First Year and COVID with Paul Clarke and Utkarsh Sharma

Matt: 0:00

Hi everyone. And welcome to the Router, the official podcast of the UQ Computing Society, where we explore the human side of tech. I'm your host, Matt filling in for Liv this week. And today we'll be having a chat with Utkarsh Sharma and Paul Clarke, both first year students at UQ studying computer science. Today, I'll be talking to them about their experiences at uni and especially how it has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hi there. Um, firstly, can you please introduce yourselves and what you studying?

Utkarsh: 0:39

Uh, my name is Utkarsh and I'm a first year student doing computer science from UQ.

Paul: 0:45

Hey there. My name is Paul Clarke, um, and I'm a first year student, uh, studying currently engineering and computer science.

Matt: 0:52

Oh, sweet. Thanks. Um, first question I have to ask considering it's exam week, how has"SWOTVAC" or exam week been so far?

Utkarsh: 1:01

Well, considering we only had four days of SWOTVAC. It was, uh, it was quite interesting. It wasn't much SWOTVAC. It was mostly just stress and a lot of stress.

Paul: 1:12

Mine's been a little better since I've. Um, my first exam is on Friday, so I've got the equivalent of, uh, around two weeks of SWOTVAC, because I've been having a great time.

Matt: 1:22

That's good. I've been in the"one week" category where I just have one week of normal SWOTVAC and then I'm straight into my one exam. Um, but yeah, I mean, like I find it a bit annoying how they just removed, I guess they just put exams in the first week. Yep.

Utkarsh: 1:38

Yeah. I don't know. I don't appreciate that at all. Considering I had one exam like Wednesday. Yep.

Paul: 1:44

And I mean, in comparison to first semester when there was three weeks of SWOTVAC, it's definitely a big change to this semester. Yeah.

Matt: 1:53

Yeah. I mean it's yeah. Big change. And since it's your first year, I guess you don't have much experience with this SWOTVAC tradition.

Utkarsh: 2:03

Yeah, exactly. Well, there was SWOTVAC back in high school and stuff, I guess.

Matt: 2:09

Yeah. Kind of. Speaking of high school. How's that been like the transition from high school to university?

Utkarsh: 2:15

Well, I think it's, I think it's been interesting and I think COVID's affected a lot of the transitioning, but it's actually been quite like, I actually almost prefer uni because, you know, uni's like subjects, you can pretty much do and that you like, which, you know, high school there, some subjects, which I didn't really like particularly, but uni's completely different from that. And there's only four subjects, which is also like a big plus as well. So you just feel like there's less workload. So, you know, I feel like the transition's actually been, I think I've had it better than most people in terms of that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Paul: 2:48

Yeah. I, I definitely agree with you there Utkarsh. Um, the transition from high school to uni has been pretty good, honestly, COVID, hasn't really affected their, I say too much of that, but yeah, it's definitely been a lot more fun since we're doing courses that we actually really like now.

Matt: 3:00

Um, yeah. Not having to do English or anything. That's always. Yeah. And they're like your, your study habits from high school do they apply well to uni as personally, I found a lot of the time I was like my first semester, if you need, it started a train wreck because I had no idea how to study properly. I wasn't used to the idea of like independent study.

Paul: 3:26

I think I had that same experience there. I had a lot of good habits in high school. And first semester of uni, when things became relaxed, all those good habits kind of went out the window.

Utkarsh: 3:39

Yeah. I feel like I had at yet a different experience to you guys because I think I found that I was able to translate most of my study habits from high school, like decently like, like alright into uni. So I didn't have much problem. I do agree with Paul, like when stuff got lax, I was, I was kind of like, alright, what do I do now with my time? I didn't really know what to do. So, but it sort of in that time, I sort of like use that extra time to like develop my own skills. So like doing a bit of extra stuff on the side as well. So that's like, despite the fact that first, most everyone says first year is meant to be easier than like the rest. And it's meant to be like typically quite easy. And that's what I found as well, just because of the fact that I think I had good study habits from high school, which kind of made it a lot easier as well to manage them.

