Reflecting on my Purdue Experience

Semester 1 this year, I was fortunate enough to be accepted to attend Purdue University in Indiana on an exchange program. Having read online about the prestige and difficulty of their Computer Science course, I was worried about how difficult I would find the course and my ability to manage a full-time course load with my part-time job.

One of the first big differences in the coursework was having graded homework due every two weeks; this was on top of the assignments and tutorials I was used to from my home university. Lecturers also expected you to have already completed textbook readings before class and jumped deeper into subjects from the start of a lecture, so I also had to fit in time for my readings. The added stress and deadlines led me to use a time management app called Shovel, which helped me stay on top of deadlines and readings; Purdue provided this for free and was a total lifesaver.

The biggest thing I gained from my experience was a new community. On-campus life at Purdue is very different from Curtin. I believe this is due to more students living on campus, bigger student clubs and more spaces to study and hang out with friends. The community I found was a club called Purdue Hackers, a group that met every Friday night and "hacked" into the early morning. We weren't hacking into computers; we hacked on projects and helped encourage each other to try new technologies and make software. They challenged me to grow my skills, and joining the club was definitely the highlight of my experience at Purdue.

Figure 1: A photo of me demonstrating a project I was working on to other Purdue Hackers.

I have brought some of my learning back to Curtin with me. I still use the Shovel app and now read ahead of my lectures, which has helped me this semester as I dive into more complex topics. I am still yearning for an experience like Purdue Hackers; maybe next year, I can work with COMSSA to create a similar experience on campus.