Okay, so I'm going to say it right away, my first week was a little stressful to say the least. Because our degree is a transition programme, meaning that I came from an unrelated undergrad degree, the first week was 5 straight days of intensive programming classes from roughly 9am to 5pm. It was an overwhelming amount of new information.
It's meant to give us a base of information to build on in the months to come. I didn't expect it to be easy or anything. Any time you're learning something brand new it's going to be challenging. But, the sheer quantity of information being thrown at me non-stop felt almost impossible to process.
You could tell a few people in class had voiced their worries about possibly falling behind (me included), because our lecturer, Professor Allessandro Vinciarelli, took roughly 5 minutes in the start of class on Thursday or Friday to explain that it's completely normal to feel overwhelmed with all the information tossed at us, and to think about how little we knew on our first day compared to what we knew today.
That was kind of a light bulb moment for me. It seemed so obvious, I couldn't quite figure out why I didn't reach that conclusion on my own. Within 4 to 5 days I went from knowing absolutely nothing about programming to being able to construct a basic program. I went from notta to a lotta so quickly...why was I so worried? I was so caught up stressing about If i was learning everything I should that I didn't realize that I was proving I knew it by actually, physically doing it. That's when I decided to calm down and let go of stressing out. I was doing just fine, and what I maybe didn't grasp right away came with just a little time.
I remember thinking to myself, "Things are gonna be okay, I'm gonna do just fine." In retrospect, it seems like a lot to go through in a weeks time, but I'm glad it happened. I feel so much more relaxed in the lectures and labs knowing that I'll get the hang of it, whether it'll be today or next week.