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Material ResourcesMany universities have student incubators on campus to help students with product and business development. If your school has an engineering department, this would be an excellent place to start.For example, the Rochester Institute of Technology offers its students an intensive program to support business and technological innovation. Wayne State University has created a program for technology startups in Detroit called Tech Town; the UC Davis College of Engineering helps innovative students get on the fast track with resource and funding support; and Boston University’s incubator accepts student tech startups as well as others in the bio-medical engineering and related fields.Many colleges and universities also offer student innovation grants, like this one from Purdue University, and this one from Georgia College. Use your favorite search engine to find about more about the numerous grants available to student inventors.The takeaway is that most colleges and universities will have some resources available on or near campus that they can guide you to. Additionally, many - like Wayne State - have created programs for the broader community, so you should also investigate those connections. Sometimes a town’s or city’s chamber of commerce and other business groups (e.g., Rotary Club) offer grants and resources for young entrepreneurs, especially with patentable ideas.You also want to check with your school advisor or a knowledgeable faculty member regarding the patent rights to anything you’re working on. It’s not uncommon to find that if you’re a student using school facilities and resources, the rights to your innovation could belong to the university, so make sure you check into that carefully before proceeding.Legal ResourcesFirst, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has developed a partnership program with multiple law schools across the country to assist independent inventors and small companies who qualify for pro bono (free!) patent services. You would need to contact each school directly, so here’s the list.Additional information about the patent pro bono program is available here. This is a very useful interactive map where you can also find information about participating law schools, relevant news and events, and general information specifically tailored for under-resourced inventors.Second, many colleges and universities that are not partnered with the USPTO program still offer students - and sometimes non-students - assistance. For instance, schools like the University of Illinois have long offered student innovators free help in completing patent applications.If your school has a law school, contact them for guidance. Even if they haven’t (yet) partnered with the USPTO, they’ll likely have some on-campus resources, or be able to guide you to someone who can help you with the process.If your school doesn’t have a law school, there are other options. Many universities have a Student Legal Services office on campus. While many don’t offer legal assistance for patents or intellectual property, they may be able to guide you to another resource that can help you.Another great resource is the engineering and science faculty. It’s not uncommon to find faculty members who have had some direct experience with filing patents. You can also sometimes discover programs that are designed to promote innovation and involve patent filing, which are offered only through their department.Finally, public and university libraries offer a wealth of materials beyond books to help you. Engage a librarian to help you access applications, template applications, and other information and tools you’ll need to successfully complete your journey along the startup highway. Such information includes events such as workshops, talks, and other programs that are usually free or offered for a nominal admission price.Hope this helps! Let me know if I can help you with any additional questions or concerns about how to invent and patent something new. Feel free to message me, or check out LawTrades for a quick and affordable way to patent your idea.

Aside from Discrete Math that some have recommended, here are some practical tips for improving your logical and coding skills over the next couple of years.Build a strong foundationYou can’t succeed in software engineering without a solid foundation.This entails computer architectures, operating systems, networks, processes, data structures, algorithms, and everything in-between.Programming itself is easy. Analyzing the available technical stack and how the different pieces fit together is the core principle of engineering.Look for patternsThis is valid both in programming and in other fields of study.Software development is built upon the foundation discussed above, and common problems solved over time.Over time, you’ll build a pattern-matching mindset that helps you identify a problem and find the right solution. This is what “design patterns” in engineering are derived from.Keep solving different programming problemsPractice makes perfect.The more you program, the easier it becomes to find a working solution that you’ve implemented previously.Take a sample web application as an example.You have the front-end and the back-end.Data is probably stored in a database.You have a templating engine rendering data upon different requests.Requests are handled by routers or controllers.There’s an underlying data model that transfers requests between the application and the database.You have performance implications for high-scale cases.Data should be sanitized and escaped for security reasons.There’s an authentication engine handling roles and users within the back-end.These principles are similar (if not the same) across applications. After successfully delivering a few apps, it gets dramatically easier to apply your existing knowledge to new problems.Reverse-engineer business casesInstead of pushing forward, think backwards.Analyze the core business problems and figure out how to get there.A library application is mainly a solution to a library’s problem for classifying, organizing, finding books. Think as a librarian for a moment.What problems are they facing at work?What steps can be automated?How can a programmatic solution support their goals?What would a user love to find books quickly?The list goes on, but once you understand the problem at hand, you can reverse-engineer it and deliver.Break a problem into phasesHaving the said problem, break it down into logical pieces.“Build a desktop software” isn’t an actionable item. It’s built upon thousands of tiny tasks, grouped into components, bundled together into an application.Categorize these and find the links between. Write down as many straightforward tasks as possible.Pick a process that helps you iterate, one task at a time, towards your goal.This is much more bearable than working against vague expectations and having to rebuild your architecture multiple times on-the-fly.Solve various puzzlesPuzzles help with creative and logical thinking.They expose you to different analytical problems. Crosswords, sudoku, games like Go, online puzzles, chess.Games are also logic-driven, defined by patterns, designed to accommodate different strategies.Building these mental models will be practical in software development as well.Take care of your healthSleep and eating habits play a role in your learning process.The better you arrange your own lifestyle, the easier it is to maintain enough energy and motivation to keep learning.The learning curve for software engineering is steep. But once you get some progress, it’s significantly easier to add on top of your existing knowledge.While new frameworks and libraries pop up all the time, it’s the core foundation that matters. And you need to be ready to face these obstacles.FocusMultitasking, procrastination, and interruptions are the enemy of progress.Allocate uninterrupted time for studying and practicing development. Block several hours a day and work on solving actionable problems.All of the tips above would be handy once you have several hours at hand for programming. And logical thinking will build itself upon your best practices along with solving practical business problems with programming code.

