Why hello there, First Years! It seems a new adventure awaits you! Its the start of something new -- new experiences, new memories, and new friendships. Its a time in your life that is as exciting as it is transformative. So bring your enthusiasm and passion, and take your first steps forward. Welcome to UNSW, we're so glad to have you!

But wait…how can you even begin this adventure without a map? Don’t worry! Your map is right here! From course progressions to CSE student advice and tips to the must-eats on campus, this guide will help you navigate your first-year journey. What are you waiting for? Pick your first destination below!

Don’t know where to start? Here are some popular destinations:

• Curious about who we are? Visit: Meet CSESoc
• Which courses should I take? Visit: Course Map
• Where is everything? Visit: Campus Tour
• What is coding? Visit: Starting with No Coding Experience
• Interested in student-developed productivity tools? Check out DevSoc's projects!

Prefer a list of articles? Click here!

Welcome to UNSW, first years! Your journey begins here and our first stop is ENROLMENT 🫵🫡😁!

Enrolment is a very new experience for first years, and it's a big change from high school. But fear not! Your (soon-to-be) favourite society CSESoc has you in safe hands <3! This guide takes you through it all: course enrolment, class registration, how course codes work, the different types of classes, plus all sorts of tips to help you thrive academically, socially, and more!

Nearing the end of their university degree, some students start to dream of travelling around the world before settling down. For exchange students, this journey takes on an added dimension, as they combine their studies with the adventure of living abroad. From adjusting to a new academic environment to immersing themselves into a different culture, these students experience university life through a unique lens.

In this month’s edition of Humans of CSE, we will be exploring the joy and challenges of exchange students. Two students will be sharing their thoughts and experiences with their exchange program to their respective countries.Through their experiences, we gain insight into what it truly means to step outside of your comfort zone, and how embracing the unfamiliar can lead to the most rewarding moments of university life.

Amy, 4th year Computer Science/Commerce Student

Can you start by introducing yourself, your name, where you're from, and where you went on exchange?

I'm Amy. I'm in my final year studying Commerce and Computer Science, majoring in information systems. Right now I'm on exchange at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), but only as a business student. I've finished my Computer Science part back at home at UNSW, and I’m here just completing the last few courses to fulfill my business requirements.

What inspired you to apply for an exchange program in the first place?

I've always wanted to go on exchange because traveling was always a big part of my life and my family’s. So the idea of being able to travel while studying on the side, especially the courses being pass/fail, was something that had been on my bucket list since I started uni. The question was really just when I would go.

I spent my first three years of uni in societies like CSESOC, so I was hesitant to leave during those society commitments. But in the end, I decided to go on exchange in my final semester, even though UNSW usually advises against it, since it can delay graduation or make it harder to confirm that you’ve met all your requirements. But that didn't stop me. I just had a genuine desire to travel and take on this experience. You only really get the chance to study abroad while you’re at uni, so I wanted to make the most of that before finishing.

Is there a reason why you chose Hong Kong?

Honestly, I actually would have preferred Korea at first, but when I started doing research, I realised there’s a lot more to consider when choosing where you want to go on exchange. I did my research into Korean universities and a lot of the courses that I wanted to take were not offered in English whereas at HKU, it is purely taught in English, with very small exceptions. Language was a major consideration for me, so even for day-to-day conversations, I felt like I needed to be in an environment where I could still use English predominantly.

Another big reason was to travel, particularly to Asia, so being in Hong Kong was the place to be. It's close to many countries, and China is literally just a train ride away. So being able to travel easily, live in an English speaking city while also being able to study in English were the biggest reasons I picked Hong Kong.

How did you first hear about the program, and what was the application process like? Was it competitive, and what did you have to do to qualify?

It's always been talked about. Everyone always asks, whether you plan on going on exchange, or trying one of the short-term exchanges UNSW offers, so it’s always been up in the air for me.  

The application process is actually quite long. You have to apply a year in advance, I actually applied in September of last year. Initially you preference six different universities around the world, researching which ones offer the courses you need. After that, there’s roughly a five to six months waiting period before you get an offer from UNSW. Only one offer is given, so if you don’t get your preferred choice, you might have to reapply next year. After that, there’s a long wait before you hear back, and then you start planning accommodation, flights, budgeting, and everything else. It really tests your patience.

Competitiveness also varies every year just because it's dependent on demand. The reason why it's called exchange is because UNSW can only send as many students overseas as it receives from that partner university. Some universities also have WAM requirements. So at HKU, specifically for business students, it's considered a high demand university and also has a WAM requirement. That makes it competitive, but the tricky part is that you never really know how competitive that year will be. When I applied, it seemed like Hong Kong actually became less competitive compared to previous years, but that could easily change next year.

What’s something you learned about yourself during the exchange?

Despite the application process sounding like I'm very organised, I learned that I'm actually not as organised as I thought I was, and it's actually fine to not be because there will always be things that you don't know until you get there. But in general, I think my friends back at home will know me as someone who's very organised, just with day-to-day things, and even with my exchange preparation. But for something as big as actually going on exchange, I actually made a couple of mistakes, which is fine, and it's good to make mistakes as long as you act to fix them ASAP.  If I made these kinds of mistakes back at home, it'd take me a while to try to figure out a solution but when you're on exchange, you just need to act on them very quickly. I realised I can actually fix things pretty quickly when I have to. Back home I try to stay organised so I don’t end up in those situations, since I’m usually bad at making fast decisions, but exchange really forced me to adapt.

What troubles did you experience before or during your time on the program? For example, cost and cultural differences?

Despite having friends in Hong Kong, I never asked them about how they pay for things, so I purely went on exchange with just my Wise card, which is equivalent to Revolut or UpBank, like an international travel card, and I didn't bring a lot of cash. But then once I arrived here, I actually found out that to top up their version of the Opal card, which is called the Octopus card, and also to pay for things like my accommodation’s air conditioning, washing machine, etc. All these things require cash, and a lot of stores don't take cards either. They only take payments through their Octopus card, which can only be topped up using cash. So I really needed to find a way to get cash ASAP because travel cards like Wise have a limit on how much you can withdraw every month before you start to incur a fee. So I won't lie, I did crash out a little bit, but it's all good now.

Was there any time you felt homesick and how did you deal with it?

Surprisingly, I haven't sat by myself and been upset or terribly homesick yet. It’s because the past two months that I've been here have been very busy but sometimes when I got off phone calls or even when I first left Sydney and my parents at the airport, I was a bit teary, but I didn't cry at the airport because I told myself I shouldn't. Though it's perfectly fine to cry, I was like, if I'm by myself at the airport right now and I start crying, there's no point because I'm literally just going to be crying in the line waiting for security all by myself.

It does get upsetting sometimes. To deal with it, it’s important to surround yourself with people and find friends in exchange. I live at student accommodation that the university provides that I applied for and I have a roommate, and she's also an exchange student from Europe, so I just got really lucky to have someone who is also sharing these kinds of experiences and be able to hang out with. I also text and call people from home from time to time just to do mini updates and I also recently downloaded the Locket widget with my friends so that we can share those mini updates on each other's phones as well. Time flies by really quickly on exchange, so honestly, I haven't had the time to be terribly homesick. I'm just trying to make the most of it.

What are some interesting stories of your time in exchange

When I meet other exchange students, but also local students, it's funny to realise all the stereotypes that everyone has about everyone. For example, I say “hi I'm Amy and I'm from Sydney”, and they go, oh my god, you know Bondi Beach? Do you love Bondi Beach? Do you go there every day? Then I'm like, oh yeah, Bondi Beach is a great place to be but I've probably only been there two times. Then they start asking about drop bears and Australia having a lot of snakes and spiders.

These kinds of questions make me think about how people from other countries think about Australia. Sometimes I think about trolling them about riding kangaroos at school, but then I tell myself not to do that. Some people also think the Australian accent is very distinct, so when they hear me talk they can't really figure out where I'm from. It's really interesting to hear everyone's accents from every country, and to hear about what they think about Australia when they hear that I'm from Sydney.

It also goes the other way, because when I first met my roommate she said she was from London. I remember thinking, oh my gosh she must be friends with the Queen, because that's the only thing I could think about when I think about London.

Also my roommate and I were never prepared for Hong Kong's typhoon weather, so when we first got here there was a pretty big typhoon that was happening in Hong Kong. When we heard about it, we were super stressed out, because when I hear of typhoons, I think of cyclones and hurricanes, and I think, oh my god I'm going to live through a natural disaster. Me and my roommate and some of the other European exchange students living on our floor, were like we should put our mattresses against the windows. We need to stock up and buy all the food from the grocery store COVID-19 style. We need to prepare for the worst. It's going to be like war but when it actually happened, it was just a bit of passing wind that was passing by Hong Kong.

It was really funny that all the exchange students were freaking out over the typhoon when in actual fact a bunch of the local students were telling us, oh it's fine, don't even worry about it. It's really funny to go through that experience with other exchange students because if I was on my own I'd be stressing way too much, but it's fun to stress with others.

It's just very interesting to see all the cultures kind of blend together because even though you meet people whose families are from different cultures back in Sydney, here you actually get to meet people raised in different cultures, and that’s been the most fun part of being on exchange.

