In year 2 (another 9 months away), you will begin diving into computer programming related modules. Some of your classmates have already started picking up programming of various computer languages this holiday season. I have decided to provide some tips on and off, for those with the will and motivation to explore and learn on their own, to better even out the playing field.
The traditional way computer programming is taught, be it in classroom or online tutorials, is step-by-step tutorials e.g., W3School’s HTML tutorial, Kaggle’s Python tutorial, where you follow along, trying to piece together what exactly is going on. Different tutorials have different levels of depth and association trying to tie the actual work back with the theory.
If you are like me and can’t stand the traditional way of learning computer programming, then perhaps reading about the “concept of programming” being implemented in a fantasy story may help you imagine and figure out how you can use the various languages to do and create digital things.
While it didn’t make me smarter, it gave me hope that I can use programming languages to create stuff of my own design. I struggled through the process of learning and doing programming not because I like it, but because I want to achieve the end-goal of creating my own digital things. I wouldn’t have been able to setup the class website on my own, within a few days, if I gave up learning about programming 20+ years ago.
So if the going gets tough for any of the modules in the future, take a step back, read some story books, see some art, do some exercise and have some hope. You will figure things out at your own time, but in the meanwhile, survive the difficult modules.
The books I am sharing is part of an old fiction fantasy book series titled “Wizardry Series” written by Rick Cook (he passed away last year). A brief synopsis of the first book “Wizard’s Bane“, which is repackaged into the two book compilation “The Wiz Biz”, can be found below.

The story is about a computer programmer, one Walter Wiz Zumwalt, who was summoned into a fantasy world, to be the hero and counter-force against a league of dark wizards. The so called “good wizards” were at a lost about what to do with Walter after they realised he didn’t have any superpowers or great magical abilities like them. Walter was thus written off as a summon that went wrong.
Abandoned by the “good wizards” who could see no value in him, Walter tried to survive in this new world being hunted by the dark wizards with few allies. Along the way, Walter figured out how to tap on the world’s magic system with his programming background and turn the tables around to defeat the dark league.

A side note, the book series was written long ago. The protagonist’s programming background was based on some of the earlier programming languages. Also the libraries (places where people borrow books, NOT programming libraries) don’t carry such an old book series anymore. You can however purchase the e-book version if you are interested on Amazon. Ref: https://www.amazon.com/Wiz-Wizardry-combo-volumes-Book-ebook/dp/B01APMDJZU/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Wiz-Wizardry-combo-volumes-Book-ebook&qid=1680189779&sr=8-1

Even though Rick Cook has passed away, he has left behind some creative writing tips in his earlier blog posts, before his body grew weaker after his heart surgery. If you have interest in creative writing, and want to see his thought process as he formed a story out of his imagination, his blog can still be found online here. Ref: http://rickcooks.blogspot.com/2007/
Will learning to write stories help you in programming? Not exactly. Both requires skills as wordsmiths, but while storytellers immerse and influence humans in new ways of seeing and experiencing things through human languages, programmers use computer languages to command electronics and digital environments into doing and creating new things.
A good grasp of creative writing may however help you as a programmer if you advanced into Data Engineering/ Data Science/ Artificial Intelligence route, with a focus in Natural Language Processing (NLP).