What was the most useful CS thing you learned at University?

Question

Probably most of the knowledge you use day to day in your job wasn't learned in a class. But, looking back, you must also have learned some things that are actually really valuable to you. What was the most useful CS related thing you learned as part of your formal education?

I left University (UBC) because I was taking one whole semester to learn concepts I could teach myself in less than a week, I was bored, and grew tired of wasting my money and time for little more than that certificate at the end. But one thing I did learn at University was an introduction to complexity analysis and big O notation. Granted I learned a lot more about that on the job, but it has definitely been very valuable to me, and I first learned about it in my second year data structures course.

So for you guys that went further than me in your formal education, what was the most valuable CS knowledge that you got out of it?

Answer 1

Most valuable for me was learning about algorithms and data structures that I may not have come across otherwise. In general getting an opportunity to be exposed to concepts that I otherwise wouldn't have seen was extremely beneficial. Much of the learning about algorithms came about when I got seriously interested in functional programming languages, something I probably would not have come into much contact with outside of university.

In a more generalized sense university puts you in with a peer group that can show you useful things that you don't know are useful.