Would you recommend exchange programs to other students? Why or why not?

Yes definitely. It requires a lot of effort but it's really something you can only experience in uni. It really tries to teach you to be a bit more independent and now that you're older to start trying to figure out what you want. So whether it be if you want to travel every weekend? What kind of activities do you want to do every day? How do you choose to eat your meals? Are you going to cook? Do you want to make loads of friends? New hobbies? Career opportunities? It's like a key opportunity to just do whatever you want without feeling like someone's going to judge you or anything which is the mindset that I had.

So when I came on exchange I was like, I'm going to do everything because no one's here to judge me or look at me weirdly. No one knows who I am. I will warn that you do need to be on top of it just because it is very overwhelming to try and figure out when applications are due, like how housing is going to work, how much money are you going to prepare, if you need financial assistance, etc. The experience isn't for everyone and that's perfectly fine. There are also short exchange programs if you just want a taste of living abroad. It's all up to personal preference but it is the experience that you can only get while you're in uni and it does just require you to set some time aside to just decide a year in advance if this is something that you want to do.

Do you have a final comment that you want everyone to know?

The final comment is to just do it. There are a lot of things that I hesitated to do back in Sydney like even just day-to-day things. Back in Sydney I'd be like, should I eat out today or should I try out this new restaurant, should I go to this festival or should I try out a new hobby? Then I'd say I'll do it next month or I'll do it next year, whereas when you're on exchange you don't have anything beyond the months that you're on exchange. So just do it. I tell myself that every time I try to make a decision here. Sometimes it's like a little activity that's being held 20 minutes out from where I live and, I'm kind of too lazy to get dressed and to leave the house but I'm like, no just do it. There's no other time that you're going to do it. It applies to the whole exchange experience as well. Just apply, even if you're not too sure, just because the application is so long that you might regret not applying for it. It's better to just apply for it and when you're waiting for that whole process to kind of start falling in line to then decide how you want to play out the rest of your uni life.

Patrick, 4th year Computer Science/Biology student

Can you start by introducing yourself, your name, where you're from and where you went on exchange?

Hi, I’m Patrick. I’m currently in my fourth year with a double degree in Computer Science and Biology at UNSW. Last year, I had the opportunity to go on exchange to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

What inspired you to apply for an exchange program in the first place?

My parents always encouraged me to study overseas, but I didn’t get into the universities I initially applied to overseas. So I decided to pursue an exchange instead, which turned out to be a great experience. I chose UCLA mainly because it’s a well known university in the University of California system and it’s located in LA, which felt like a cool place to live. Other options I had, like universities in Japan or Switzerland, had language barriers since many courses weren’t offered in English.

How did you first hear about the program? What was the application process like and was it competitive and what did you have to do to qualify?

I first heard about the exchange program vaguely, but didn’t know much about UNSW’s specific options until I looked into it myself by searching UNSW exchange. It was always in the back of my mind, but I only seriously considered it once I felt ready and had a clear plan.

The application process was quite challenging and mostly self directed. You need to nominate six universities and research their course offerings to find subjects that credit towards your UNSW degree. This can be tricky, especially with international universities. For example, the ETH Zurich handbook was a 200 page PDF in German, so I had to translate it manually. Japanese universities had similar language issues, while American schools like UCLA were easier to navigate but still had their own quirks.

Once you pick courses, you have to match them to UNSW equivalents. This is easier if you have free electives, but I was completing a double degree in Computer Science and Biology, so I had to carefully ensure my courses aligned with degree requirements. This involved comparing syllabuses and proving equivalency.

The program is competitive and based on WAM (Weighted Average Mark), especially for popular universities like those in the UC system. I was the only UNSW student at UCLA that term, while only one went to UC Berkeley - my first choice, but UCLA turned out great. Higher WAM students can also receive scholarships, which helps offset some costs. The application was complex and time-intensive, but definitely worth it.

What is something that you learned about yourself during the exchange?

During the exchange, I learned a lot about connecting with people in new environments. At UNSW, most of my close friends are from high school or classes where we already had common interests, so making friends felt natural. But on exchange, I met people from very different backgrounds and cultures, which was initially a bit intimidating.

Surprisingly, it turned out easier than I expected. I made some amazing friendships—some even closer than those back home. It taught me that meaningful connections don’t require a lot in common; they can grow from openness, curiosity, and shared experiences.

Leaving was bittersweet, but I still keep in touch with many friends and hope to visit them again. Overall, the experience showed me I’m more adaptable and socially capable than I realised.

What troubles did you experience before or during your time on the program? For example, like cost and culture differences?

Before going on exchange, we attended several preparation workshops, including one on culture shock. They explained the typical stages including the initial shock, adaptation, and reverse shock when returning home. Honestly, I didn’t experience much of that since Los Angeles culture is quite similar to Australia’s. It was more interesting than disorienting, with only small lifestyle and attitude differences.

The biggest challenge was the cost. Living in LA is expensive. I was lucky to have financial support from my parents and a UNSW scholarship, plus some savings from part-time work, but it was still a significant expense.

Socially, it was tough at first. Making friends in a new place takes effort, and initially, I felt intimidated because I didn’t know anyone. One day, I went through the UCLA student societies list and joined a few clubs, which was the best decision. That’s how I made most of my friends and started feeling at home.

There was also some social unrest on campus related to the Israel Palestine conflict. Students set up a large encampment in the main quad, leading to a week of cancelled classes. Police eventually cleared the area, with helicopters and tear gas, which was quite confronting to witness nearby. I wasn’t in danger, but it was a stark reminder of the different political climate.

Was there any time you felt homesick? And how did you deal with it?

In terms of homesickness, I actually didn’t experience much of it. Los Angeles felt surprisingly similar to Sydney in many ways, even though the weather was almost identical. It gets down to around ten degrees in winter and up to about thirty in summer, so it really felt quite familiar.

That said, I definitely missed my friends. To stay connected, I found a slightly unconventional solution. Back home, my friends and I would often play games together late at night, usually around 10 p.m Sydney time. But with the time difference, that worked out to about 4 a.m in LA So what I’d do is go to bed early, set an alarm for 4 a.m., wake up just to play games with them for a few hours, and then go back to sleep. It was a bit of a funny routine, but it really helped me feel close to home and stay in touch with the people I cared about.

What are some interesting stories of your time in the exchange?

Another memorable experience I had during my time at UCLA was going to a fraternity party, which is something that felt like a quintessential part of American college life. One of my roommates, who was also an exchange student from the UK, had joined a fraternity there. He invited me along, saying I should experience it at least once. I’m not usually someone who goes to parties, but I figured since I was in the U.S., I might as well see what it was like.

He took me to a “pre-party” at one of his friend’s apartments, and then we headed to the main event. The party itself was enormous, more like a small music festival than a house party. The fraternity owned an entire apartment-style building, and the courtyard had been transformed into this huge event space. The theme that night was “Blackout,” so everyone was dressed in black, with neon paint and lights everywhere. There were fog machines, music, and hundreds of students.

It was definitely unlike anything I’d ever seen at UNSW, it’s chaotic but also a lot of fun. It was one of those moments where I thought, Okay, this is the full American college experience.

Would you recommend this exchange program to other students? Why or why not?

Yes, 100 percent. It really gives you a new perspective on life. It makes you realise there’s so much more to being a uni student than just studying at UNSW. The campus culture at UCLA and in American universities in general is completely different. Because everyone lives on campus, there’s this incredible sense of community. You can just message a friend and say, “Hey, want to grab something at the dining hall?” and meet up right away. Here, it’s a lot harder to organise anything, it might take two hours just to get to campus. Over there, everything and everyone feels so much more accessible. You’re constantly surrounded by people, energy, and opportunities to connect. I think that’s what makes it so special. You really feel part of a close-knit community, and for that reason, I’d 100 percent recommend the experience.

Any last ending remarks that you want to say?

Definitely go for exchange if you can. Life is short, and this is a unique chance to grow and experience the world. I’d recommend doing the exchange as early as possible because securing spots and matching courses gets harder later in your degree due to prerequisites and WAM requirements. I found the course matching process particularly challenging, but it was worth it.

In this month’s edition of Humans of CSE, we delve into the unique experiences of an Indigenous computer science student here at UNSW.

Can you introduce yourself?

Hi I’m Isabella and I'm the Vice President at the First Nations Engineering and Science Society (FNESS). I grew up on Worimi country but my ancestors were Gamilaroi and unfortunately, a part of the stolen generation. I don't know too much information but I want to get more involved with the Indigenous community so I can learn more about myself and my ancestors. I've also been a part of The First Inventors, which was a TV show where we worked on making a drone with boomerangs as the propellers. Currently I am studying a Bachelor of Computer Science and technically I'm a second year, but I have been here for a couple of years doing part time study. My job right now is an intern at IBM where I do a lot of programming, software development, and cyber security. It's a lot of fun, I really love it.

Why did you choose UNSW?

I started Uni in 2020 but I came to Sydney in 2021. Originally I went to the University of Wollongong but I wanted to learn more than just Java. Wollongong did really well, but I wanted lower level stuff and that's why my teacher recommended UNSW because of their MIPS course, which was COMP1521. I was able to get in through Nura Gili where I did an interview, allowing me to transfer to UNSW.