Matt: 4:27

I think I still, I still feel like I'm developing those study habits and especially I relate to the thing where like, when you don't have much, uh, do you not just assessment, I just sit doing nothing, which isn't very effective. Um, yeah. Anyway, I was just, I guess yeah. Curious about like so far at uni, um, what, what have you found like the most valuable for like your experience and things like that Like, is it the lectures that you, so is it like extracurricular things? Like what's been the nicest part of uni so far?

Paul: 4:56

Honestly, I think the most valuable thing I've found so far has to be UQCS. I mean, like, I think the courses are like, I've been really useful as well, um, that I've got into, but just the sheer amount of experience, um, tech talks and of course pizza that comes through the society has been one of the most awesome things that I've found. Um, definitely something you wouldn't find easily in high school. Yeah.

Utkarsh: 5:26

I feel like, obviously I agree with Paul, but the other aspect I feel like is one of the things I found really enjoyable about uni is like, it's a lot easier to make friends with people because everyone has the same interests as you. And like one of the best ways to do that is obvious three, obviously through all these societies. And, you know, I obviously, I agree with Paul with all the free food, obviously you never cause I'm a big sucker for all that stuff. So that was a big plus as well. But, you know, especially in the, well, I guess COVID has affected a lot of the tutes and pracs, I guess kind of hard to socialize with people as much as I would've wanted, but like in second semester when we did started having in-person like some of them were in person pracs, it was really fun to get to know people and like put a name to the face because I'd been talking to people like in lectures that I had didn't really know who they were, like, how they look like something like that. Right. But then when I got to these pracs and actually met them, you know, it's sort of like putting a name to a face and then, you know, help kind of just helped me like kind of develop friends. And I'm sure you can kind of agree with this Matt. Like the people you've met in your first year degree, are like still friends with you now.

Matt: 6:35

Yeah. I mean like, um, I guess to an extent there are a few people who have stuck around with the whole time, but I have noticed that my like friend group, I personally goes along with a lot of like what classes I do. Like if I don't have a class with someone, I just, maybe that's just because I'm a bad friend. I don't know. But like, uh, I guess, yeah, it really helps if you like stuff that the people who like in your degree and things like that, and you'll go in the same path and like the same speed and everything doing the same courses and things like that. What, like what sort of courses where like in person, was it like programming or other practical courses or?

Utkarsh: 7:12

CSSE2010 and for the people who aren't at UQ, introduction to computer systems course, and it all involves quite a lot of like circuit building and stuff like that. So that was, there was an option to make it online, but I felt like that'd be too difficult due to the nature of the course.

Matt: 7:32

Yeah. I, I, yeah. As someone who did 2010, what was it a year and a half ago? I think. Um, yeah, I don't think I would have been possible to get through that course without some sort of practical component, like, or at least like a simulation of it, because a lot of the time you spend like on breadboards and things like that, right. Like wiring up stuff, I believe your like main project is a hardware kind of, you know? Yeah. You got your little washing machine simulator this time, right? Not like asteroids or anything but washing machine. Uh, yeah, but I guess, um, I it's a good segue into, in general, like COVID, um, I probably spent, I don't know, three or four weeks, at least I remember in semester one in-person. And then, Oh man, it was, it seems like foreign to me having, having lectures in a room with other people sitting there.

Paul: 8:32

Yeah. I remember that so well, because personally I really, Um, enjoy, um, going to, I, I really enjoyed going to lectures and meeting new people and all that. And I think in those three weeks we had in semester one, I actually met a couple of good people. Right. But then suddenly everything just disappeared with COVID and all that. And I haven't been in touch with them at all lately and it's just not, so it's kind of a little bit sad really, but, um, I kind of wished that, um, in semester one we had the whole, obviously the whole semester to do, um, more uni side of stuff. Um, that would've been a lot more funner, but, um, I guess doing everything from home also had a little bit, some benefits here and there because you get to sleep into, um, whatever time and then wake up and do your stuff

Matt: 9:18

So it's just like, I guess you wake up and you have a lecture in five minutes. I'll open up the zoom app on my phone. Yeah, exactly.

