Disclaimer: This post was inspired by Xierumeng’s blog, which I read extensively before 1A because of how nervous I was to start the term. You can find it here.

 

For those unfamiliar with the terminology, 1A refers to the first term of our academic studies at Waterloo (followed by 1B, 2A, …., 4A, 4B). And looking back on it, it’s a term that is filled with highs and lows, confusion, frustration, and excitement. Most of this stems from the fact that 1A is filled with so much change.

 

The first few weeks of the term were the roughest. I was in a new city, without any of my high school friends, living on my own for the first time. There are so many emotions going on at any given time, that it’s hard to describe and certainly nothing that you can prepare for. Everyone will react to the changes differently, but it’s important to remember that all of your peers are in the same boat. Talking to the friends I’d made later in the term, I realized pretty much all of us felt lost, lonely, and scared as we arrived in Waterloo and tried to settle in. Just hang in there. I promise it gets so much better.

 

Engineering Orientation Week was a good time. I’ll keep my comments minimal because it’s much more fun to experience things with no idea what’s happening, constantly confused about what, at times, seems like a cult indoctrination. Nevertheless, I met some good people from my program, had a lot of fun, got a hard hat, and sweated a lot (it was unbearably hot).

 

Now, shall we dive into the academics? Let’s break it up course-by-course. I’ll tell you my thoughts on each course, give a little advice, and summarize the main content. Keep in mind that you may have different instructors when you take these courses if you’re a 1A student, but a lot of the info should still be applicable.

 

ECE 105 – Classical Mechanics

Instructor: Matthew Robbins

I’m writing this the day after I wrote the ECE 105 final exam which was… interesting to say the least. The course consists of a lot of high school review in terms of the physics itself, with a few new concepts. As an Ontario High School student with no special schooling (no IB, AP, etc.) the new content for me was torques, rotational motion, rolling motion, angular momentum, and simple harmonic motion. The pre-midterm content was almost exclusively review.

 

However, let me be clear, no matter your level of prior physics education, this course is difficult. The professors (Robbins especially) make very difficult problems, taking concepts you think you’re familiar with and pushing them to the bounds of what you can recognize during assessments. This can be an adjustment from high school, but I eventually learned to enjoy the process of starting a quiz, being clueless, and eventually working out how to apply my knowledge to solve the problem (rather than knowing what to do immediately). To be fair, there are definitely times where the instructors decide to go easy on you in this course, because they genuinely don’t want the performance of the class to be very poor. The grading scheme which allowed for the final exam to only be worth 35% of our final grade definitely saved many people, and I know many upper years didn’t get this leniency. Most finals are worth around 50% in engineering.

 

Overall, Matthew Robbins is what made this course great for me. He brought so much passion to every lesson, did demos in almost every class, and was very available for help and to answer questions. Many students from the other sections started attending Robbins’ lectures by the end of the term.

 

ECE 150 – Fundamentals of Programming

Instructor: Douglas W. Harder

Your level of prior programming experience totally dictates how this course will be. Personally, I had a few years of experience writing web applications and APIs, so I had the basics of programming down. Still, I had never really used a low-level language like C++ (which is what the course uses) extensively, so there was quite a bit for me to learn. Pre-midterm content is quite basic up until bitwise operations, but post-midterm ramps up quite a bit as you dive into memory, pointers, and object-oriented programming. If you have prior programming experience, you’ll be ok. If you don’t, I’d recommend getting some practice in before 1A. It’ll make your life easier, trust me. 

 

Harder is a decent instructor and a nice guy, and his slides are quite thorough (you can find literally all of the lecture materials and accompanying videos for the course here), but I preferred when he taught lessons on the whiteboards, writing out sample code by hand. It’s important to keep in mind that your exams will have you writing code on paper, so it’s good to see an instructor doing the same. A tip: don’t speak while Harder is teaching. Not even quietly. He will hear you, and he will ask you to answer a question about the content. You should be keeping your voice down no matter the instructor at the front of the room though, out of respect for them and your peers.

 

If you can, I really recommend getting a head-start on the projects as they come out. I always finished them well ahead of the deadlines, and I think it really lightened my load and made me less stressed. Especially if you have skills via prior programming experience, you can definitely finish the first two projects in a couple days and the last two within around a week. They may change the format of these projects at some point, but it’s been consistent for a little while now from what I can tell.

 

A few notes:

• If you don’t have a strong background in code, attend labs and tutorial sessions. The instructors for those sessions are legitimately very knowledgeable, kind, and helpful. 
• DO NOT PLAGIARIZE FOR PROJECTS. It sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised. During 1A, I was an Academic Representative for my cohort, so I had the pleasure of reviewing cases of plagiarism with Harder. The MOSS system will catch it, and Harder will pursue it. It is far better to submit nothing at all than to plagiarize. At least during my year, any low project grades were automatically replaced by your final exam grade anyways. You do not want a Policy 71 violation.