When you came to UNSW what was your experience of the entry process/pathway?

It's a mixed bag. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to experience the UNSW Indigenous Pre-Program prior to joining UNSW, which is offered to potential future students, as my pathway was different - transferring from another University. When I first joined, it didn’t feel like Engineering had as much Indigenous engagement as some other Faculties. However, this was during the COVID period, and this has been improving in recent years.

I was the ambassador for the Nura Gili engineering pre-programs in 2022 which were three week intensives, like Uni but put down to three weeks. It's really intense and a lot of students struggle with it because it's a very intensive program where you do maths, design and a couple of other courses. Tyson Namok this year has put together a group to encourage more Indigenous engagement. He has coffee chats now and textbook reimbursements. This wasn't around when I first started. But it is available now thanks to Engineering’s improved focus on supporting Indigenous students. I haven't had a lot of experience with this as I have been sick but I can tell it helped a lot of students this year. Tyson also runs science and engineering student drop ins that have free food. This connects students and FNESS each term.

Does the program get a lot of students?

When I supported the Engineering Pre-Program in 2022, I only had three students that were actually in the program whereas the other programs had more students. A lot of the reasons why Engineering is not as popular is because a lot of Indigenous students come from rural backgrounds or from outside Sydney - resulting in them believing they're not smart enough to get into engineering. I want to change that and so does all of FNESS. We're trying to show them that even if they feel they’re terrible at maths, it's okay because there is help we can provide over here including Indigenous tutoring programs available at UNSW.

Is it common for Indigenous kids to believe they aren’t smart enough to do engineering?

So that is a thing that I've constantly heard when I was in high school, because we had Indigenous programs in high school where we used to go and you would get free food. We used to call it the cultural room and basically a lot of the times people would go in there for help with math but a lot of the complaints were, “Oh, I'm not smart enough to do anything related to math so I'm going to do the lowest math course”. I was also recommended to do it or other things like that and it's just very unmotivating. So when I said that I wanted to study computer science, a lot of my teachers sort of looked at me and were like, “Are you sure? it's a lot of maths” and I'm just like,  “I can learn maths” but then they were like, “yeah, but in Uni, it's very, very difficult, you should do something more interesting, like art”. The teachers weren't really encouraging towards engineering at my high school, they weren't directly discouraging it. It was just sort of like, a lot of students go through and unfortunately a lot of them do fail. It's like when something happens so many times, they sort of just go, “okay, well, are you sure? Are you positive?” They would have past students that dropped out and they'll think that you might drop out too. It was sort of like a protection thing and it definitely came from a place of love, but it did come across as kind of harsh.

Have you been able to learn much about your Indigenous heritage and family history?

I don't know a lot about my ancestors. Some Indigenous students will know everything about their ancestors but if you come from the stolen generation, there's almost nothing. Growing up in high school, it was really disheartening when everyone had a family tree and I couldn't get past a certain stage. It’s heartbreaking because then you find out about the birth, deaths and marriages of the people that you do actually have information on. Some of them were children when they had children and it also hurts because a lot of the family don't want to talk about it. So obviously if I went up to my grandmother being like, “what's my heritage like?” She would be like, “don't ask”,  as there's so many things wrong. There's definitely a bit of generational trauma.

I'm trying to find out more information about my ancestors without hurting my family but that is very difficult. Sometimes you'll find that with a lot of the identity stuff, some members in our family will just prefer to not associate themselves as Indigenous even though we are. If you go into the history, it becomes quite confronting. For my family it's pretty bad, because I believe my great great grandmother was stolen and then she was more or less just forced to have children with white people. People who are commonly a part of the stolen generation usually either don't have access or they don't know how to get access or sometimes they don't want to find out because it's just too confronting. I'm part of the belief that I would like to know that my ancestors existed. I would like to find out more about them because at the moment we're sort of pretending that they don't exist which is not fair.

Tell us about your society FNESS

FNESS is the First Nations Engineering & Science Society, and we are a community of UNSW Students - both Indigenous and friends.

For what we do, we've got the Boomerang project happening and we've also started bringing in a couple of fun events with free food, which everyone loves. We'll have stalls where we'll show off and advertise something but because we're really tiny, we can only do so much. I think we've only got about 12 members in our society, which is low, but I actually think that's just representative of how many Indigenous students do science or engineering, but our goal is to create a community. We would also like people who aren't Indigenous to learn more about Indigenous culture and if you're interested or you want to be an ally, you are welcome to join.

Do you feel a sense of community here at UNSW with other Indigenous students?

Yes and no. So, yes in terms of that there's a community and we do tend to get together when things go wrong but unfortunately due to the way the timetables are set up, there's not really time to really see everyone so the community here is very disconnected unless you're in Nura Gili 24/7.

Do you feel a cultural difference between you and your classmates?

Very often, yes but obviously not purposely. Actually a good example of this was when I was in the Makerspace for the Boomerang project many years ago. We had a mixture of different students and there were only two Indigenous students on the project with the rest not being Indigenous. So that resulted in the other students not really understanding the significance of having an elder’s boomerang and they would be like, “Oh, why don't you just do this? Just make a 3D model of it, it's still the same anyway, ” but I'm like, “No, it can’t be scanned because the boomerang is sacred”. I understood what they were saying, but there can be misunderstandings and a lack of awareness of the culture, especially when it comes to elders' items. They'd often hold it and be like, oh, this is funny, let's throw it.

So what actually is the significance of an elder's items?

So sometimes it depends on each tribe. So some cultures believe that if you take photos of this particular item, you're trapping the soul. Other times you can take photos, it's fine. But sometimes you might not be able to hold it or you need to hold it in a certain way. It's just different things. There's not really one rule but it's best to ask an elder and if you get given something that's from an Indigenous community, it's best to just make sure you understand the significance of that. So that way you don't end up either damaging the product or hurting the community. I was very picky about how the boomerang was handled but I was picky for a reason because I knew the elder behind it had already had his ancestors wronged and I didn’t want to repeat that.

What do you wish more people understood about what it's like to be an indigenous student at UNSW?

Every Indigenous student has different experiences and the best thing you can do is listen, learn and try to understand. You know, if someone is indigenous that might mean that they have a differing opinion to another Indigenous person because there's hundreds of tribes in Australia and they all have different rules. I don't know much about this Country but I know Worimi Country because I grew up there. A lot of people will say “if you're Indigenous, you must know everything about this community here” when that’s not true, they’re all different.

Do you think the tech world could learn anything from the indigenous?

Absolutely, IBM has a really cool thing which I really love where on every single one of their offices in Australia they've got this really nice plaque that states what Country they're on, which not a lot of companies do. Another thing which IBM has are these little puzzle sets, which are actually Indigenous artworks. I really like them because they're done by actual Indigenous artists. These art-works will say what Country they’re from - and it’s really nice to just sit down and put it together with a team-mate because it opens up discussion on what different symbols or parts of the art-work mean.

Did you have an indigenous person in your life that inspired you to do computer science?

In high school there was a lot of stuff with Indigenous art, but being autistic and liking computers, I wasn’t really drawn to art. This involved a lot of arguments between me and the cultural group. Although it seems counterintuitive being able to talk to them, even if it was in a way where it was probably not the most motivating, it did the opposite.

So you built a drone that used boomerangs as the propellers?

Yes and we're building another one with the help of Uncle Moogy. He allowed us to scan one of his personal boomerangs and we kind of want to test it out with different boomerangs of different shapes and sizes. The original boomerang drone didn't fly great. The boomerangs wanted to go in different directions. So it wasn't a complete success but it still flew. We're still investigating. I still want to make more things.

How intrinsic is indigenous culture to your day-to-day life?

So it sounds silly, but I believe that my ancestors are watching over me and the reason why this is important to my day-to-day life is because whenever I feel really crap or if I feel bad, I interact with birds, usually crows or currawongs. I believe that they’re my ancestors watching over me. Everywhere I’ve gone I've always had crows around. In Wollongong, I had a crow - like a wild crow that would just approach me. Here at UNSW, I had a currawong that would approach me. But the reason why I'm bringing that up is because Indigenous people have a lot of connections to the land. It's important to my day-to-day life because whenever I feel  disconnected, it's a reminder that I am connected.

And another thing that's important is that even though I don't have a lot of information about my ancestors, I still like to try and learn. I like to approach every day with the attitude that every day is another day where you get to learn something new and maybe today is the day I'll find out more about my ancestors!

What advice would you give to younger indigenous students who might be considering studying computer science?

If you're thinking of studying computer science or if you have an interest in computers, just do it. Sorry, that's very cheesy. If you're scared about mathematics, there is help. It's never too late to learn and there's no such thing as being too stupid. That's not a thing. You will be able to persevere through a lot because your ancestors could persevere through a  lot. You probably don't believe in yourself but you should. Your ancestors didn't have the same opportunity. It's probably something they would have loved to have done, a lot of them weren't even allowed to go to school.

For more useful resources:

CSESoc Discord - A great place to ask questions and get advice from fellow students!