In response to your question, I like to append herewith my elaborate template for designing your self-directed life-long and life-wide pursuit and knowledge acquisition:First and foremost, you need to establish compelling, inspiring and overarching long-range goals and objectives, broken down into short-term, medium-term, and long-term perspectives, and covering all the major life dimensions (*), with academic pursuit as your top priority, in your life to drive you.Then, with the end in mind, you need to draw up a series of specific, prioritised, and executable tasks that you want to accomplish daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and even annually, in tandem with your long-range goals and objectives, while you are in hot pursuit of your desired outcomes or cherished dreams.These initiatives form the basis of your systematic game plan.Goals, priorities and a game plan, set your direction and keep you focused on the things that matter to you the most.Using a military analogy, goals, priorities and a game plan, are like precise commands preset into the flight plan of a Tomahawk cruise missile, homing onto a predefined, long-distance target![(*) Other major life dimensions include: career aspirations; mental development; physical health; financial wealth; family relationships (including romance); social networking; recreational ventures (including hobbies, interests, sports, vacations, etc., and even spiritual development (including contributions to society, volunteering, etc.]With a game plan in place, then only it makes sense for you to factor in your learning agenda, or study plan, or even side-gig project plan, if any.Here are a few more important things you need to explore and do:1) identify all the critical skill-sets for future employability and career tracking, or 21st Century skills for the Future, you really want to acquire and master, through desk research, using Google as your search agent;[Frankly, there are so many, and it is advisable to narrow them down to only those that would suit your ultimate purpose, especially in tune with your long-range life goals and objectives.]2) single out those renowned experts and/or more knowledgeable persons, locally and globally, in the arena of future employability skill sets or 21st Century Skills for the Future;[Business and industry webcasts, TEDTalks, and YouTube productions will obviously be good places to start.]3) locate all the published works, online and/or offline, hard copy or electronic, of those in (2), and proceed to select, read and digest them;[Amazon, plus Alibris and AbeBooks, is probably your first hit. Your public librarian, should also be able to lend a hand here.]4) don't forget to scan the periodic and sporadic weblogs, podcasts, video or webcasts, newsletters, news journals, and news magazines relating to (1) and (2) for strategic insights;5) also, don't forget to keep yourself abreast about what's happening around and beyond you, by reading local as well as international business news releases, pertaining to (1) to (4);[A good place to start is setting up your Google Alerts to draw established news resources like, Business Insider, Fast Company, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, HBR, Huffington Post, Inc., New York Times, The Economist, Wall Street Journal, among many others.]6) check out the myriad seminars, workshops and conferences, brick and mortar type as well as web-based, in the open marketspace, locally and globally, in connection with (2) and (3);7) check out institutions of learning, locally and globally, where those experts in (2) are often attached or connected, so that you can go there to acquire and attain those skill sets; it's also a good idea for you to spend some time to scope out their prevailing program synopses;8) as mentioned earlier, draw up a constantly evolving, but systematic and adaptive, learning agenda or study plan, taking into consideration of (1) to (7), to be broken down into short-term, medium-term and long-term project timelines, each with the pertinent start-point, end-point, and the developmental path of transition points in between;9) develop and embrace a curious, inquisitive but questioning, mindset;10) follow-up and follow-through, consistently and massively, your learning agenda or study plan; as it is constantly evolving, with the forces and dynamics of change in the world out there, don't hesitate to tweak, adjust and adapt;Most importantly, notwithstanding what has already been written from (1) to (10), always make it a point to put the requisite skill sets you have wanted and learned to work in your life, or your work, or your business, or even for your client(s), where appropriate.That's to say, the ultimate fire test of your learning agenda or study plan, as you will have so nicely laid out, is your real-world application and your personal as well as professional productivity - the value added, compounded, and multiplied!My final word of friendly expert advice (I owe this to one of my most admired role models, the legendary martial artist Bruce Lee, no relation of mine):Absorb what's useful;Reject what's useless;Research your own experience;Add what is specifically your own![20160327_Learning Agenda]