Utkarsh: 9:27

Perfect. Perfect timing. You're brushing your teeth while watching.

Matt: 9:31

Yeah.

Utkarsh: 9:36

Well I quite agree with Paul here. You know, I feel like, but I'm going to say maybe a bit of controversial opinion. I didn't mind the fact that everything was online except for the social aspect, like the socializing aspect. I didn't actually mind everything being online because you know, traveling time to uni, especially for me, it was probably one of the biggest things. It's almost like one hour or one and a half hours sometimes. And like it like saved almost three hours of journey, like every day to go into uni and going out of uni. So, you know, it think because of all this COVID stuff, I may take more stuff online that, that, you know, that is possible. You know, it's like, I wouldn't take like electrical engineering course online, but maybe something like coding course, I may be more inclined to take it online now just because I kind of, I can see that, you know, it's actually worked for me. Like it hasn't been too bad for me. So that's kind of good in that aspect as well. I guess for me.

Matt: 10:33

I guess one other thing that I don't think many people were thinking about is consequences of COVID means that online teaching is going to be even after COVID as you, as long as there are UQ students outside of Australia who can't get back in, there's going to be online teaching as an option for quite a while. I imagined like about a year a so. So it's going to affect a lot the uni experience, even not, not just this year, but next year too, which I guess is a bit of, and it might even affect like forever how uni is taught. Cause I'm sure they're saving a lot of money, you know, not having lectures in person or room bookings or anything like that. You can just run it from your house or whatever. And people seem to have a lot more technology now to like, like, uh, using iPads and all of that to do that lectures. So yeah, I feel like it's going to change things long term.

Utkarsh: 11:28

We'll see, we'll see how this kind of affects our uni experience, I guess is a long-term as well. Yeah. Yeah. You're in your third year. So I guess it's almost almost over for you.

Matt: 11:37

I still have, I still have like two more years to go, but like, yeah. But uh, I just hope this, I hope there's a return to normality sometime soon. Yeah. Can't hope for anything. Um, so Paul, you mentioned you were doing engineering. So at least in my one semester experience of engineering, there was this big team project called ENGG1100 and follow-on 1200 that I never did, but that was, I guess the bulk of that experience was just meeting up with my team friends and working on this hardware, like robot, something like that. Um, so I guess COVID affected that. How was that experience?

Paul: 12:20

Yeah. Well, um, yeah, so we also did the, um, autonomous landmine, your project for ENGG1100. Um, and initially it started out, um, as was intended for the course right for the first three weeks. But then, um, after that there was a whole, um, change in like the course completely. So in the end we would actually, um, engineering the robot anymore. We were really only kind of making the design for it online. Um, and with our teams, those are, those are also, um, just literally meeting up online on zoom, uh, for just for our team meetings and all that. And I remember for our, um, like our sort of, kind of interim, um, demo day, if you will, um, halfway through the semester, that was the first time I think I met, I had, um, everyone in my team face to face apart from one. And then at the end of the semester, like at the very last point at that demo day was the first time in the entire semester that I actually saw my entire team. Um, so it was, it was pretty bizarre, but it, it was, um, it wasn't like a, definitely a big shame that we couldn't engineer our, but in the end we had a lot of fun making it and would have been a lot of, lot of, definitely more fun to actually engineer it ourselves.

Matt: 13:43

Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, the bulk of my fun was testing it on the final day and then everything was like breaking, but it was so funny how it was all breaking.

Paul: 13:53

Likely thing for us was that, um, with the, with the coding side of it, I was on the coding. Right. Um, and pretty much I, I coded it. Right. But I never actually had to test if the code would work or not. Right. I would only. I just only had to comment it. Right. And pretty much I was told at that point that the tutors would know if your code would work or not. Um, and so I kind of trusted in that and we ended up with a really good mark in the end. So I'll trust them.