UNSW Subreddit - This is not CSESoc affiliated, however it is popular amongst students when seeking useful advice that may have been asked by past students in subreddits. Use at your own discretion.

CSESoc Outreach aims to release monthly articles that highlight the diverse experiences of students. We invite you to submit feedback or share your own insights through the form. Your stories, advice or perspectives could be invaluable to someone navigating university life.

https://forms.gle/Vt12TthoPhGSALGf8

Richard Zhang, Andre Ford, Liem Phan

Despite being stereotyped as solitary and sedentary, CS students share surprisingly unified hobbies. Scour any computing forum, or get on the right tiktok algorithm, and you will find recount after recount claiming a supposed CS bouldering phenomena.

But is bouldering really as prominent a phenomena as the internet may suggest?

At first I considered this just another case of a perception skew, sensationalised by the demographic overrepresentation present on platforms like reddit. Perhaps patterns like bouldering and gaming we are so quick to deem as universal are a hasty consensus, magnified by algorithms and self-selection.

But then I actually started my CS degree.

I noticed that these strangely specific hobbies weren’t just online myths — they were an unignorable element of CS student culture. This article will represent the UNSW CSE demographic, and my subsequent observations and opinions. I will explore what hobbies are common among CSE students, how they cluster and compound, and how these seemingly irrelevant hobbies might shape how we approach our degrees, and maybe even imagine our futures.

What are the 'CS hobbies'?

After conducting a survey among UNSW CSE students, I have found the following hobbies most prominent among the sampled students:

• Gaming (57%)
• Musical instrument (40%)
• Coding (37%)
• Running (34%)
• Bouldering (20%)

So yes, bouldering is not the dominant force online forums might imply. But it is so niche. Specificity gives it an outsized cultural presence. The fact that 20% of surveyed CS students boulder is, frankly, notable. It warrants its unproportional attention and carries enough weight to investigate further.

Still, what’s more interesting is the underlying pattern: Why these hobbies? Why do they cluster the way they do?

Categorising hobbies: the CS archetype

A certain archetype is naturally drawn to CS — and unsurprisingly, to certain hobbies as well. Similar people like similar things, after all.

CS selects for certain personality traits or dispositions: goal orientated, and problem solvers. And many of the common CS hobbies tender a similar mentality. A student's choice to study computer science is not random, it's consistent with these deeper dispositions. The same personality that guides someone into CS will inevitably reveal itself again in their choice of hobbies.

Take bouldering, for example. It can be considered a physical manifestation of engineering/science. You solve problems, often in teams. You adapt. You try different methods and techniques. You fail. You iterate. Is it really so surprising that CS students, in a field so contractually tied to problem solving, teamwork, adaptability and creativity – would be attracted to hobbies built on the same foundation.

Students are funnelled along into both CS and their hobbies because of these personality traits, it's a predisposed route. It matters not what happened first, rather both were an inevitable becoming, guided by the very nature of an individual. It is our cognitive similarities that draw us to both CS, and our hobbies.

Upon further inspection of additional survey data, it became apparent that two striking hobby categories were emerging. Hobbies like gaming and playing an instrument had a mean uptake age of 8.7 and 7.9 respectively, with most responses clustering tightly around the 6-10 age range, as seen in figure 2.

In contrast, hobbies like running, coding, and bouldering were overwhelmingly adopted at 18-19, right around the first couple years of uni.

This clear pre- and post-uni hobby divide suggests more than a coincidence, it alludes to the possibility of certain CS pipelines. Could our career in CS be both shaped by, and a shaper of, our hobbies?

This, I think, is where things get interesting. CS students are pulled by currents of influence, invisible nudges we rarely recognise. Our hobbies predict our degree and our degree, in turn, predicts our hobbies.

Interest: the connector

But what really draws us to these hobbies? The answer lies in interest.

It’s a well enough versed point of public attention, ask most people and they would instinctively agree interests are important in guiding our careers. In a study by Rounds and Su: The Nature and Power of Interests, interests are asserted as a predictive power that can be used to predict career choice, as well as performance and success.

But interest is much more than an emotion. It can be argued that although interest elicits certain emotions such as curiosity and attention, it cannot in its own right be defined as an emotion. Interests are traitlike. They are contextualised traits that always have an object. Interest is not a blank statement trait like integrity or extraversion, interest is always in relation to something else.

Whether it be a certain activity or topic, our interest is always in relation to an external force. Interest captures the relationship between the individual, and their environment. Put the right person in the right environment and BAM interest is the most powerful motivator and tool for success.

Interest connects personality with action — it bridges internal traits with external choices.

Hobby reinforcement loops

But how does this all play into our hobbies? Lets return to our two pipelines:

1. Hobby to degree
2. Degree to hobby

Hobby to degree

Are we really intuitively drawn to our childhood hobbies? Perhaps not as purely as we like to believe.

Interest in something is not an isolated phenomena. Our childhood hobbies are determined by compounding access, environment, ability, and positive feedback. We enjoy what we’re good at, what we’re praised for, and what makes us feel accomplished. That’s how the loop begins.

Life is full of moments of coincidence and convenience. We find out what hobbies we enjoy by experimentation, but so much of what we experiment is guided by choices our parents make and situations of convenience.

In the survey responses, students often credited their hobbies to environment or proximity:

“I’ve kinda just always skated because I lived close to a rink.”
“Tennis was because of lessons I had as a kid and my friends also played.”

Just as a child will “choose” a hobby based on access and positive feedback, a teenager will “choose” a degree through the same process.

Take gaming – a hobby claimed by 50% of survey respondents.

Does gaming select for traits that indicate success in CS? Probably. But these same people could be successful in a great matter of other STEM fields.

What gaming does do is put you in a world where CS is presented as an option in life. That moment of realisation when you realise your hobby could become your career — that's critical.

You can't consider what you can't see. CS may not be a choice made because you gamed as a child, but it might not have been a choice at all without it.

Degree to hobby

Now let’s reverse the flow of events. There are two key elements here:

1. Social osmosis.
2. The snowball effect.

Social osmosis – the passive absorption of knowledge.

I’ve never seen a single full episode of Friends. But somehow, I know all six characters’ names. Through memes, TikToks, references in other shows, overheard conversations, and quiz nights I didn’t study for. I always put an extra line through my 7’s because that is what my year 5 teacher did and I thought it looked pretty. I use the catchphrases and jokes of my old classmates. There are books and songs and cafe orders I love because someone loved them first.

It’s not because I tried to pick up any of this. It just... happened.

We absorb parts of everyone and everything we are exposed to. Our lives are not solely our own. We live with pieces of all the people we meet, we leak into anyone we spend time with.

This is exactly what happens in CS. Indeed, many CS departments in universities are known for being close-knit. You don’t necessarily decide with intention, “I want to be a boulderer now.” It just becomes the default.

You hang out with CS friends who boulder.

You catch yourself nodding knowingly when someone says “V4”

You go “just once.”

You wear Uniqlo and carry a chalk bag ironically.

You’re now 70% boulderer, and you didn’t even choose it.

Friends are one of the most influential facilitators of our hobbies. They present, accompany and guide us in our hobbies. This is reflected in the survey results.

Take out the filler worlds, and “friends” is by far the most repeated word. Response after response cite friends as the reason for picking up a hobby:

“tennis was because of lessons i had as a kid and my friends also played”

“most of these hobbies are because i do them with friends”

“volleyball was complete chance - my friend dragged me into it lmao”

“Bouldering was mainly influenced by friends i met in uni”

“People around me”

And once a hobby takes hold within a subset of people, it snowballs.

To an outsider, bouldering might seem like a niche hobby, but to a CS student, it's a natural progression. Social osmosis fuels the CS–bouldering echo chamber by making bouldering feel like a natural extension of being a CS student. The same goes for running. The more it happens, the more invisible the transformation becomes — and the harder it is to tell where individual preference ends and cultural mimicry begins.

What does this all mean for the CS identity?

So what does this really mean for us – as CS students. CS is notorious for its high drop out rates (10.7% across USA universities). Imposter syndrome and career uncertainty are common struggles. But the hobbies we share — and the culture around them — might actually act as informal support systems.

For many, this creates a sense of belonging in an isolating degree. The lecture hall might feel cold and competitive, but the climbing gym doesn’t.

When you are stuck staring at your screen for hours debugging, or after you flunked that test and are questioning if CS is the right path for you… sometimes what keeps you going isn’t grit or discipline. It's your weekend run. Or that impromptu bouldering session after your tutorial. Or the ten minutes of guitar you swore you didn’t have time for.

As one student put it:

“Small wins motivate u to try big wins”

So maybe the bouldering-CS pipeline isn’t so far-fetched.
Maybe our hobbies are less random than we think.
Maybe we’re all just bundles of interest, shaped by feedback, environment, and curiosity.
And maybe, just maybe — that’s why every second CS student ends up dangling off a wall at 7pm on a Tuesday.

Written by: Summer Manning-Lees

Balancing the demands of university life is no small feat – from lectures and assignments to part-time work and social commitments. Yet, some students choose to go a step further by giving back to the community. Volunteering while studying is definitely not easy, but for many it’s one of the most rewarding parts of their university experience. It’s an opportunity to step outside the classroom, connect with others, and use their skills to make a meaningful difference.