The final exam for this course was brutal. Most people came out of it thinking they failed. It was genuinely difficult and quite long. Most people didn’t finish. The universal consensus was that our final was quite a bit harder than previous years we were given as samples. This led to a lot of Reddit memes, and I’ll leave you with this:

 

ECE 190 – Engineering Profession & Practice

Instructor: Dan Davison

ECE 190 is not a difficult course. Attend the lectures, don’t miss group activities, study at least a little for exams, and you’ll get a good grade. The course content focused on how to succeed in UW ECE, engineering ethics, legal stuff, risk management, etc.

 

Dan Davison legitimately tries his best to make the course interesting and is an amazing person in my opinion. This was his first time teaching the course and he was already extremely organized. You’d think he’s been teaching it for years. 

 

This was also the first time ECE 190 had a midterm and final exam. But… multiple choice… cheat sheets… it’s manageable if you put any effort in.

 

ECE 198 – Project Studio

Instructor: David Lau

As an Academic Rep this term, ECE 198 was the course I received the most consistent complaints about. In our meetings with First Year Engineering and the Professors, a lot of our time was spent discussing how this course is run.

 

That’s not to say you’re doomed in any way. A lot of this course is what you make of it, although I do think it needs an overhaul.

 

Essentially, the whole course is based around a hardware project you and a partner will create with an STM-32 Nucleo microcontroller board (think dumber Arduino). Every year has a different theme, and my year was personal health and wellness. This meant that, in my first couple weeks as an engineering student, I was told to come up with a unique idea to solve a real-world personal health issue using a technology I’d never heard of. Intimidating. Especially for those like me with no prior hardware experience.

 

As you get later on in the term, you will be tasked with actually implementing the design for the project you proposed (both physically and in software) to produce a working prototype. This is a big ask for a bunch of 1A students who are mostly clueless. David Lau will say this is a self-guided course, which I understand. But my classmates often pleaded for some kind of formal instruction or help in getting started. My hope is that some level of instruction will be provided in the future following our discussions this year. Thankfully, the implementation was only worth 30%. Which brings me to the other main complaint. The grading in this course is largely based off of two written reports you submit: the Project Proposal and the Design Document (worth 50% alone). Writing these documents can be quite time-consuming (especially for a half-weight course) but the main issue comes in the grading. Each group is assigned a TA to meet with who grades all of their work. The TAs vary in consistency wildly. I was lucky to have a fairly lenient TA who allowed for some wiggle room in the rubrics, while others were not.

 

Pro tip: 80% of groups will leave the implementation to the last week of the course. I’m not going to explicitly tell you not to do that, but I urge you to purchase your components and get familiar with STM32CubeIDE before then. Personally, I finished the implementation around a week and a half in advance of our demo, and it lightened the load so much compared to the other groups who were racing to hack something together.

 

While this course was a challenge, there’s no denying that it throws you into the fire of engineering design and forces you to learn something about ECE, ready or not. Working on my project in this course was one of the only things this term that made me feel like I was working in “engineering.”

Kinda cool, right?

 

ENGL 192 – Engineering Communications

Instructor: Heather Love

Personally, I didn’t mind this course at all. I enjoyed the way my instructor ran it and learned some interesting things. There will be a lot of reading and writing, and the course may feel time-consuming. But, it’s important to remember that communication skills are legitimately important in engineering. You won’t get a co-op without communication skills, no matter how technically adept you are.

 

I’ll pretty much leave it at that, as your experience can vary A LOT depending on the instructor you have. They all design their course slightly differently while working toward the same learning outcomes. Mine, for example, was focused on many steps toward an end-of-term symposium in groups about the ethical implications of different technologies.

 

The course is broken down into small sections of around 20-30 people, giving it a strong high school vibe which is nice. I definitely had the chance to get to know some of the people in my cohort much better in this class.

 

MATH 115 – Linear Algebra for Engineering

Instructor: Graeme Turner

I found this course to be the most interesting this term. I came in with relatively solid knowledge about vectors and matrix operations for an Ontario HS student, so a lot of the pre-midterm content was review for me. However, closer to the midterm and definitely the whole second half of the course gets quite abstract and difficult to fully grasp. It’s important to do the weekly practice problems and go to office hours if you don’t understand something. 

 

Before coming to Waterloo, I’d recommend looking into how you solve systems of equations with matrices if you haven’t before (not all MCV4U teachers introduce it). It’ll make your life just a little bit easier as you’re thrown into the fire of engineering and trying to survive (it’ll be okay, you can do it 😀).

