UWaterloo Math 1A in Retrospect

I took MATH135 & 137 ¹, CS135 ², COMMST100 ³ for my required communications course, and ECON101 ⁴ for my elective.

Regarding grades, I was quite surprised by my efficiency. Every week I had two quizzes and one assignment, and I would usually only spend 2–3 hours studying for them the day before. Not skipping almost all lectures helped. My average for this term was >90%, and although I did not properly set academic expectations for myself⁵, this was higher than I expected.

For midterms, I spent about 3–4 hours on each math course, and not much else on the other subjects. For finals, it was roughly 4–12 hours for each subject, again, more math heavy. I can't say this was particularly difficult to pull off, and having a study partner definitely helped.

The effort required for CS, ECON, and COMMST was negligible.

The course content was neither interesting nor boring, I did learn a lot of new content, certainly much more compared to high school. I much prefer the higher density and pacing. The weekly quizzes made sure I was caught up as well.

One thing I appreciate is that my math profs are pretty great. They wrote the course notes/textbooks, which were free, and it matched the lectures one-to-one. There was always someone online to answer your questions on the forums too. Unfortunately for MATH135 the practice problems did not come with solutions. I (and many others) disagree with this decision. You can view a somewhat funny exchange regarding this here.

I'm currently studying math and I must say I have some doubts as to whether this is the optimal path for me. I believe having a high interest in your course content is essential, and I certainly don't dislike math but I don't feel this excitement so much either.

Also worth noting that I do not care about how practical (or not) what I'm learning is. Many paths are open, but they all come with tradeoffs and looking around is difficult.

I've been leaning towards Combinatorics & Optimization or Computational Mathematics. It would also be wonderful if I enjoyed STAT230 (which I am taking next term) and went towards Data science or Statistics since I believe that would be more employable but it's not looking likely.

Aside from schoolwork, I also played a lot of pool, met some cool people, and went to a few events. I wish I had gone out even more, and connected with even more people, but it is what it is. Next term I hope to "do better". How exactly will I do this? I don't know... should probably figure that out.

I've come a long way from when I actively avoided social situations, to now where I actually enjoy them. Regardless, it still takes effort to put yourself in those situations.

UWaterloo has the reputation that it is horrible for socializing, and indeed I can see aspects of this, but I don't have a baseline to compare it against, so I can't comment on this much. I think there are places you can put yourself; perchance it does not come as naturally compared to other universities.

After all, socializing is all about maximizing your surface area, and you can certainly do so.

One thing I regret is not purchasing the climbing gym membership during the term, it's a good deal⁶ and I think I would've greatly enjoyed it. Next term I will be climbing at least two times per week at the PAC⁷.

I've also had more free time than I expected, and I spent much of that working on my compiler and other recreational programming projects⁸. It's been very fun, and I'm grateful that I'm not an engineering student and that I have the time to do this. Another thing I did was that I played Silksong (up to Act 2), which was a delightful experience. Aside from that I didn't play any games at all.

I also lived with a roommate this term, and it was alright. We didn't speak much, and unfortunately we had rather mismatched sleep schedules, and both of us had wild swings. Sometimes I went to sleep at 9 and other times at 2, all in the span of a week. Usually I went to sleep earlier. I don't think it was bad, but I'm grateful that I'll get the room to myself next term.

Oh and the common bathrooms were amazingly clean, which was a welcome surprise.

Another goal I had was to eat more. Now, you'd think this would be easy considering that I had an all-you-can-eat meal plan. This was, in fact, not the case, as I lost 1 kg over the semester and I am already severely underweight. I partly blame this on the cafeteria's less-than-satisfactory hours and partly on the fact that I will just be too lazy eat, or wake up too late (same thing). Having a small appetite also doesn't help.

My course-load will be significantly heavier next term and so it's not looking like I will have a lot of free time next term, but that remains to be seen. Not only that, but I'll also be searching for coop jobs, which is a whole other ordeal in itself. (please hire me)

Even though university was a totally fresh experience, these 4 months have really flown by. It's interesting to think that 1/8th of my study terms are over. One down, seven to go.

thanks for reading! very minimal AI used! all handwritten