In this month's edition of Humans of CSE, we explore various initiatives and volunteer programs which a few of the individuals from the UNSW CSE community have undertaken. Whether it is assisting migrant children in assimilating into school, to mentoring robotics or even assisting in recreational activities for those with intellectual disabilities, we delve into the unique experience of three students sharing their insights on volunteering.

Each of these causes are different, but the impacts are immeasurable. Through reading this, it is hoped that you the reader are inspired to spend some time helping a cause that you care about.

Jenny (2nd year, Computer Science)

Can you introduce yourself and tell us which initiative you volunteered for?

Jenny: My name is Jenny, I’m a 2nd Year Computer Science student at UNSW. I volunteered at a St Vincent De Paul’s program called Sparks – whose goal was to assimilate migrant children into Sydney schools. It was based in Western Sydney and every week I was placed in a primary school and interacted with the students – helping them practise their English to more confidently integrate themselves into the Australian schooling system.

What inspired you to start volunteering with this program?

Jenny: I’ve always enjoyed volunteering and helping the community in different ways. This opportunity popped up shortly after high school and its mission spoke to me because I come from an immigrant family. Learning about the different cultures from the kids that came from overseas was quite an interesting experience.

Do you feel that you’ve made a difference through this program?

Jenny: With the program, there were four groups that we separated them into every week which ranged from games, storytelling and discovery. These sorts of things came together to help them communicate confidently, making a difference in their lives.

Not only was it rewarding for us to get these kids to be more confident, we were able to actually see their confidence develop by the end of the term, as we were with the same class throughout the term. It was really nice to see them be more confident in communicating in English and seeing how that confidence enabled them to start playing with the other kids.

How did the program shape you?

Jenny: It was definitely eye-opening in the sense that there are people in similar situations like me – coming to a foreign country where they might not know the language. It definitely made me more patient and understanding with the types of situations that people can come from and it made me grow as a better communicator as well. Learning how to adjust the words I say, how I’m presenting myself, my gestures and body language was a learning experience since communicating with adults is different to children.

What challenges did you face throughout the program and how did you overcome them?

Jenny: Since the target of this program is migrant children, a lot of them were not familiar with English so there was a language barrier. Not being able to communicate or talk to them was a big challenge but the activities we ran weren't just about comprehending English, but also about using hand gestures and body language to understand English. It was also helpful that we had teachers from different backgrounds who could help translate.

Is there anything you’d wish you’d know before starting the program?

Jenny: No, everything you needed to know you learnt on the job. Even if you weren’t confident in communicating or weren’t exposed to children at all - it didn't matter because if you were willing to put in the effort you would naturally become more comfortable communicating with the kids. Everything you learn you get from the experience, the most important thing is to have an open mind.

What made you keep sticking with the program?

Jenny:I think seeing the children evolve from being shy to being more confident in speaking to us as adults and to their peers inspired me to keep going. I really liked how my efforts made them feel more assimilated into the Australian culture and school system and made me want to keep contributing to the community through other programs.  

As much as I feel like I contributed to their life they also made a difference in mine as well.

Neel (1st year Computer Science/Electrical Engineering)

Can you introduce yourself and tell us which initiative you're volunteering for?

Neel: My name is Neel and I am in my first year doing Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the initiatives I am a part of are Emu robotics; where I help teach high school students that participate in robotics competitions. In addition I am a subcommittee member for Linux society. I am part of the development subteam, which is where I make the projects including the website.

For EMU, what does a day in the life of volunteering and mentoring look like?

Neel: Wednesday is the day that has both Linsoc and EMU in it. So on wednesday at twelve I head down to the square house where I have the weekly meetups with Linsoc. I am just there to chill, talk to people, make people feel comfortable and take attendance.

EMU robotics begins at four because that’s when all the high school kids come. They come to Uni and they get into the lab, which is when I just pop in to help out with coding. I'm a programming mentor, occasionally helping with some electrical and mechanical as well but usually other mentors handle that. I teach introductory programming to the students and teach them how to make robots until eight, it's a pretty long stretch.

Through your volunteering and these programs how do you think this has shaped you? What skills have you gained?

Neel: If I hadn’t experienced EMU robotics in high school then I wouldn’t have been able to experience a collaborative and dynamic teamwork environment. The stress and the rush of working on your robot a week before the competition is something I really enjoy. You test code on the day, scream at your team-mates to do a task while you go off and do your own thing. It’s amazing. It’s so fun.

I have been able to learn teamwork skills, communication skills and socialisation skills, things I would have been able to gain through just high school alone.

But because I went to EMU I was able to experience this as you do work late sometimes. Think about it, it’s like a week before a competition, the robot's basically half done and you have to make sure everything gets done by Saturday, which is when competition is.  Then sometimes you don't even have anytime to test code, your testing code on the day, screaming at your teammates. It's amazing. It's so fun. But yeah, through volunteering, I've learned all sorts of teamwork skills, communication skills, qualities that I wouldn't have gained through just high school alone.

Can you share a moment where you felt like your contribution as a mentor made a difference.

Neel: Those small moments of mutual celebration between a student and I after I am able to help them with a question about programming. It’s an amazing feeling to see them create things with my help.

If you could say one thing to people who never volunteered before or are new to these programs? Would it be?

Neel: Working together with people who share the same interests as you in my opinion builds a stronger connection with people around you. This isn’t something that you can get from just attending lectures, tutes or even society events. If you have the time it is definitely something I recommend you give a try.

Jason (1st year Computer Science/Economics)

Introduce yourself:

Jason: Hi I’m Jason, I am a first year student studying economics and computer science. I grew up in Canberra and I’ve moved to Sydney this year for university.

Which initiative did you volunteer for?

Jason: I volunteer at RAID basketball which is run by the YMCA in Canberra. So, RAID stands for Recreational Activities for people with Intellectual Disabilities and what we do is facilitate games of social basketball between them. Our duties generally involve encouragement, teaching them how to pass and shoot, and making sure everyone is involved and having a good time. It's an amazing way for people to have that social element in their lives.

What does a typical day or session look like in your volunteer role?

Jason: The program runs every Wednesday during the school term from 6:30pm - 8:30pm - and each session is split into two halves. It starts with a slower paced game, and towards the second half it becomes a bit more fast paced - although it is still inclusive of all skill levels.

The main focus of us volunteers was to socialise with the participants - as mentioned before - and it was through these chats that we really got to know the participants better.

What has been the most surprising or memorable experience so far?

Jason: I stopped going weekly at the end of Year 12 because I moved to Sydney,  but the first time I went back to visit was at the end of Term 1. When I walked through the doors it was crazy because most of them recognised me and called out my name and it was really nice.

I think it's the personal relationships, the bonds you develop with these people, that makes volunteering worth it. I heard about people in the years above telling me about how RAID just keeps making you want to come back for more and after doing it I now understand.

How has this experience changed or shaped you personally?

Jason: In general, I improved my communications skills - it requires a bit more effort to communicate with people with intellectual disabilities, but to be honest it’s just about expressing yourself more clearly.

Through meeting all these people you gain a better insight into what life is like outside of your bubble. I went to a private school where everyone is pretty well off, but through growing your relationships and getting to know people that are living in different situations to you it really opens your eyes. It helps you appreciate the world more and what you have.

Can you share a moment when you felt your contribution truly made a difference?

Jason: Pretty much every time I go I feel like I’m making a difference, they are always smiling, always happy, just to see the joy on their faces, it’s all worth it.

One recurring moment I notice is when they score a point and run around the hall giving high fives to everyone, that just seals the deal - it’s the cherry on top. The people and the bonds you create with them, you want to keep improving your relationship with these people which is what motivates you to keep coming back.

What advice would you give someone considering volunteering with this or a similar initiative?

Jason: Volunteering is one of the greatest things you can do, it's not for you to feel good about yourself, it's about making a difference in someone else’s life. One of my teachers used to say “not to, not for, but with”.

You aren’t doing something for them to help them, but you are doing it with them helping each other grow. It’s worth it and whenever these opportunities arise I will always recommend you to go for it - you never know where it’ll take you.

For more useful resources:

CSESoc Discord - A great place to ask questions and get advice from fellow students!

UNSW Subreddit - This is not CSESoc affiliated, however it is popular amongst students when seeking useful advice that may have been asked by past students in subreddits. Use at your own discretion.

CSESoc Outreach aims to release monthly articles that highlight the diverse experiences of students. We invite you to submit feedback or share your own insights through the form. Your stories, advice or perspectives could be invaluable to someone navigating university life.

https://forms.gle/Vt12TthoPhGSALGf8

Lily Su, Romeo Abran, Liem Phan

Sometimes, the path to university isn’t a straight line. Gap years, health breaks, personal responsibilities, or simply time to figure things out - there are countless reasons why some students choose to delay starting uni. While it’s easy to feel like everyone else is racing ahead, taking a different approach can offer more space for growth, reflection and clarity.

In this month’s humans of CSE, we hear from students who took the less conventional route - those who started their computer science degree a little later than most, their stories truly show that there; is no one right way to begin uni - and that sometimes, a detour can take you exactly where you need to be.