Matt: 14:20

They didn't actually run the code. Cause it's all like a design project now. Right. So they just have a look at your design and they, yeah. Well, that's interesting. Cause I found the most difficult he was debugging and you kind of debug when you're just writing code, like from, from uh, what's it called without testing. That's interesting. Well, I guess there's not really any other option, right? Like they can't make you do.

Paul: 14:47

Yeah. I mean, like if we're not engineering a robot, we can't really test the code out. Yeah.

Matt: 14:52

I'd heard in other courses, whether it was like solo or maybe small team projects wet, they actually sent out parts like, Oh yeah. Or something like that, but with the 6 person and that's probably not realistic. And then it's also like everyone's going off different places. I have to keep remembering that people aren't all in Brisbane just waiting at home. And there are people who've gone to like all different parts of the world just to be back with their families.

Paul: 15:19

With ENGG1200. So like the course after ENGG1100 that I did this semester, we actually had a mix of people in our team. Right. So we had a mix of external and flexible delivery students. So I think we had, um, most of us were flexible delivery who came to uni, but then we had, um, um, someone who was like literally doing the course from China. And then there was someone else who was doing the course from Rockhampton. Right. So that, that was pretty much, um, our team. And I know one of my other friend's teams, right. He had a course. So he had a team that was, um, like I think two or three flexible delivery students, including himself and the rest were external delivery from just all around Australia and a bit of China, I think as well. So I think definitely the whole COVID situation has made the teams a lot more flexible

Matt: 16:18

And I guess yeah. For it, for a hardware project, that would be weird. That there's only like one or two software team projects and even those, uh, yeah, like I, I just finished my third year, uh, DECO team project. Um, and we had the privilege of being able to just meet up in person every week. Cause we're all, you know, in Brisbane all come into uni. So that was a nice, refreshing change. It just sort of felt like normal. Um, of course we had to wear masks in the studio. Yeah. Things like that. And nice. Um, I guess the next question is now that you've done your first year, uh, overall, how have you, I guess, was it better, worse than you expected?

Utkarsh: 17:05

That's a bit of an interesting question.

Matt: 17:05

I guess, I guess this sort of point have been, has been like brushed her in a few previous ones as well, I guess like on a grand overall, like rating, is it good or bad or yes. Yeah.

Utkarsh: 17:23

I feel like it's good. It could have been better obviously, but you know, I feel like there are definitely some good aspects, I guess, to come out of all the, of the situation, as unfortunate as it was, I guess there are some good aspects that came out of it, some bad ones. So, you know, I don't, I didn't mind it as much as some other people may have in other disciplines because, you know, computer science, a lot of it was quiet, like doing it online. Wasn't really much of a problem, much of an issue, except like obviously with the exception Of some courses. So, you know, I didn't feel like I was missing out on too much in terms of the learning aspect of the, instead of like the learning side of things. Yeah.

Paul: 18:12

I think, um, in comparison to high school, I mean, uni kind of blows things out of the water. I mean, yeah. Um, first semester, yeah. Obviously it, it had its kind of downfalls with the completely online side of things, but I think in that sense semester two kind of redeemed it, um, because we kind of got the uni experience in semester two, um, which is still better than nothing. Right. And I think even if semester one was online, I think you, since UQCS was still doing a lot of their things, like from the online events and all that, we still felt kind of included with the whole, um, uni life. Right. So I don't think it was all bad. Yeah.

Matt: 18:53

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think having those communities set up from like move to online, help helped things quite a bit. Just keeping everyone involved. I don't know if the, the social events and things like that, um, were as good of a substitute as the real thing, but I guess at least seeing a few faces. The whole cliche of zoom, social events. Ah, yes. Yes. Nice. I mean, hopefully we can have real in-person events. Um, I guess for the remainder of you, like your degree, do you have any plans and then did you have any like ideas of what you wanted to do? Um, and like, if so, have they been affected by COVID at all? Like,I guess personally I've had a lot of plans that I've just been thrown completely out because of, um, COVID that I was planning to do before I graduated.

