He will learn it in school too. It's a good idea to get a jump start on it. And it's pretty easy to learn.

This is coming from a post graduate mechanical engineer. I wish I had one when I was in school. I learned more about programming and electroics with this kit than i did in class. I'm a much more hands on type of learner. It's cool to see code effecting the real world. You also get to learn how certain electronic parts work with code.

Also check out /r/Arduino it's a very active subreddit.

If you have any other questions just ask.

Go out and buy K&R's "The C Programming Language". It's about 50 bucks on Amazon, and it's the definitive guide to C.

C++ is a derivation (and in fact, a strict superset) of C. So, anything that works in C works in C++. The book will get you acquainted with pointers, structs, and all the things that make C totally different than Java.

The best way I can describe C++ is if Java and C had a bastard child-a lot of the concepts from Java (object orientation, a class library, etc.) translate pretty directly, but a lot of stuff (pointers, memory allocation/deallocation, structs, unions) come from C. I find that these topics are much easier to learn through C rather than C++.

C doesn't contain much resemblance to Java because it has no object orientation (i.e. you can't have "objects", nor can you have "object methods" which only act upon the data in that object) which makes it a very weird experience for someone with only Java programming experience, but being able to program in straight ANSI C is an invaluable skill and it will put you WAY ahead in 225.

Here's a link. Trust me, don't rent this book, BUY it. You will use it for years to come.

Also, if you want a book that strictly covers C++ (I would only recommend this after you go through all of K&R), go ahead and get this one. It's easily the best C++ reference I know of.

1. Start looking at basic programming, specifically in C. There are a lot of good tutorials and books. I like this one.
   
   
2. Your first year, the hardest class will be ECE 220 in the Spring. The hardest overall are ECE 385, 391, and 411, and CS 374. Don't worry about those yet.
   
   
3. Look at scheedule for scheduling. Be sure to take ECE 120 in the Fall. The rest of your schedule doesn't really matter. It will probably be calc, chem, and rhet.
   
   
4. Breathe.
   
   
5. Yes. Plenty of engineers party.
   
   
6. Study, especially in a group. Everyone is in the same boat, so learn to work together.
   

I was in the same boat recently. I joined STEM mainly because I inspired by the greats (Feynman, Sagan, Hawking, and so on) that I grew up watching and reading about. They explained the big ideas and I got all excited and wanted to solve them. Over the years I got to into the weeds, fatigued, lost passion, and forgot about why I joined STEM. You just have to find that same passion that made you pursue STEM in the first place again.

​

Honestly everyone goes through this. Richard Feynman went through this and was "disgusted" with Physics. After doing some soul searching he rediscovered why he loved Physics again. He talks about this in a book of his "[Surely Your Joking Mr.Feyman](https://www.amazon.com/Surely-Youre-Joking-Mr-Feynman/dp/0393355624/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536790260&sr=8-1&keywords=surely+youre+joking+mr+feynman)" and there's a youtube vid somewhere but I can't find it for some reason.

I heard this one calling:

https://www.amazon.com/3000-Hooks-Steering-Wheel-Yellow/dp/B004HNT4WQ

And keep an eye on Craigslist.

(But fun rides in focus? I highly doubt it. Since Focus is like fleet cars, especially for ZipCar or so. So do keep an eye on if recently there are fleet car stolen as well.)

Other than that, good luck bruh. This is only acceptable if and only if the person who stole it fits a V6 or V8 into your engine bay and straight pipe it.

Yup. It's an extremely powerful calculator that very few people know about because everyone would just go buy TI stuff. Honestly felt like cheating sometimes when I took exams with it.

​

It looks like the FX-991EX ClassWiz is the newer model though.

https://www.amazon.com/Casio-FX-991EX-Engineering-Scientific-Calculator/dp/B00ZZ93346

https://www.amazon.com/Aroma-Housewares-uncooked-Exterior-ARC-150SB/dp/B0055FSN0Y/ref=sr_1_3?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1473739002&sr=1-3&keywords=rice+cooker
Best Selling one on Amazon is $37 new with 4.4 stars. Your price may be a little high.

Amazon has window tint that just clings to the window. It's not that expensive and it easy to remove and doesn't ruin anything since it just clings. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000HE57JS/ref=ya_aw_oh_bia_dp

See if you can find a copy of https://amzn.com/1259096955. It's an excellent supplement.

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Computing-Systems-gates-beyond/dp/0072467509

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Computing-Systems-Gates-Beyond/dp/0072467509

Look for a PDF of this book somewhere. I don't have one.