Introduce yourself!

Shaun: I'm Shaun. I grew up in Perth, Australia, and graduated from high school in 2022. After that, I took a two-year gap year to serve in the Singapore army. One of the main reasons I went to Singapore was that national service is mandatory, and I figured it was better to get it done. Plus, if you ever want to travel through Singapore again, it's something you kind of need to do.

Also, after finishing HSC and studying for 12 years straight, I felt it was a good time to try something different—to step away from academics for a bit and figure out what I actually like and don’t like.

Anonymous: I am a computer science student at UNSW. I started my degree two terms late. I took those two terms off for mostly mental reasons.

What led you to study Computer Science, and how have your past experiences shaped your learning?

Shaun: My dad actually did computer science, and that played a small part in why I chose it too. Since I was a kid, I’ve always liked computers and technology. It’s nothing too deep, but it felt like a natural fit.

That said, going to the military definitely helped me stay focused. If I’d come straight out of high school, I probably would’ve procrastinated a lot more and not studied as hard. The time away gave me space to seriously think about whether I really wanted to do computer science, and I came back more certain about my choice.

Anonymous: Personally, I didn’t know what I wanted to do until Year 12, when I found computer science interesting and saw it leading the way for future job opportunities. By the time of the HSC and graduation, I knew I wanted to pursue it.

How do you manage the challenges of uni while balancing other responsibilities?

Shaun: For me, most of my responsibilities come from living alone and dealing with the challenges that come with it. In my case, I don’t think my time in the military added too many extra responsibilities—it was more about the experience than ongoing duties.

Anonymous: After Year 12, I started university in Term 1. During Year 12, I really struggled with balancing all aspects of my life, and it was a very stressful year. When I began my degree, I felt like I was back in that same stress with all the deadlines. I had difficulty balancing work, relationships, and social life. So, I decided to take a couple of terms off to focus on finding better balance. After that, I developed a solid system that helped me manage both my university and social life effectively.

How have you found the social environment at UNSW? Have you connected with younger students, or do you feel a gap?

Shaun: When it comes to the social environment, you really get as much out of it as you put in. If you're really quiet, you might not make many friends—but if you put yourself out there, you’ll definitely start making connections.

As for connecting with younger students, it kind of feels like talking to my younger brother. It’s pretty natural most of the time, but there are moments when I don’t quite get the slang or acronyms they use.

Anonymous: Going into Term 3 last year, I still wasn’t on campus much. But in Term 1 this year, my friends encouraged me to apply for societies, and I’m glad I did. It really helped me build the social life I missed during my first year. I went to a camp, and at first, I was worried about being older than everyone else and the potential age and maturity gap. However, even at camp and within the subcommittee, I still managed to bond with others since we were all experiencing similar things. Meeting people in similar situations really gave me confidence in my decision.

What would you say if you could advise someone older thinking of switching to CS?

Shaun: I’d definitely encourage them to go for it. If they’re genuinely interested in computer science, that passion will help them push through the learning curve. Just keep in mind it’s never too late to start something new. CS can be challenging, but if you’re willing to learn and curious,  there’s honestly no reason not to give it a shot.

Anonymous: Everyone’s situation is different; not everyone runs the same race, not everyone takes the same pathway, you shouldn’t let that stop you from what you want to do.

Looking back, do you think age has helped or hindered your experience in CS?

Shaun: I think age has been more of an advantage than anything. Taking a gap year was actually a great decision for me because it gave me the space to step back, reflect and really understand what I wanted out of uni and life. After pushing so hard through the HSC, that break helped me come back more focused and motivated. Being a year or two older doesn't matter much in the long run - what matters is what you do with your time. Being a bit older can give you more perspective, confidence and a better sense of direction. Plus, when you’re out meeting people and putting yourself out there, you’re already building your network without even realising it - and that’s one of the most valuable things you can do.

Anonymous: You’re never truly alone. You might feel like you're the only one, but there’s always someone out there with similar experiences. My age hasn't hindered my experience in studying computer science; in fact, it’s helped me. The added maturity has been beneficial, especially in navigating my social life while balancing my studies.

What’s your favourite memory during your compsci degree?

Shaun: Hanging out with friends in a peer mentoring group :)

Anonymous: Joining subcommittees, going on road trips with my subcommittee.

For more useful resources:

CSESoc Discord - A great place to ask questions and get advice from fellow students!

UNSW Subreddit - This is not CSESoc affiliated, however it is popular amongst students when seeking useful advice that may have been asked by past students in subreddits. Use at your own discretion.

CSESoc Outreach aims to release monthly articles that highlight the diverse experiences of students. We invite you to submit feedback or share your own insights through the form. Your stories, advice or perspectives could be invaluable to someone navigating university life.

https://forms.gle/Vt12TthoPhGSALGf8

Aria Zhang, Jogesh Emmadi, Liem Phan

Come with us on a journey of youth, and the start of many new friendships at CSESoc First Year Camp 2025!

Navigating the transition between high school and university can be a daunting journey characterised by many challenges. For interstate students, these challenges can feel even more pronounced. From homesickness to learning how to cook their first meal, moving interstate means adjusting not only academically, but socially, mentally, and emotionally.

In this month’s edition of Humans of CSE, we delve into the unique experiences of interstate students within the UNSW CSE community. Whether it’s building a new support system of friends or familiarising themselves with the unfamiliar, three interstate students share how they’re making Sydney their new home away from home.

David, 1st year Computer Science/Mathematics student

Introduce yourself!

I’m David, I came to UNSW from Adelaide and I am currently a first-year doing Computer Science and Mathematics — I’d say Adelaide is like Sydney but smaller.

Why did you choose UNSW over universities in your home state?

I just wanted to move out, go interstate, and live a little bit more independently. I essentially randomly picked what university would be good, but I also liked the idea of coming to a bigger city.

It helped that I knew some friends that were coming to UNSW, and that this uni was the best in Australia for what I wanted to do. If not a Sydney uni though, I would’ve gone to Melbourne.

How do you balance living independently, whilst also keeping on top of your academics/social life/financial matters?

In a way, I hoped everything would work out naturally. I tried to make sure that in any one week, I’m keeping on top of my stuff, making sure I have enough food in my room, and making sure I’m going out with my friends.

My routine is getting more consistent now. At the start, it was a bit all over the place, though. I didn’t come with anything, so initially I thought “oh my God, moving in is taking way too much time”, but after a while I found it was quite manageable. It isn’t a lot more work living here now compared to living in Adelaide.

What do you miss most about home? Do you ever get homesick? How do you deal with that?

A few weeks before, I was super excited to come. However, on the first plane from Adelaide to Sydney, I was really sad about leaving.

I have a cat at home, I used to have two but one passed away, and I really miss her. In general, I miss a lot about Adelaide — the overall environment, the same shops, the same buildings, the routine, just the familiarity in general.

Do you see yourself staying in Sydney after graduation or staying in your home state?

I don’t see myself moving back to Adelaide. I was thinking I could stay here or try living overseas for some period of time, since I want to see the world as well. In terms of staying in Sydney, once I graduate I would have lived here for five years with my friends so I’d be settled in by then. I also moved to Sydney for Computer Science job opportunities, which I think are better than Adelaide’s.

What advice would you give to students moving interstate to study at UNSW?

Get and stay involved — try to go to events, sign up to clubs, and make sure you stay going to events. In the first week, I went to a whole bunch of different things, but some things I wished I had stuck with for a bit longer or taken more seriously.

I was trying too many things and they didn’t all stick, but it could be a good thing, after all you want to work out what works for you. In that way, you will also have more things to choose from to stick with. Go out and see what you like!

Also be organised. Get your Opal card early — for me, I think I got my Opal card about four weeks into being here, so be organised and have a plan.

If you could say one thing to your family and friends back home about Sydney what would you say?

Sydney is a good place to be! If any of my family and friends want to move to Sydney, I’d recommend it, and we can catch up.

Yunaa, 1st year Advanced Computer Science student

Introduce yourself!

My name is Yunaa! Before moving to Sydney, I was born in Thailand, but moved to Melbourne — the city where I grew up and graduated high school. I study Advanced Computer Science, hoping to major in Cyber Security.

Why did you choose UNSW over universities in your home state?

I first came to UNSW for a summer camp, National Computer Science School. Ever since then, I started seriously considering moving interstate. I wanted to start a new chapter of my life — I was in the same school for my whole pre-tertiary education and I realised that all the people from my school tended to go to roughly the same uni (Monash or UniMelb). I knew that moving to Sydney would be the drastic change I was looking for and I would be able to meet a lot of new, different types of people.

How do you balance living independently, whilst also keeping on top of your academics/social life/financial matters?

I think doing one thing at a time — slowly introducing things rather than going into everything at once - helped me adapt to university. When I start one [extracurricular], I do it for a few weeks and then ask myself “is my timetable free enough to add another thing?”. Taking things one thing at a time means I can properly settle into a routine and balance everything else I have to do.

In particular, living in Colombo College has made the move interstate easier. I picked Colombo because I thought it would be a good way to transition to living independently — we have to do everything ourselves e.g cooking and cleaning — but we still get the social benefits of living in a college. Since I live on campus, I am overall pretty balanced: I go to uni for most of the day, come home to study, and then afterwards [my college friends and I] hang out during the night.

