Waterloo’s Software Engineering (SE) Soc helps organize a talk every year for first-year SE students titled “What I wish I knew in 1B”, where a panel of upper-years SE students come to a class and answer their questions. It’s a fun title (WIWIKI1B), a great way for first-years to hear from and connect with upper-years, and overall, a good time.
A few days before the panel, while making dinner I realized that… I actually know almost exactly what I was thinking in 1B, thanks to the spike of motivation I had in my first year to write about my SE program experience.
This was written by 19-year-old Hannah, who had absolutely no clue what was about to happen in her life. This blog right now is written by 22-year-old Hannah, who is a few months away from completing 4B SE and graduating.
I originally intended to do a term reflection each term, which well… I didn’t end up doing, but I thought it would be fun to revisit some parts of this old post and to reminisce a bit about first-year.
Quick preface that I am only one SE student among a little over a hundred in my cohort, and everyone has had different experiences.
I considered dropping to CS many, many times but ultimately stuck with SE. As a quick rapid-fire:
The cohort - there’s a lot to say here, but the short of it is I like the people I’ve met, the friends I’ve made, and how supportive everyone is of each other.
Admittedly, a part of me was stubborn and wanted to finish what I started. Ironically I’m learning about the sunk-cost fallacy in Introduction to Game Theory right now.
I have a scholarship dependent on the fact that I stayed in SE for 8 terms.
In a way that I can’t quite put into words, I just wanted to. The program felt right for me.
In my original blogs for 1A/1B, I went through my thoughts on all my courses. In all honesty, a few terms ago (maybe even directly after 1B) I realized that I don’t really care for academics... so I don’t feel qualified to say anything on “this course in 1A/1B helped me in this technical course later”.
My co-op recruiting experience was really short in 1B and pretty uneventful compared to other stories I had heard, which is probably why I didn’t include anything about it in the original blog. I, pretty randomly, shot out my first-round applications to positions that looked interesting to me. I think I got a few take-homes, but only one turned into an interview. The job was full-stack development for a remote startup in Toronto, and the interview turned into a rank 1 on WaterlooWorks. Since it was my only ranking, I ranked them 1 back.
I’m actually fairly certain that I wasn’t supposed to get the job and that they mixed up my take-home results with someone else’s (based on conversations that happened after I started). Felt very big imposter syndrome there. But I ended up getting an Outstanding rating and return offer, got to ship a lot of features to real clients, and later the company got acquired so… it all worked out 👍
I realize just how much things have changed since first year. Evidently, university is no longer fully remote because of COVID, but there are also factors like… ChatGPT didn’t exist when we started university…
A fun exercise I like to run with my friends is guessing who was in each other’s SE 101 groups because the results are almost completely unexpected now. I talk to people who I didn’t know existed in my first year (or second year, or third year, or honestly maybe last week), and I’ve grown apart from others. I have hobbies that I didn’t have before, and lived in places I never would have dreamed of.
And it’s funny because for me now, this all makes perfect sense. I can see the twists and turns and highs and lows of life that brought me to be exactly where I am. But nineteen-year-old me, sitting at home on my laptop (perhaps eating instant ramen at the time, because that was all I knew how to make), had no idea.
A lot of the learnings I wrote on that old post were academic-related, with the exception of “Find things that give you joy”, which still rings true. I just didn’t realize at the time how true it was. Although I’d like to do a slight rebrand on that and change it to “Find things that bring you joy” 👍
Reading that old blog got me into the mindset of 1B me, and if I were to open a time portal and popped in to talk to her... I actually don’t think there’s a lot I would say. I might have overwhelmed myself, or influenced some necessary event in a paradoxical way (🕷️). You can receive advice left and right, but often it doesn’t click unless you’ve actually lived it.
To list a few though, in the spirit of the title (in no particular order):
It’s important to find what works for you instead of what works for other people (and taking inspiration from others can be super helpful, but ultimately you are stuck with you for the rest of your life).
Sleeping proper amounts and not surviving off only caffeine will actually make you feel a lot better.
You will need to Leetcode and practice interviews. Perhaps that will change in the near future, but it would have been true for 1B me, and it’s still true now.
Leave the CS/SE bubble sometimes! Talk to people who are doing completely different things than you. High school friends, intramurals, people in other clubs and programs.
Although you can do a lot to improve your position (and you should try to do these things!), sometimes life will come down to luck.
As a co-op example, you could get the best referral, and reach out directly to a recruiter, and it’s still possible that you won’t get to the first round of an interview pipeline. Or maybe the interview you end up getting is the one you sent an application to and then completely forgot about until a recruiter reached out to you.
And finally, find things that bring you joy. Whether it be a hobby, a study spot you love, or a game to play. Maybe all of the above or maybe something completely different. And (depending on the thing), do them and share them with friends 🫶.
In a few months, I’d like to write something about my SE program experience, maybe about my co-ops. I’ve also assembled a wonderful class profile team and we’re working on a SE25 class profile (coming soon, ™️).
Until then, I’ll be navigating through 4B 🌊
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end of musing 🫶
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