Orientation Week Articles

I wrote two articles for UW’s frosh week – one introducing Software Engineering in the Iron Warrior, and one with general advice in mathNEWS. Since mathNEWS has been having issues with their online archives, I will have to wait until a later date to publish my article (when I can retype it or figure out how to find a digital copy of the version the Editors published). Alas. After I wrote this blurb, CSCF adjusted their policy to assign students mailservices email accounts rather than accounts on their own student.cs mail server. As a result, SE students now only have two emails from the university to manage, instead of the three I lament in the article as published. This is definitely a positive step – mailservices gives much larger quotas than the old student.cs server, and it also can be accessed via IMAP (yay). Of course, there’s still the plethora of SSH and RDP/Terminal Servers available for one to access… for better or worse. But that discussion is best left to another article… or to the various wiki pages you can find using Google. And I’m still waiting for at least one software frosh to come say hi. Perhaps I should spend more time in the labs on campus? > Software Engineering – Michael Chang – 2A Software If you’re the > tl;dr type, remember: Sleep is good. First, some house-keeping items: > As I write this, your class has two facebook groups. Join the active > one, created by Elisa Lou. (Yay, Elisa!) Use Facebook to keep touch > with classmates; official notices from the university are sent via > email. You have email accounts from student.cs and engmail; I also > recommend also using mailservices (all > .uwaterloo.ca). Officially, you should check > each account every day; many students forward everything to one > account. Gmail works with some caveats (you must send mail using > GMail’s servers). When in doubt, Google Is Your Friend. (GIYF) Spend > time getting to know your fellow softies and new people outside of > Software (e.g. friends in residence). When you witness tribalism > between Math and Engineering, remember it’s meant to be good-natured > competitive fun. Take a few chances this week – say hi to a pretty > girl (or boy) you see in the foyer – everyone else is just as awkward > and nervous as you are. Oh, and Charlie likes “the Wikipedia”, and > insists on attending the first lecture before buying texts for a > class. Software focuses on Doing It Right for Big Projects. For the > robots in SE101, my advice: Friends do not always make good group > members, and avoid excessive use of methods in NQC. Strive to find > balance between work and fun. Whatever you do, whether its writing for > the Iron Warrior or mathNEWS, helping a cute girl/guy in AHS or AFM, > playing StarCraft, or setting up btrfs as root on Ubuntu 10.10, spend > leisure time in Waterloo so you’ll want to come back. Welcome to > Waterloo – come say hi; I’d love to get to know you. > > Published in > the Frosh Week 2010 Edition of Iron > Warrior.