What do you miss most about home? Do you ever get homesick? How do you deal with that?

I miss seeing my dog the most! I also miss seeing my parents and friends, but I manage that homesickness by calling them often. I found that bringing things (e.g books and figurines) from home to keep in my current room makes the experience better. I also have a polaroid wall! I brought polaroids of friends from home, and now I’m adding to my wall as I go.

Keeping in contact with my Melbourne friends hasn’t been too hard. I’ve been fortunate that it’s been a mutual effort — it would have been hard if it wasn't mutual, since it’s easy to ghost or drop off. While living in Melbourne, I also had friends in Sydney so it’s not my first time keeping in contact with long-distance friends.

Would you recommend other interstate students come to UNSW?

If you want to try something new, I would recommend you move interstate. I feel like being out of your comfort zone helps you grow as a person and be more inclined to try something you haven’t done before. In uni, especially as an interstate student, you have to put yourself out there more and make a conscious effort to talk to new people.

It’s been a really good experience for me personally. My mindset was that if I moved here and didn’t end up liking UNSW or Sydney it would be much easier to move back than vice versa.

What advice would you give to students moving interstate to study at UNSW?

Make sure you’ve covered all possibilities and thought about it long enough to move. I’ve personally thought about moving since NCSS (about 2 years). It’s important to plan out everything before you move - what you need to bring from home, what you need to buy when you first arrive etc.

You should also apply to accomodation places early since the process is very long and you don’t know when they’ll get back to you. I personally applied at the end of December. Waitlists are also very long so apply early and have many backup options in case it doesn’t work out — in my case, applying in late December is pretty late and I was lucky to get in, so make sure you get in early!

Do you think moving interstate has changed you? In what ways?

Moving interstate has made me more conscious of how I spend my time and where I spend money. I’ve learned to manage what I want to do a lot better now since I have full control over it and I have to do it - there’s no parents to rely on.

I’m also more willing to try new things I haven’t tried before like reaching out to talk to new people. I’ve gotten better at that compared to when I was in Melbourne.

If you could say one thing to your family and friends back home about Sydney what would you say?

Come visit the beaches! When I lived in Melbourne, beaches were a lot further from my house. Since living in Sydney, I’ve been able to visit Bondi and Coogee. I also have friends who live in Northern Beaches, so I’ve also visited Manly, Dee Why and Shelly.

Stuart, 1st year Computer Science/Commerce student

Introduce yourself!

Hello, my name is Stuart and I am a first-year, in my second term, studying Computer Science and Commerce! I was born in London, but I moved to Perth when I was 12.

Why did you choose UNSW over universities in your home state?

I’m very big into entrepreneurship, and UNSW has a good entrepreneurship program which I feel offers me better opportunities compared to in Perth. Sydney in general has a lot of opportunities to develop yourself. There’s a hackathon every week, as well as plenty of workshops, and the opportunities just come to you. There’s always a place to go, or a thing to do.

What is your accommodation situation like, and how did you find it?

So, a year ago I actually studied my first term in Term 1. However, I had to take a two term break, so now it is my second term at UNSW.
In my first term, I stayed at a sharehouse in Juniors Kingsford, and it was very good! However I found that you are sort of on your own in a sharehouse. As long as you clean, your roommates aren’t really concerned with you, and it also means you have to step up really quickly as a functioning adult. While I did make two really good friends staying at this sharehouse.

Now, I live on campus in a college! I feel like college definitely offers a true first-year university experience, and I was able to make a lot of unsuspecting friends. For example, I met my current friend group in the common room on a random day, and we were having jelly together, and now we do a lot more things together.

Your friends sound like a great support system in Sydney — what other fond memories do you have with them?

With my college friend group, we have a tradition where on Thursdays, we go to Maccas at 12pm, get food, go to the hammocks at Alumni Lawn, and play games and eat Jello. We ate so much jelly — right from the moment we met! — because we’d buy it on a 50% discount from Coles.

I also had traditions with my sharehouse roommates, too. Every Friday back then, my mum would order these vegan burgers and we’d cook and eat them together. Nowadays, I instead go down to a park with a grill and just mess around with the swings, or climb up the slide and chill up there. It’s a nice vibe.

Last year, I was also diagnosed with diabetes and was mainly managing that shift in my life on my own. However, I do remember my roommate, now my closest friend in Sydney, coming to sit with me in the hospital and reading with me.

How do you balance living independently, whilst also keeping on top of your academics/social life/financial matters?

In general, I’m prepared at all times, I have a ‘go-to’ food in case there’s no other options as well as always having clothes ready if I need to go out at a moment’s notice. For my social life as well, I have my aforementioned traditions as well, but I also find that a lot of good things come out of sparking random conversations. I like chatting up people in the elevator, and I remember once I did this and the guy I spoke to was, later on, my tutor. Since we already knew each other because of that moment we spoke again, and he was happy to give me advice on a lot of things. I just think in general college is built around getting the most out of what you find, or rather what finds you.

What do you miss most about home, and how do you deal with that?

I miss a lot of things — when I was diagnosed with diabetes, the first thing I did when I returned to Perth was go to the Scarborough Night Markets. There, the sun sets over the water rather than over the city compared to Sydney, so I was able to enjoy that while eating food on the beach.

I also miss being able to play volleyball with my Perth friends on the beach, especially since we’d set up the court while the sun was setting and it was beautiful. Another thing I miss is seeing the stars, since they are much clearer in Perth than what they are in Sydney.

If you could say one thing to your family and friends back home about Sydney what would you say?

Although I’m living the life over here in Sydney, it doesn’t mean I’m not going to be going back to Perth. At the end of the day, I can’t forget my roots and where I came from. Love Sydney though!

For more useful resources:

CSESoc Discord - A great place to ask questions and get advice from fellow students!

UNSW Subreddit - This is not CSESoc affiliated, however it is popular amongst students when seeking useful advice that may have been asked by past students in subreddits. Use at your own discretion.

CSESoc Outreach aims to release monthly articles that highlight the diverse experiences of students. We invite you to submit feedback or share your own insights through the form. Your stories, advice or perspectives could be invaluable to someone navigating university life.

https://forms.gle/Vt12TthoPhGSALGf8

Kaiyu Su, Mary Fakhr

An integral part of your university experience will be the classes that you go to and even more important than that is the tutors that teach them. It’s easy to place them on a podium and treat them as an endless wealth of knowledge - but they are people as well.

In this month's article we will be exploring two perspectives of a CSE Tutor at UNSW - and who knows, maybe after this you’ll consider teaching your own class.

Introduce yourself!

Anonymous: Hi there! Unfortunately I want to keep my identity anonymous, but I've been teaching a level 2 and a level 3 course after tutoring since 24T1.

Anonymous: Hi, I’m currently a final year Computer Science student and I currently tutor COMP2041 and COMP6080.

What was your pathway to becoming a tutor?

Anonymous: I originally had no intentions to be a tutor - I thought tutors were way too cracked, and I simply thought I wasn't smart enough. However, one of my tutors told me I'd be a great tutor for one of the courses I took after I showed enthusiasm towards my course, and after achieving a HD for the course, he recommended me to the course admins and here I am!

Anonymous: I started tutoring as a comp1511 tutor in my first year before moving onto some other courses after a couple semesters.

What do you enjoy most about being a tutor?

Anonymous: Two things:

1. When you study for your own course, all you do is reinforce your understanding and try to get better marks for assignments, quizzes and exams. But when tutoring, it feels like it's your responsibility to get your students to have better marks. When I teach my own ways of approaching fundamental basics to challenging concepts, and giving tips on solving problems and my students understand, I feel so relieved I helped them learn something new.
2. Surprisingly, I also love meeting various people when tutoring. Whether it comes to chatting with my students or talking with other tutors teaching the same course, it opens up so many new opportunities to interact with other people studying the same degree.

Anonymous: Keeping my knowledge sharp. Courses can teach some very specialized knowledge and when it’s been a long time, I tend to forget the details since I’m not using it day to day. I think tutoring really helps my brain retain the content.

What is your biggest challenge as being a tutor and how do you approach it?

Anonymous: I think my biggest challenge is writing my own slides and code so that new students have a much easier time approaching the course content. When I make my slides, I assume everyone did not watch their lectures, and I try to make an easy step-by-step approach to understanding the course content and solving the related questions. This takes a considerable amount of time as I don't go through pre-made tutorial contents, and making slides and example code easy for everyone takes a lot of consideration in general. However, I always get reviews every term that the students liked my slides and example code which helped them understand the course contents a lot better, which makes me feel proud of myself!

Anonymous: Sometimes I simply just do not know the answer to your question 😭. Usually I’ll have enough context information to make a guess with maybe 90% certainty and I’ll go from there. Occasionally though I simply just do not know in which case I grab another tutor or ask someone who would know.

What is something that you want people to know about tutors that most people don't know?

