Semester 1 of CS @ CMU

Fall 2025

Extracurriculars: ScottyLabs Tech Team, Mayur SASA Freshman Rep

Reflection

The main CS curriculum is standard for any CS major. I enjoyed 15-122 the most and 15-151 by the end of the course. I took a total of 56 units with 50 factorable units. It was a good introduction to college life with a workload which was serious enough to remind me I need to study, but also allowed me to balance a social life quite well. I met quite a few wonderful people this semester with similar and different interests. I often felt overwhelemnd with work especially when the seemily perpetual midterms started to coincide but I also learned how to manage my time. Overall I consider this semster quite fruitful.

All in all: If you’re considering CMU for CS, you should come.

My personal tips and goals for next semster and new students:

1. Find time to exercise and be healthy (eat breakfast?)
2. Avoid the early morning and late evening classes for when you’re busy or have no motivation
3. Go to office hours please (or ask your smart roomate)
4. Leave time to have fun (less of a goal more of a reminder to continue)
5. Everyone seems smarter than you because in some ways they are, but in other ways you’re also smarter than other people. Don’t forget that you belong
6. Do NOT underestimate the workload. 50 hours a week is no joke.
7. Sell your blocks

Courses

I’m only going to mention relevant courses (essentially >9 units or interesting). Things like FIC, GPI, and Core are not really worth addressing, they were self explanatory provided I was managing my time well enough. Mostly just going to be a dump of my thoughts.

15-122 Imperative Computation

• This was arguably my favorite class of the Semester
• Incredible instructors and good assignemnts to build a fudnamental undertsanding and rebuilt the way I thought about Code
• Contract and proof based design may not be rpactical but is a good framework
• The course provides many resources to do well inclduing comprehensive assignments and extra practice
• Check-in style weekly assessments allowed me to warm up to the course content especially after a programming hiatus
• I will be TAing S26 :)

15-151 CS Concepts

• Arguably my hardest class
• Without much proof based math experience, this course will not be trivial
• It gets better with rpacite and also erbuilds the way you reason and think
• It works well to find a group of people who are familar with the problems and have them help you in increments or seek out a TA (who is trained to do the same)
• Identical to math 21-128, good to study with math majors 🙏

21-241 Linalg

• I liked linear algebra, despite struggling a bit on the exams becasue I didn’t prepare well enough and hoped high school knowledge would carry me
• Informal proof expectation was good and not to taxing
• For some reason I decided to typeset all my homework? I spend more time typesetting the matrices than doing the actual problems I think
• The CS section was quite different from the Math section but simialr enough that we coudl relate on Gram-Schmidt 🥀

80-180 Linguistics

• I think I underestimated this class and it was a very close save
• Good introduction, professor Werner knew what he was talking about and was very helpful in OH (which I only went to one unfortunnately)
• Do not take the general education lightly ;-;

24-201 TS Project Fabrication and Assembly

• This mini was a good break, 2 hours a week on Wednesdays at midday
• Unlocks other techspark courses and tools
• Fun to work with your hands as someone who is always at their laptop

98-008 Rust STUCO

• Also a good introduction with lwo pressure as far as grades go
• Helps you start building projects which really helps you learn

Extracurriculars

ScottyLabs Tech Team

• Terrier Team
• Pretty fun, I started this website in Svelte to learn it for this
• Leanring rust
• 2 hours a week on Saturdays (if it ran on my machine)

Mayur SASA Freshman Rep

• Also fun, met a lot of people in the same cultural community
• Helped set up the Diwali event at CMU

Scavenging

• Not really an extracurricular but theres a lot of old tech to be found on campus
• I found and repaired a working PSP-3000 (incredibly fun handheld)
• Got a 2012 iMac and broken Asus laptop, the latter of which is for my new server