How I studied for CS 1332 (and went from panicking to an A)

I was genuinely worried after the first couple of weeks, so here's the routine that turned it around for me. 1. Implement every data structure yourself, from scratch, before the assignment asks for it. Reading about a linked list and writing one are completely different skills. 2. Keep a "complexity journal." Every time we covered an operation, I wrote down its best, average and worst case and one sentence on WHY. Re-reading the whys is what made Big-O stick. 3. Trace on paper. For trees I drew every insert and removal by hand until I could predict the shape without thinking. 4. Teach it. My roommate isn't in CS, and explaining heaps to her exposed every gap I had. Time-wise I averaged about 12 hours a week, more in the weeks with trees and graphs. Start early, ask questions early, and don't just read your code, test it with weird inputs.