Anonymous: Some new students (especially first and second year) think we're super cracked individuals who know everything and can answer all the questions related to the course. This might be an exaggerated example, but I once had a student in my course asking me how to set up AWS instances in a course completely unrelated to AWS, thinking tutors know almost everything there is to coding. The fact is, we have to go through the course content ourselves before teaching to check if there are any key principles we forgot about the contents we teach, and we also sometimes struggle to answer some questions if they are topics the tutors haven't looked into before :((

Anonymous: You should ask us more questions! Especially in labs, if you’re stuck on an issue for more than 15 –20 minutes, then consider asking a question! We’re here to help and we’re very friendly 😊

In a male dominated faculty, how is your experience as a female tutor?

Anonymous: Luckily I’ve never had any issues 😄 Just go for it!

Any advice for any students who wish to become a tutor?

Anonymous: First of all, show that you have effective communication skills to your tutor. Ask constructive questions, participate in class, and if possible show yourself helping other peers in your class. This assures us tutors that you know the contents very well, and have enough communication skills to become a tutor. If your grades are also decent (HD is preferred, but for some courses DN is also fine), kindly ask your tutor if they can write a referral for you. Don't beg them for referrals - show them you have enough communication skills and understanding of the course content enough for them to write a referral for you!

For more useful resources:

CSESoc Discord - A great place to ask questions and get advice from fellow students!

UNSW Subreddit - This is not CSESoc affiliated, however it is popular amongst students when seeking useful advice that may have been asked by past students in subreddits. Use at your own discretion.

CSESoc Outreach aims to release monthly articles that highlight the diverse experiences of students. We invite you to submit feedback or share your own insights through the form. Your stories, advice or perspectives could be invaluable to someone navigating university life.

https://forms.gle/Vt12TthoPhGSALGf8

Liem Phan, Hayden Ho, Qiandai Huang

Greetings, First Years! A new adventure awaits you. A whirlwind of new experiences, new memories, and new friendships is approaching. Bring your excitement and passion, and take your first steps forward. Welcome to UNSW!

But wait…how can you even begin this adventure without a map? Don’t worry! Your map is right here! From course progressions to CSE student advice and tips to the must-eats on campus, this guide will help you navigate your first-year journey. What are you waiting for? Pick your first destination below!

Don’t know where to start? Here are some popular destinations:

• Curious about who we are? Visit: Meet CSESoc
• Which courses should I take? Visit: Course Map
• Where is everything? Visit: Campus Tour
• What is coding? Visit: Starting with No Coding Experience
• Interested in student-developed productivity tools? Check out DevSoc's projects!

Prefer a list of articles? Click here!

Welcome to UNSW, first years!

Enrolment is a very new experience for first years, and it's a big change from high school. But fear not! Your (soon-to-be) favourite society CSESoc has you in safe hands <3! The guide takes you through from everything to course enrolment, class registration, how course codes work, the different types of classes and more!

For 2025, we've revised the guide for new changes (including a brand new degree!), and also added a new section aimed to help you in establishing yourself socially at university. We hope this guide helps you!

(Don't like PDFs? Check out the Issuu here <3)

In recent years, there has been a growing concern among students and professionals alike about the oversaturation of the computer science (CS) industry. With the rise of powerful AI models, especially large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3 and Claude, many have begun to wonder if jobs will soon be replaced by AI. Moreover, a wave of tech layoffs in prominent companies has added fuel to the fire, sparking fears that the industry is shrinking and that opportunities for future tech professionals are drying up. But is this narrative accurate, or is it an overreaction?

The AI Revolution: Friend or Foe?

The transformer architecture, introduced in the seminal 2017 paper Attention Is All You Need by Vaswani et al., revolutionised natural language processing (NLP) by enabling models to handle vast amounts of data in parallel and better capture long-range dependencies in text. The transformer’s key innovation lies in its use of self-attention mechanisms, which allow the model to focus on different parts of a sentence or input sequence with different levels of importance. To understand this recent growth in LLMs, let’s first consider how this architecture works:

1. Self-Attention Mechanism: In traditional sequential models like RNNs or LSTMs, each word is processed in sequence, meaning long-distance relationships between words can get muddled or lost. The self-attention mechanism of the transformer allows each word (or token) in the input sequence to directly interact with every other word. This enables the model to understand relationships and context regardless of how far apart the words are in the sequence.

• For instance, in the sentence “The cat that sat on the mat is brown,” a transformer can easily recognise that "cat" is the subject of "is brown," even though they are far apart in the sentence.

1. Multi-Headed Attention: Transformers use multiple self-attention mechanisms in parallel, allowing them to focus on different aspects of the sentence at once. Each “head” in the multi-head attention mechanism attends to different parts of the input, allowing the model to gather a wide range of contextual information.
2. Positional Encoding: Since transformers don't process input sequentially, they lack an inherent understanding of the order of tokens. To compensate for this, positional encodings are added to the input, embedding information about the position of each token in the sequence, which helps the model capture word order.
3. Parallel Processing: Unlike traditional models that process input sequentially, transformers allow parallelisation. This drastically reduces training time and makes it possible to train on much larger datasets, leading to models that are both faster and more efficient.
   

In particular, the scalability of the transformer architecture enabled the training of massive models like GPT-3 (with 175 billion parameters), leading to substantial improvements in performance across a wide range of NLP tasks. This is why we had such a massive uproar about AI in recent times.

Tools like LLMs are capable of generating text, answering questions, and even writing code. As a result, a misconception has spread that these models are on the verge of replacing software engineers and developers. Coupled with high-profile tech layoffs following the COVID-19 pandemic, this has created a sense of uncertainty and fear among students who are passionate about technology. Many worry that their skills might become obsolete before they even enter the workforce.

AI: A Helping Hand, Not a Replacement

Contrary to the belief that LLMs are ushering in the end of tech jobs, these models are currently quite limited. While they are excellent at generating boilerplate code or assisting with simple tasks, they struggle with more intricate programming challenges. For instance, LLMs often fail to understand context, manage stateful systems, or handle tasks that require deep domain knowledge.

A study by DeepMind even highlighted that while LLMs can write code snippets, they often introduce errors that require human intervention to resolve. In one instance, the study analysed over 13,000 code snippets generated by LLMs from programming problems across various datasets. It found that even in routine tasks, the models generated errors or required human intervention to fix issues before the code could be integrated into real systems. Even when we try to apply “self correcting” and ask the AI to fix its errors, we find that “self-correction can sometimes impair the performance of these models, challenging the prevailing understanding of this popular technique” - the paper from DeepMind and the University of Illinois finds. (Dickson, 2023).

Furthermore, with regards to the consistency of these models, we encounter the issue of “hallucinations”. This term is used to describe the generation of text that is nonsensical or deviates from the original source content. We have two types of hallucinations when it comes to LLMs; intrinsic hallucinations, where the generated content contradicts the source content, and extrinsic hallucinations, where the generated content cannot be verified from the source input (Dong et al., 2024). In both cases, the quality, maintainability and reliability of AI generated code is put to question.

The Industry Isn't Shrinking, It's Evolving

It's true that recent layoffs in the tech industry have been widely reported, with companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft cutting jobs. However, these layoffs are not necessarily a sign of long-term industry contraction. In many cases, they are a result of companies over-hiring during the pandemic, followed by post-pandemic corrections. These layoffs are also more about shifting priorities within companies, where roles are being realigned to focus on emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and cybersecurity.

The demand for skilled CS professionals remains high. In fact, a report by the McKinsey Global Institute projects a 50% increase in the demand for tech professionals by 2030. Many sectors, including healthcare, finance, and education, are increasingly adopting technology, driving the need for developers, system architects, and AI specialists. As long as you're willing to continuously learn and stay adaptable, there are plenty of opportunities in tech.

Why CS Students Shouldn't Worry

For students passionate about computer science, the prospect of oversaturation may seem daunting, but it is far from reality. The key to success in this field lies in perseverance, a willingness to learn, and developing a robust portfolio of technical and soft skills. Coding bootcamps, personal projects, internships, and contributing to open-source software are all valuable ways to stand out in a competitive job market.

Moreover, specialising in high-demand areas like AI, machine learning, cloud computing, and cybersecurity can give aspiring professionals a significant edge. Even within these advanced fields, the need for skilled human workers far outstrips what current AI models can do.

In Conclusion: Keep Calm and Code On

The fears surrounding the oversaturation of the computer science field and the replacement of tech jobs by AI are largely exaggerated. While AI is indeed becoming a powerful tool, it is not yet capable of performing the complex tasks that software engineers handle daily. In reality, the tech industry is evolving rather than shrinking, and new opportunities continue to emerge for those who are prepared to embrace them. So, for students and professionals alike, the key takeaway is this: don't be discouraged by the hype. If you're willing to put in the work, the future of tech looks bright, and your place in it is secure.

V. Dong, et al. "Exploring and Evaluating Hallucinations in LLM-Powered Code Generation." arXiv, 2024, https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/2404.00971.

Ben Dickson. "LLMs can’t self-correct in reasoning tasks, DeepMind study finds." TechTalks, 9 Oct. 2023, https://bdtechtalks.com/2023/10/09/llm-self-correction-reasoning-failures/.

Vaswani, Ashish, et al. "Attention Is All You Need." arXiv, 2017, https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762.

Rehan Shukla