Alright. It's December 27th, 1 AM, and this is a review of everything I did in Waterloo over the past four months of my first term here—my 1A reflection.
I got into Waterloo for Software Engineering last year, technically making me Class of 2028. Early on, I realized I wouldn't be able to afford the ~$90k CAD per year for international tuition. I didn't have that kind of money, so I worked my ass off for a year. I moved to Vermont, worked with Hack Club, joined a startup as a founding engineer, and took on two more contracts. At one point, I was working 20 hours a day just to save enough for tuition. That's how I made it here.
I had to skip the whole o-week because my visa had some delays. So I came a week later to Waterloo. My first week at Waterloo was actually the week when classes kind of, like, took full speed. And I would say the course load wasn't too bad. Not bad at all. Everything is chill. I mean, as long as you get your assignments and stuff done on time, I think it's really easy grades. Like, a lot of it is easy grades. You have your friends to help you, and I think in general, you're just chilling.
The day I came to Waterloo, I let myself realize that from here on, I'm all alone, all by myself. If I don't put myself out there, I am fucked, as in I do not want to end up like yet another introvert who has no friends in university (especially the Waterloo stereotype). So I forced myself to do some extremely extroverted things that, looking back at them, yeah, introvert me would never been able to do things like those. I was just really outgoing. I didn't really care about talking to literally any person on the street. I would do it. And I would do a lot of social stuff.
So September was really grinding out, trying to find a group(s) that I would fit in, trying to find my people. And luckily, it didn't take me long. There was a lot of luck involved because the very first class I attended, a person came in, sat next to me, and he just said hi to me. I said hi to him. And somehow we became good friends, and now we're actually really close friends. We have a group of friends, and both of us are in there, and we're just really nice and good friends in the cohort. So that is pretty cool, and I'm grateful to have met him.
I wanted to also go all out on trying to make a lot of friends outside of my actual SE cohort. But then that, in retrospect, backfired because now I have a lot of friends outside of my own cohort, but I don't know comparatively anyone within my cohort. Maybe 20 people.
I live in REV for context. And so, I don't know, for some reason, I feel intimidated by the people at REV, and I had a good friend at V1. So I always used to go to V1 to hang out and spend time with him. The side effect of that is now I have a ton of friends at V1. Every time I walk into V1, it's yeah, I know, 5 people in there. But the bad part of this is, since I spent so much time in V1, now I just don't know anyone at REV. I don't know anyone literally where I live. So that's been a side effect.
Something that really helped me a lot was AY's post on Waterloo and how to enjoy it. I'm grateful to her to have written that post, honestly. It's a wonderful post. It resonated with me a lot, and it also showed me some unusual ways in which you can actually enjoy Waterloo. So that's pretty cool, and I'm glad to have figured that out. I'm glad to have stumbled across that post, and I love reading it every other month or so to remind myself about what I can do to improve my quality of life here.
I did put REV at the very bottom of my list of preferences, but I still ended up getting it anyways. So going in, I had very low expectations. I can force myself to have low expectations where I need to because having high expectations only leads to disappointment. But then to my surprise, I like living here. It's a really nice place. It's not as bad as people on Reddit talk about.
In an alternate universe, if I were to be asked again about where I wanna live, I would choose REV again. I would actually choose REV again. It's—it's a great place, trust me. It's the Lazeez of Waterloo dorms. Speaking of Lazeez, the food is god awful, but I guess you get used to it. But I love going to Plaza rather than depending on the holy UW FOOD SERVICES for all my meals.
Other than that, my roommate—well, he's a very chill guy. I'm grateful to have him as my roommate compared to any other weirdo that I could have gotten. One thing I feel sad about is that I never got the opportunity to hang out with him or connect with him, and we also never really talk. I do feel bad that I didn't put any efforts into it, while I should have. And I still do have 4 more months of living with him, but I don't know if I'd be able to put those efforts into building a good friendship with him because I'm outside for most part of my day. And it's just not ideal for me to come back home all tired with zero social battery for me to go out of my way and talk to him and make a connection with him. It just doesn't work. So I'm not too close with my roommate, so it is a bummer. But it is what it is.
A general formula that has worked for me at Waterloo is, everyone should get a job. Or—have something in your life that keeps you busy. For context, I've been working with Wispr AI over the past 4 months, and I'm still continuing to work with them over my study term. Everyone has this ability within them to manage time perfectly, to be able to dedicate to both work and school. That has kept me busy just to the perfect amount. It's not, “Oh, I'm way too busy, so I don't have any time to go outside and spend it with my friends.” No. I'm fine. I'm chilling.
The main reason for me to work somewhere is because I do get this constant mental reminder that I have to afford $90k a year for the next consecutive four years. I don't know if it's just that, but it feels like if there's a fire under your seat, it's easier to be motivated about better time management.
The perfect formula that worked for me—and I would, to some extent, suggest it for other people, and it might work for them too—is that you go to classes, you go to school, you get work done. The point is, have something on the side. Even if it's not a job, it could very well be a side project. Build something cool. Waterloo is a wonderful place. And if you're not building anything here, you're missing out. That reminds me of this tweet I made earlier this term about having this seemingly endless writer's block (but for projects).
So the formula is be out there. Don't come back to your dorm until 10 PM at night or something. Be out there. Do things all the time. And I can't emphasize how many times I've just walked out of my dorm expecting nothing and ended up doing some side quest with people I know. Embrace serendipity and randomness, and you would have a great social life. So even if you wanna work, don't lock yourself in your room unless it's very serious work that you wanna be isolated away from humanity. But sit in public spaces. SLC is one of my favorite spots. There's DP, there's also DC—yeah, Dana Porter—and all of those places are really good in terms of finding spots to work around people. This is also something I learned from AY's post, by the way. So credits where they're due.