Paul: 19:53

Um, yeah, definitely. Um, I know you guys already know, but um, I definitely wanted to go on exchange to Korea in semester two next year. Um, had had it all planned out that sort of thing. And then I was kind of hit with the, uh, um, next year or exchanges are canceled due to COVID. That was, that, that sucked a lot since now I have to replant a lot of my courses and all that, but I mean, what can you do? Um, so there's the, so that's obviously kind of a bummer and all that. Um, but I think before I graduate, um, I'm still working for like a lot of experience in that sort of sense. So, um, my current goal is to get as many internships as I possibly can for the moment, because I reckon that like getting those internships will give me that experience and insight. I need to kind of give me an understanding of what I want to do in the future. So kind of my big goal before i graduate is internships. Yeah.

Utkarsh: 20:51

Yeah. That's quite a big thing as well. And I feel like, you know, I feel like, uh, like joining the societies, especially UQCS helps quite a lot with that. Um, and you know, um, I guess I'm kind of looking forward, just continuing my degree as it is, because I didn't, I guess I didn't really have grand plans like Paul it of going on exchange or something, you know, I was just content, but just doing my degree at UQ. So I wasn't, it didn't, it doesn't, I don't think clearly it has affected much of my plans anyway. Not that cause just cause I didn't have many plans like on like what to do specifically.

Matt: 21:28

All right. Fair enough. Yeah. I guess it affects people differently in different ways. Um, I guess my final question, uh, in terms of like your career path, I know you're very early in your degree, but this is a question that a lot of people love asking first years. Uh, do you have an idea of what sort of career you want to go into when you graduate like a software engineer or any other sort of

Utkarsh: 21:53

Well, um, my plan was that I've I guess like everyone in the, but I guess I'm, I'm wanting to go into data science. Yeah. It's quite, yeah. It's quite a, I guess it's just, it's just the thing where it's at, I guess nowadays, I guess I, from saying that, so I guess I'm just joining the bandwagon and. Exactly. So that's kind of what I want to be in three, four years, depending on, you know, what I'd do with my degree.

Paul: 22:23

Yeah. Look, I think I've had my eye on a bit of like front-end web development a little bit. Um, but part from that, I still kind of lack the experience that I want before I make a solid decision. That's why I'm, I'm still looking for those internships.

Matt: 22:40

Yeah. I think experience is the most valuable thing. Like that's what I've been trying to do to get experience in as many things as possible, like trying out and math stuff and try out like backend work and things like that. And I think that's like, you've, you've got plenty of time, I think to try all these things out, like you doing three year degrees, I think three, three or four years ago. So, um, yeah, you got another one or two summers to experiment and try things out and you can even do stuff like, I guess during, during the year, just like casual jobs and there's plenty of opportunities, I guess you're really well set for all those different things.

Utkarsh: 23:18

Exactly know the future is uncertain, especially nowadays. So, you know, who knows, who knows what our degrees will take us, you know? Yeah.

Matt: 23:25

Uh, I guess any, any other final comments or, or words or any advice to you on, I don't know what advice you can give as a first, but yeah,

Utkarsh: 23:39

I think we've said everything that needs to be said in interviews also to any, uh, employees looking out who are listening to this, if you are looking for prospective interns, uh, you can always feel free to message us and hit us up on Slack. Our Slack handles, are,@Utkarsh Sharma. So just my name. Yeah.

Paul: 23:59

And mine is@filez.

Matt: 24:05

Um, yeah. So you heard it here first, if you're looking for a first year, um, software developer or anything like that, then you know who to call. Um, and yeah, I guess that that's pretty much it for the podcast. So thanks so much again for coming along. Um, you sharing your experiences and things like that were fantastic and really insightful,

Utkarsh: 24:26

Thank you for having us.

Paul: 24:29

Thank you.

Matt: 24:31

That's all we have for you today. And we hope you'll join us in two weeks for the next episode of The Router until then, you can join our community at slack.uqcs.org.