In short, I really liked the Introduction Week, though there are moments that I think

could be improved.
There were quite a lot of activities this week. I think they could be divided into
groups:
1. General Information
Welcome and Plenary Session
2nd years Q&A
STC kickoff session
T-skills workshop
FIND
2. Lectures
Talk cybersecurity
Alumni Talk
Talk game development
Workshop 1-4
3. Other
Tech Fair
Kickoff Challenges

Starting off with the group one, I think that these activities were inspiring and
informative. We were told about important stuff like our online portal, mental
health, schedule, deadlines, commitment, etc. There were many things that I
understood or knew already, but there were also things worth noting, too. For
instance, it was nice to hear the experience of students who are now in the
second year of the program. One particular piece of advice from a student,
Shay, that I remember is that it may be beneficial for us to focus on 4
subjects at a time instead of 5 if we feel like we won’t pass all the exams.
That’s what he did: prepared for 4 exams rather than 5 and then passed the
last one in August. If he were to prepare for 5 subjects, he may have failed
more than one exam.
Without getting into much detail about other activities in this group, the
information was helpful and cleared any remaining confusion. I submitted my
ISP, got my schedule for the semester, was told about how the courses are
going to be evaluated, and got some insight into what to expect from the
upcoming courses.

Group two. Although I did get some understanding as of what to expect from
the BCS program, I think that these lectures did not represent the program or
UCLL. The lectures were almost completely theoretical, while UCLL is a
university of applied sciences. I expect that our courses will involve much
more practice than it was this week.
Frankly, I rather more disliked than liked the theoretical lectures, as I felt like
it was too generic and a lot of material to remember. There is, though, the
other side of the coin: particularly, WS3 – Infrastructure felt like it was too
much practice for someone who didn’t have knowledge about the information
in question before. It was a lecture about wifi and how scammers manipulate
it to profit, whether materially or not, from other people. During the lesson,
the teacher showed us the insides of the processes that follow it, which
included many yet-to-be-understandable numbers and commands, and
though it was generally interesting, I think it is a rough start for someone who
starts getting into IT. In my opinion, it is the kind of information that most,
including me, forget soon after attending the lecture.
What I did like from this group were the WS2 and WS3. It was a nice balance
between theory and practice. The lecturers gave us some insight into the key
points about the stuff we were about to do, and after that, we got a bit of nice
hands-on experience: drawing some simple stuff using Javascript in WS2 and
taking a look at what the computer looks like inside in WS3.

In terms of inspiration, Alumni Talk was one great source. It was nice to see
graduates talking about how they continued their journey in IT and what they
had to face. Burnout is a concern one should be aware of while working on
any job, and I was relieved to see that after many years (20+), people still
were passionate about programming. It was important to me to hear this
because programming is like a hobby to me, and if I get burnt out doing it, I’ll
both lose my job and the hobby.

One thing I didn’t like about the introduction week overall is the big breaks.
Some of them, as I remember, were as long as 90 minutes. Were it not for the
table football we played at campus during the breaks, it would be boring to
wait for this much time before the other activity started.

Moving on to the last group, tech fair was like a cherry on top and a switch of
the atmosphere between the workshops. It was great to test the various and
different activities out. Drunk driver struck me the most, as it highlights the
importance of driving sober. It was also something that both gave me
motivation to continue programming and made me excited about my journey
in the university, as not only it was created by students studying at UCLL, but
also a project I am to get my hands on with my peers in the future.

Lastly, the activity I enjoyed the most was the Kickoff Challenges. It’s what I
came to this university for: practice and teamwork. I’m not sure whether the
point of the activity was to do the assignments together, but as my fellow
students and I sat together, we helped each other out to solve the tasks
given to us. The fact that we sat there collectively gave me energy to solve
one exercise after another while working with others. It only made me sure
that pursuing a BCS degree was an obvious and correct choice for me and
also made me realize how much I love working in a team.

All in all, I am grateful for the welcoming experience UCLL gave us in the
week that precedes the start of the program.