Alright. Moving on to speaking about people. I feel like people in Waterloo—when I think about it, I feel like there are kind people everywhere. A lot of kind people, in my opinion. I've rarely come across rude people per se, and I think I'm really happy about that. I think people are generally nice when you go talk to them, and they're always kind and helpful. So that's been pretty good, and it hasn't been hard for me at all to make friends. And that's why I would say I think people are kind, and they're always willing to talk to you, spend time with you, and all of that. And if you come across anyone that's not nice, I guess it's totally up to you to just, like, not care about them and move on and find someone else who actually cares about you. Because I feel like university is a huge place filled with a lot of people, and you're definitely gonna find someone—find a few people who care about you. And they're gonna be your good friends.
However, I wouldn't say the same thing about ambition. It's hard to find ambitious people here. It's ironic. I wrote this tweet a while back and blew up a bit. I got so many DMs by people in Waterloo telling me about how they feel the same way. This tweet may come off a bit as looking down on others? a bit harsh? But that was sincerely not my intention. I knew it definitely would have implications when I posted it. But it was a 2am brain dump and the social implications of my words (truth) matter too less to me when it's beyond a certain point of sleep deprivation.
When you find people you resonate with, when you find genuinely fun, kind, caring, ambitious people, please take great efforts to hold on to them.
Being out there—that is, exposing my surface area and meeting as many new people as I can.
Being a kind person and improving myself every day.
Being a 0.1% better version of myself than what I was yesterday.
The courses I did in my 1A term:
CS 137: Programming Principles
CHE 102: Chemistry for Engineers
MATH 115: Linear Algebra for Engineering
MATH 117: Calculus 1 for Engineering
MATH 135: Algebra for Honors Mathematics
SE 101: Introduction to Methods of Software Engineering
One of my favorite courses was MATH 115 (Linear Algebra). I just loved it because it had a lot of practical use in the world of computers and technology in general. So I liked it too much, and I also enjoyed solving problems in that course. Also, ironically, the name of the professor who was teaching us that course is Faisal Al-Faisal. So I might be a bit biased on that one, but he is a hella good professor. Other people can agree on that.
Eventually, at some point in October or something, I stopped going to classes because my sleep schedule got messed up, and I started waking up at 2 PM. Not proud of that, but it is what it is. And I'm definitely gonna fix that this term. Yeah. I didn't really attend any classes for the latter 2-ish months, and things started going downhill, but it's alright. It's fine. Classes aren't worth it unless you wanna go there and make friends/socialize.
Small section but highly notable. Embrace Serendipity. I remember doing a lot of 2 AM hikes to Plaza all the way from our campus dorms just to get food with my friends. I love it. It paid off in a way that I do remember these fun times with my friends, and I'm grateful for them.
I joined the soccer intramural. We formed a team within my own SE cohort, and that was pretty fun. I didn't really get time to commit to any clubs or anything, and I do feel a little bad about it, but then I was really busy with my own stuff. So I do plan to improve on that later.
Socratica: I love Socratica, man. I found my people here other than anywhere else in the whole university. Even though it's like I'm hanging out with people who are 23, 24 years old, and I just turned 19. So for a better part of my term, I was 18. And it felt odd to be hanging out around these old people (relatively) as an 18-year-old kid, but I'm truly, truly glad that they looked at me as their equal, and they gave me equal opportunities and took bets on me.
In November, I helped BM organize the Microbots Hackathon, and it was really fun. The joy I get by organizing hackathons is really unique—I just don't find it anywhere else. And that got me closer to Socratica and the people in it. And I just love how everyone is so kind and insanely welcoming and loving. And, yeah, it's not an understatement to say that I found my people here rather than anywhere else in the whole university, and that's what makes me happy. That's what makes me happy about being at Waterloo and studying here. I'm privileged, and I truly understand that privilege.
Speaking of finals, it backfired a bit when I realized I hadn’t attended any classes, so I crammed entire courses in under 50 hours. Fortunately, I’m decent at studying on my own, so it worked out. The finals went well, though I was worried I’d fail at one point. Thankfully, I passed all my courses, which is pretty cool.
That’s about it for my 1A review. I’ll leave some learnings and random stuff below. This sums up my past four months, and I plan to continue doing these term reviews.
ty for reading all this yap.
Stop giving a fuck. Nobody cares. Do what you think you feel like doing.
93% of your life problems can be solved if you choose to stop getting bothered by things that aren't in your control.
You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.
Tell people how you feel. it will save you a lot of time.
Most people are meant to leave, fall apart. Don't get sad about it. It's fine.
Stop taking everything so seriously. Have fun.
Things resolve themselves, with time. Stop worrying.
Be kind. Be the person that makes people feel like they belong here.
You’re rushing to the end of the story. You wanna skip to the end. Good stories take time, don’t push for an ending. Sometimes it’s fine to enjoy the process and not be frustrated about it.
You don't realize it but you actually have the ability to make the conscious decision to stop being sad and be happy instead.
Make mistakes. Do things that make you feel unsure. Sometimes, even when you know something’s a mistake, you have to actually do it to realize that it was a mistake.
The most amazing things that can happen to a human being will happen to you, if you just lower your expectations.
— End of Post —
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.