My First Year of Waterloo Software Engineering
I recently finished my first year of studying software engineering at the University of Waterloo. It’s considered by many as one of the top programs in Canada. What does this reputation really mean? Here are my reflections on my first year. I hope you get a taste of what it’s like to be in this program, and you get some insight into freshman year in general.
Finding your place
SE at Waterloo is structured in a cohort system. This means that almost all of our lectures are with the exact same classmates. After only the first few weeks, I could see that people were gravitating towards their ideal companions for this 5 year journey. Personally, I find this really nice. University can be stressful and the cohort system can help you quickly find trustworthy friends. These friendships truly were effectively formed, because it’s been two terms and friend groups haven’t really changed much. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s not like we only interact within cliques, the whole class is supportive of each other. We’ll all stop and engage in conversation if we see other SEs, even if they aren’t in our closest friend groups. The cohort system means that you’ll get to know almost everyone in your class, which is amazing since they’re all super talented in their own unique ways.
Little fish in a big pond
Upon arriving at Waterloo, everyone tells you that you should expect to work super hard and be prepared for big changes. “Getting out is even harder than getting in”, “half of you will be in the bottom 50% of the class”. I was pretty much as average as possible after my first term. I was right at the middle in terms of class rank. I went to an elite high school and I was already used to not being the best, but I can’t say that I wasn’t surprised to be so average. You will be surrounded by many incredibly intelligent kids, most of which topped their classes in high school. It’s scary to think about at first, but it’s really not an issue. I’m a firm believer that everyone should feel satisfied after doing their best. If you’ve put all of your effort into something, you should be proud of yourself no matter the outcome. Don’t treat school and grades as a competition, because most of the top students aren’t. Instead, be grateful of the wonderful learning environment you have at your disposal. In SE, there will always be someone you can reach out to — including upper years. Nearly everyone is super intelligent and kind, they’ll be there to motivate and assist you in achieving your goals.
New challenges
Again, nobody was lying when they said that university would be hard. You’ll face new material that can sometimes take forever to grasp. It’s important not to get too caught up in comparing yourself to others. Different people struggle with different courses. For example, I scored above average in all of my first term courses, except for classical mechanics, where I was far below the average. It would make sense for a student to be fairly consistent in where they place in terms of class rank for each course, but often that’s not the case. Don’t worry if you’re struggling with courses that other kids find easy, just work your hardest and prioritize what’s difficult for you. I’m gonna repeat myself again here, you will be surrounded by great students, so don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Also, it’s not like university was immediately 20x harder than high school. First term courses will slowly ease into difficult material. Keeping up is just a matter of reviewing notes and doing assignments. Studying won’t be torturous because hopefully you’ll find the material interesting. Another thing to note is that UW is pretty good about understanding the difficulty of school and offer ways to prevent burnout. Most classes will drop the lowest assignment mark and the lowest quiz mark (if it has quizzes). This means that when school becomes too overwhelming, you can choose to skip certain evaluations and catch up later. During our first term, a large majority of our class skipped an early morning linear algebra quiz because we had been working on our SE101 final projects. During second term I was feeling so sick that I only handed in half of an assignment (and still went to PennApps later that week 😵).
Co-op
You can’t mention Waterloo without bringing up the cooperative education program. I just finished my first week of work and I’m having a blast. Honestly, co-op is much less stressful than school. You only need to work for half of the day, and then you can do anything you want — like write blogs 😎. The full time employees on my team are all super helpful and I’m learning in a way that you genuinely cannot experience by trying to learn everything yourself. Co-op isn’t only available for SE, nor is it a Waterloo only thing. I’d recommend doing co-op no matter where you go.
So, those are the largest takeaways I got from my 1A and 1B terms in SE and much of it is applicable to being a freshman in general. Now, I’ll just fire off some notable moments:
- My friend falling out of his chair during a lecture causing a large bang, to which our linalg professor replied “don’t get too much excited!”
- Our physics professor telling all sorts of stories ranging from his life in the military, to crashing his Jag, to realizing that he’s the next Pavarotti
- Our digital circuits prof asking if we knew what functions were, explaining by drawing example squiggly lines and saying “well I don’t know what they teach in high school anymore”
- Going to a buffet with my friends every Friday for lunch
- Seeing some of my friends still show up to lunch on Fridays — which was across campus, even after they had skipped every lecture
These ones aren’t SE related but I still love them:
- Buying 3 almond milks and a lemon tea because they kept getting stuck in the residence vending machine
- Our friend group going to Dairy Queen for buy one get one 99c Blizzards and one of my friends accidentally ordering just one at full price
- Telling our friend that he couldn’t have cake because it had peanuts, but only realizing once he had already gone home that it actually had pecans
