Queenie’s Declassified SYDE Survival Guide

What is Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo?

In a university full of impossible assignments, freezing snow, and an overwhelming number of co-op job applications… Queenie Wu, that’s me, and my 91 classmates try to do the impossible: create a guide that will help you survive school.

*cue theme music*

I recently finished up my first year of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo (Class of ’22). Whether you’re a curious about the program and school, anxious to start your first day, reminiscing on your own first year, or just browsing, I hope you enjoy my little personal musings.

Part of the SYDE crew after 1A

1. It takes a village to raise a SYDE. Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo is a cohort system. This pretty much means its a bit like Elementary School — where everyone is in the same class, and for the first two weeks, you draw shapes and trace letters. Not to mention, you spend pretty much your whole day in one classroom: E5 6008. But having this group of people you identify with gives you a bit of a home— which is nice in a school of 35,000+.
2. It’s really frickin cool to be a nerd here. If you have something you want to talk about, talk about it. If you want to start an initiative, start it. The best thing you’ll find here is that almost everyone has something they can go on an on about, be it artificial intelligence or the best mojito recipe. And if your high school experience defined “cool” as not caring about things, let me tell you how wrong that is.
3. Bubble tea is not a meal, despite a large panda milk tea from Presotea being almost 1000 calories. With 10 bubble tea places within a 2km radius, tapioca is still not on the food pyramid.
4. Everyone’s SYDE degree entails something different. Development, UI/UX design, product management, data analysis, quality assurance, research… Just to name a few things Systems Design Engineering students do on co-op and beyond. Even if what we do in the classroom is the same, it’s our activities and pursuits co-curricularly and extracurricularly that define what that diploma means. It’s no longer all about marks.
5. Sit in the 4th row, on the left side of the class. I know, every post about university tells you to sit close to the board. But in E5 6008, it’s even more important. Plus, the fourth row is that sweet spot of not being TOO close to the board, still being able to see what’s written, outlets on the ground, and the left side of the classroom means not as much glare on the chalky blackboard.
6. The phrase “spiders are more scared of you than you are of them” applies to people too. Though it might be surprising to people who don’t know me well, I’m someone who gets intimidated by other people quite easily. But one important thing I’ve learned this year is that more often than not, the other person feels the same way — even if they’re four years older or had worked at your favourite company the previous term. A good conversation is worth the sweat and rapid heart rate you might have while seeking it.
7. Tradeoffs are often blurry: not every decision is entirely bad or entirely good. It seems intuitive, but no one event is going to “make or break” your future, because even the biggest failures will succeed in pushing you forward.
8. Quitting does not mean you have given up. There are always things that aren’t right for us. This could be a job, an extracurricular, or even the SYDE program. But quitting does not mean you’ve given up or you’re not good enough, it just means you’re one step closer to finding what’s right. We have the rest of our life to work a dream job, so a few extra years to ensure that you’re on the right path is worth it.
9. Just because you got there first, doesn’t mean you’re the best. And vice versa: just because you’re not there, doesn’t mean you will never be. This specifically pertains to co-op search. SYDE has one of the best employment rates with really diverse positions (see the class profiles of SYDE’18 and SYDE’17), which means the person sitting next to you will most likely take a completely different path from you. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to get a good co-op if you’re in continuous. Both my co-ops I received offers later into the semester than my friends, and that doesn’t mean a thing. It’s not worth comparing timelines, no matter how easy LinkedIn will make it seem. This is much easier said than done, but understanding this early into your university career will be so beneficial to your mental health. Which leads me to the next point.
10. Meet people outside of your cohort, outside of SYDE, and outside of engineering. This is a point for several reasons. One, because it’s really cool to have diverse friends with different perspectives, and expanding those horizons will help you with your *systems* thinking skills. Two, it’ll make you appreciate the tight knit community that is SYDE and how much the program values that. Three, it’s really cool to have friends and care for them when things get tough. Because it’s true: it’s the people who will make or break your university experience.

These 10 things represent just what I, one person, learned in the last 12 months. Like point 4, everyone’s experience is different, but I hope this gave you a little glimpse into what it was like experiencing 1A SYDE from 2017–2018.

And there were a lot of other things I learned as well! For example, I started off this year not ever have heard the term UI/UX or product design — now I’m going into my second design co-op in September! I started off this year having typed not even a single line of code — now have done two pretty cool hackathons and built a (kind of) functional website. I started off this year not having lived through a winter past -5 degrees — now I know exactly what height of boot is ideal for the icy and snowy winters.

I’m going to sound like a salesperson trying to fill a quota but going into Systems Design Engineering was probably the best unwilling decision I’ve ever made.

*roll credits*