First year engineering at UBC had its ups and downs, but in retrospect, I had a pretty great time. Here is my experience summed up in a narrative timeline.

September: Oh, the joy of moving to a new campus! I moved into Orchard Commons, a UBC residence, and my university life officially began. After watching a billion youtube videos about entering college, I was so excited to meet new people and make new friends, and would even sit down with random people in the cafeteria and start a conversation. Of course, I didn’t become friends with everyone that I met but fortunately I eventually found some awesome people in the next couple of days, one that I still call one of my best friends now.

  • I ran in the election to be part of the engineering first year student council. Lost by 1 vote, nice.
  • Also scoured out good secondhand textbooks deals via UBC buy and sell Facebook groups. Typically I buy for 50% or less of the original price - don’t be afraid to negotiate!

October: Physics gets a lot harder, and we take our first midterm. Everything starts to fall into a pattern; also started to play intramurals dodgeball, and regularly going to the gym with a buddy.

November: We’ve been through a lot of midterms, mostly one after the next for each week. I leave my studying mostly to the last weekend before the midterm, but still managed to get a decent mark so I didn’t try to improve my studying habits.

Also went to my first hackathon with my rudimentary C++ skills. My friends and I didn’t even know how to get started but still a great experience (article I wrote). After this, I promised myself that I would learn programming on the side so that next year, I would also be able to present a cool project.

December: Classes come to an end and finals hits. Hard. I left all my studying to one week before, and I had to study for 6 finals. Super stressed, tired, and worried, I don’t remember much of this time. To make matters worse, my teeth started hurting and it was excruciating pain that just shot up my jaw. After getting a root canal done following the end of my exams, my dentist and I came to the conclusion that I had been intensely clenching my teeth at night (probably due to stress), damaging the nerve inside. Also, should I mention my back/neck also started hurting? Ah I love university.

January: After a restful winter break, I go back to school determined: this term was going to be different. I didn’t want to get a root canal again. I stop leaving things till later. Once homework is assigned, I do it.

February: Big snow this year. I remember studying with people and getting excited about all the snow potentially leading to a cancelled physics midterm. We were all checking the online discussion forum and half-studying when the news hits. I went to bed, study group partied?? Read full post here -> Snow Day

March: Normal school things. Still doing all the assignments waaayyy ahead of deadline, and sometimes I would even be waiting for homework to be opened online. Still, I wasn’t doing so hot in linear algebra.

April: Finals season again. But this time, I was prepared. I spent some time studying alone but most of the day I would meet up with a study group. Went to my first BYC course for PHYS 158 (most horribly organized and confusing course of the year) and did pretty great in my final exams. At the end of the next month, we received our specializations and I successfully made it into computer engineering. Checkpoint passed!



I still have my battle scars today: my root canal-ed teeth and my neck pains. I think I put way too much time into studying because I had forgotten my values and the purpose of higher education. Personally, here are some things important to me:

  • Physical/mental health
  • Writing and painting
  • Having fun and spending time with friends, family
  • Endeavors in coding or other projects

But in the busyness of school and getting swamped by the exam-after-exam hailstorm, I really lost sight of these values. It was only after school ended that I realized I wasn’t spending time on the things that I really liked.

UBC, especially engineering, is no easy feat. But that’s just university. It sweeps you up and lurches you in its deep roaring guts. And the only way to battle against this quashing wave is to stand tall and proud and tell the monster... it’s not as important as it thinks.