Zed, unfortunately or fortunately there are good and bad universities (in terms of CS). If you are in a good university, a lot of professors will teach you lessons which will last a lifetime. You must go check the video lectures on youtube by UC Berkley, MIT and Stanford. They will teach you the most important lesson, time and again, till it becomes a habit for you - its all about the fundamentals. They will teach you that computer science is as much programming as it is applied mathematics (& lot more). I went to a bad school. Teachers were not confident in their subjects, they could not inspire me and I must confess I wasn't smart enough to inspire myself. 4 years later, now I have taken a break from my work, and I am revisiting my fundamentals with the help of the open course ware available on the net and boy, I sure have missed a lot!