Looking back at the first month of university

Wow!

Even though I have been at home since March, these past few weeks have gone by rather quickly. Most of the leaves outside have already begun to fall, and we are approaching the end of the “midterm” season at school. (Although this was supposed to be a “first month” post, somehow I have dragged the posting date to a few weeks later). Here are some of my thoughts on all that’s been going on:

School

Unlike previous years where an engineering schedule would fill up the entire calendar, this year it is rather empty. What used to be some 30 hours of classes, labs and tutorials have now been shortened to less than 10 hours of synchronous classes each week. Most of the courses have some asynchronous portion, so I would assume that those are supposed to take up the other ~20 hours.

You would think that online school is easier, but I think it is fair to say that it comes with its own challenges that are different from in-person school. For some, it is the environment- being at home and “comfortable” might be more difficult to focus and get tasks done. For others, it can be the self-motivation- with the flexibility to pick when to study, listen to lectures and when to sleep, the onus is on you to organize your time effectively. (As to how I am doing, well, we will leave that for another time :P)

Without actually spending a term on campus with in-person classes, it is difficult to make an accurate comparison to the current situation. I’m sure that now, being in-person sounds a lot better than online, but once we are in-person, online will start to sound better. Something to continue pondering

In general, most of the courses have been manageable in terms of content and assignments. With online school, the mark distribution has changed, putting less emphasis on final exams/midterms and more on assignments/quizzes. For some courses like linear algebra and physics, they went away with exams and replaced them with three tests spread throughout the term. The content is starting to ramp up though, so it is fair to expect some friction resistance on the way up (my attempt at a physics joke: not good, like my attempt at actual physics)

Thinking ahead

Part of me is worried about the return to actual in-person school- the earliest time that will happen would be in September 2021 (my coop term is in the spring), meaning I would have gone !!1.5 years!! without being in a physical school setting. It is kind of weird to think that most of the second-years will be as clueless as the first-years once we get on campus.

Hypothetical conversation in September:

1A student: “Hey, do you know where Dana Porter is?”
me: “Who?”
(Dana Porter is the name of one of the libraries)

Not only that, but I want to say that online learning is different from in-person. Most of the online assessments we have are open book, whereas the ones in person are usually not. Online recorded lectures (even synchronous ones) are not the same as live in-person ones, although the participation rate is probably the same (oof). Regardless, these are problems for 2A, which is still another year away.

Social Things

I have been trying to be more proactive in interacting with others (online of course). I don’t want to drag on a conversation unnecessarily, but there are times where we can have a good chat on meaningful topics that isn’t just a brief “how-are-you-doing-i’m-fine-and-you?” conversation. These are good, (I would highly recommend!) and can help keep you sane when you are stuck at home.

In terms of fellowshipping (don’t think that is a word), keeping up with three fellowships (one at home church, two at Waterloo) was something I did not know if I could manage at the beginning of the year, but somehow it has been working out so far. I’m thankful that I have this opportunity to spend time with different people in different environments, and hopefully can keep it going as the year progresses. There are a lot of cool people to meet!

Final Thoughts

Well, that’s a brief look into how the past month (and a bit) have been going. I don’t know what else to say; this keyboard suggestion I got from Google does capture part of the ongoing feelings. Thanks for noticing, Google.

With that said, I will hopefully see you soon!