Advice for freshmen entering college
gms: I want to echo gdp's advice above. What I wish someone had told me as a freshman:Grades don't really matter, no one will care about them.1) Future employers (investors too?) will care about code you wrote outside of class, whether open source or your own projects.2) Grad schools will care about great recommendations, which you do not get by getting good grades. You get those by doing research with the professor outside of the class.I'm not saying it's ok if you fail; just that there are different priorities to be balanced. Missing out on that A in order to improve on 1) or 2) above is a trade off that will serve you better.