A recap of Orientation Week 2020

This is mostly meant to be a quick dump of what we did at Orientation this year, so that in a few years I can look back and be like “oh yeah, I remember that!” Be prepared for unvaried sentence structure and strange remarks/references to be made. (The emoji next to the first sentence is an ox, since it was the closest emoji I could find to a Minotaur, our colour team’s mascot).

Some brief context

I think only a few of the activities/videos were from the Waterloo-wide Orientation, and that the majority of the ones I listed below were Engineering specific.

Within Engineering Orientation, everyone was split into 1 of 18 colour groups (light and dark versions of the same colour) and within that, 4 subgroups.

Day 1: Ending on a good note

This day is dedicated to those people in timezones that were not optimal at 9:00 am EST (or EDT) and woke up much earlier than they usually did, only to find a pre-recorded 5 minute video. We all should have read the description more carefully though; only live events had a big capitalized “LIVE” in front of them on Portal.

The Meet the Dean live video was an exciting time: we learned that we would be getting our yellow first-year hard hats after all!! (originally we were not going to get them this year) You may wonder, “how exciting can a yellow plastic hat be?” It is hard to explain, but it is incredibly exciting

Day 2: there was no need

The main event of Day 2 were the department hangouts. Since listening to all of the hangouts (which cover similar things) is not necessary, I did that anyways. Don’t do that. There was no need.

Day 3: the fun ramps up

One of the activities, ScavEng, was a trivia/find objects/be creative type of game (There were over 400 items). These types of activities are quite enjoyable, and there was a particular one (Item #169: a presentation on what engineering disciplines UW should add next) that stood out.

I present to you the first new engineering discipline, Geespace Engineering.

This was very fun to work on- we had a description, career possibilities and areas of study, just like you would find in a Waterloo Engineering viewbook. Here’s the description below:

Day 4: games

I had a few other things to attend to so I was unable to participate in some of the colour team vs. colour team games. One of the games was Coup, which was a throwback to a game we played occasionally in the lunch room last year. Another game that they had was held on Minecraft (yes, they built a good portion of the Waterloo campus on Minecraft Education Edition), and it was called Spleef (or something like that). Sounded like a fun time as well.

Day 5: return of discipline #2

So since one future engineering discipline was not enough, a new one was created, this one focused on puns (and the tears of engineering students). Here is Ma-tear-ials Engineering!

As you can see, the diamond shape of the molecule shows the strength that comes with the tears of engineering students. Here are some of the specializations you can take with this degree:

We also had the chance to play “4 pics 1 word” as an asynchronous activity. For most of the asynchronous activities, you would do them and then submit your scores to earn points for your team. (I probably should have mentioned that the objective of the week was to get the most points by completing the different activities)

Day 6: submit submit submit

Just a lot of submissions for the various items with regards to the ScavEng activity. I hope the people who made the form don’t receive emails every time someone submits (I apologize if you did).

Day 7: finale

Early morning, last minute QR Code Hunt. This was another activity that was held throughout the week, where QR codes were hidden throughout social media, the Minecraft Waterloo campus, different videos and other clever tricks or tips. Had to get those points!

Evening, Smash Concert. It was pretty good, and as usual, the YouTube chat was very active. O-Team made some announcements, and we also learned the winners of the week!

Light Brown (best team, meaning us) won second (we actually moved up from third, where we have been for the past two days). Dark Brown, who had been holding the top spot for the last two days, dropped to third and Light Green moved up from second to be crowned the winner of O-Week.

And that was a wrap!

Last Thoughts

There were many other activities that were available but that I did not really get involved with, such as building a Rube Goldberg Machine (for those who know, some mixed feelings from #11pm and #groupIV), constructing a water filter and two different building challenges on Minecraft.

Overall though, it was a good time despite it being online and not in-person (unfortunate). The Engineering O-Team and all the other directors and leaders definitely put in a lot of work, and the enthusiasm that the leaders always had (#LightBrown) was still felt in the video calls and chats. We got to learn about the different Engineering traditions, listen to upper years and hopefully meet a few more people that will be walking on this journey with us for the next 5 years.

That’s about all for now. Hopefully in the future looking back at this jumble of words will bring back some good memories. See you soon in the next post about my first week of school!