1. Contribute to an open source project. It gives you a great experience in real-world coding, as opposed to the seemingly-meaningless assignments one often gets in a class. Plus, it's great to put on your resume and in some cases can serve as a way to get connected to potential future jobs.

2. Get a summer internship where you actually do coding. It should pay half-decently and is useful for many of the same reasons as 1).

Also, I think encouraging blooming coders to just go out and hack something up is worth pushing.

edit: also, hate to be "this guy", but there's a grammatical error here: 5. Don't blow off you're non-CS/ECE/EE classes!.

This depends... I would not skip a Gen-Ed class if:

- My grades depended (directly or indirectly) on my attendance. Surprisingly this wasn't too often, most profs had all notes posted via CMS. Usually I'd attend 100% up until the results of the first exam.

- The professor was highly distinguished in his field

- I determined that I learned more by activity/doing/hearing in the class than simply reading up on the subject (often strongly linked to the item above)

There's no point in wasting your time with a class that you can skip and discover the subject matter on your own later (which is much more fulfilling). I usually caught up on sleep or worked on my own projects. =)

Gen Ed doesn't mean there's one set class that people have to take. It's just a general area requirement that's needed.

Not being able to do anything but math/code? That honestly sounds horrible to me.

I do a lot of stuff just for fun with other people or without at our own tempo (usually faster). Occasionally I also visit lectures in philosophy. And they would not teach you unicycling, juggling, and walking on a slack rope anyway.

(And it's not math/code in university for me, it's math and math only that I have to do to get my degree.)

I was bred ,born and raised in India .. and received a pretty well rounded education.I like to think we can do a little more than write code ...:)

Loved it.

The reason to do well in non-CS classes is that when you start letting yourself slide in one area it's quite easy to keep doing so. It's simpler to just say "I always do well in classes."