 

Graeme Turner is a great guy and a good teacher. It took me a little while to get used to the “language of math” that profs tend to use, but you’ll catch on eventually. The important thing to remember when coming into university is that you’re now being taught by experts. Your high school math teachers were very smart people, but they most likely had a Bachelors or Masters degree at most and were experts in the field of education. Your university math professors are actual mathematicians who dedicate their lives to the field. It’s cool to meet people who are so knowledgeable and passionate about math as someone who has always loved it as a subject, but just keep in mind that it may take some adjustments to fully understand a lesson taught by an expert.

 

Overall, this course is quite fast-paced but very fair. Weekly tutorials were never that surprising if you did the practice problems, and the midterm and final were very similar to the samples provided. The course is highly organized and designed to help you succeed. It makes sense, seeing as many engineering disciplines take this course (over 1000 students total split among 10 sections in my term).

 

I will never forget the thrill of weekly hour-long tutorials (which were basically like collaborative quizzes) where we would be helping each other answering problems, scribbling things down, trying to convince TAs to give hints, and then going to debate with people about the answers. Genuinely a fun time for math lovers like me.

 

MATH 117 – Calculus I for Engineering

Instructor: Yingqi Li

Pre-midterm content is a mix of review from Advanced Functions and Calculus for Ontario students and a few new procedures that you’ll be able to pick up fairly quickly. The Harmsworth course notes that you’ll likely be required to buy are quite useful.

 

Post-midterm is when integrals are introduced, which is entirely new for students coming from the standard Ontario curriculum. It’s honestly not that bad. The resources are there for you to succeed, and we were lucky to have a very fair final.

 

This course also had weekly tutorial assignments, although two hours long and in smaller sections of students. They rarely took the full two hours, and my TA was very helpful. 

 

This course is quite manageable if you do the practice problems consistently and seek help when things get tough. It seemed intimidating at times, especially as my instructor was brand new to teaching, but I found that if I reminded myself of the math that I knew, nothing was a major leap. You just need some confidence.

 

Odd little note: the very first topic we were taught was conic sections, which was new to me and many of my Ontario HS peers. It was extra stressful because we had a tutorial assessment on them 3 days after they were taught. Luckily, conic sections didn’t appear again after the first week (not even on the midterm or final).

 

Co-op Search

While this isn’t a course, it’s a major part of the term for Stream 4 students like myself. Finding a job in this economy is certainly not easy. As I’m writing this, just over half of my cohort is employed for the coming term. Which is… not great. Luckily, I secured a job relatively early on in the process this time. You’ll learn all about WaterlooWorks when you become a student, but here’s the summary of my journey:

• 43 WaterlooWorks applications through 2 cycles
• ~20 external applications
• 2 Interviews
• 1 “Not Ranked”
• 1 Offer (accepted)

My offer ended up being for a role I applied to externally, and I am very happy with it. I look forward to the next 4 months I’ll be spending on co-op.

 

Keep in mind, the co-op search is not easy, but looking at my stats there you may notice that it doesn’t take much to get a job once you’re in the interview stage. Realistically, it takes one good interview. And yes, my unsuccessful interview was actually pretty bad. The biggest trouble right now is getting yourself through the resume screening phase, which is very tough as a 1A student with little experience. Just like anything at Waterloo, however, this is doable with some persistent effort. As you come into 1A, you will be given many resources on resume building and interviewing. Take a look at this to get started.

 

A Note on Grades

Your expectations from High School will need to shift quickly. You should be quite happy with 70s and 80s in Waterloo Engineering. It may take some time to get used to, but you will adapt.

 

Dean Mary Wells told us “60 is the new 90” multiple times. While that may be a slight exaggeration, it’s a valid statement. To advance to the next term in UW Eng, all you need is a 60% average. Maintain that, and you’re doing ok (especially in 1A). Additionally, 1A term promotion rules allow for two failed courses (to be cleared later) without affecting your status, as long as that average stays at 60. 

 

Conclusion

Even though I practically just wrote an essay, I feel like there’s so much more that could be said. I didn’t even touch on hell week or get into many of the everyday practicalities of being a UW student. Perhaps more blog posts are on the way! I guess my main takeaway from 1A is this: You will never be fully prepared for what’s to come, and that is ok.

 

1A is a term defined by changes to your life, to your personal standards, and to your academic journey. As most engineering students would, I always tried to over-prepare for everything and anticipate every action. This was the wrong approach. And to be clear, I’m not telling you to stop doing homework or preparing for tests. I’m talking about the “life stuff.” Just remember that it’s ok to be unsure with what comes next and to be nervous about what’s coming around the corner. That’s life, and there will be plenty of that in 1A.

 

Overall, you have to remember to believe in yourself, especially in the toughest moments. There were times in 1A when I questioned whether I belonged at Waterloo (EVERYONE has these thoughts), and other times when I was literally jumping in the air with joy over various successes. It’s a journey, and while it may only be four months, it feels quite long by the end. Take it slow and steady for the marathon of a term ahead, don’t race through.