Editorial

Letter from the Editor: Remember the Past but Embrace the Present

Note: This article is hosted here for archival purposes only. It does not necessarily represent the values of the Iron Warrior or Waterloo Engineering Society in the present day.

Wow, this term has gone by pretty fast! Midterms are finished and projects haven’t quite reached that  point where long hours are critical, not that my courses have many projects anyways.  For me, the stresses of Jobmine have ended and I’ll be off to adventures in Edmonton come January! Don’t worry, I like cross country skiing and the cold doesn’t bother me much anyways.

For those of you still on the job hunt, don’t despair! There are still lots of great jobs out there just waiting to find the perfect student. Job hunting is an interesting beast in that there is no perfect formula to getting yourself employed. Specialized technical skills can get you in to the interview, but getting hired depends in part on how well the future employer can picture you in their office. Things as simple as liking unicycling or spending your free time curled up with a book are what might land you the job. Don’t despair, you will find your employer!

Despite the relative lull in academics (although don’t relax too much, exams aren’t as far away as we’d like them to be!), November seems to be filled with excitement. I have been inundated with lots of articles that are highly relevant to Waterloo. In the past few weeks several engineering teams have made inroads into international competitions, including Suncayr, which came in as international runner up for the James Dyson Award, making it the first Canadian team to have gotten this far. Teams also represented UW at BIOMOD at Harvard, and the National Mining Competition in Saskatchewan.

In other news, Waterloo Engineering recently reported a significant increase in female engineering student enrollment. The incoming engineering class is 27% female, which is a big jump from the 15% that were coming in just 10 years ago. This means more girls in stereotypically male engineering programs like Mechanical, Mechatronics and Electrical engineering. In an article on the University of Waterloo website they cite low female enrollment in grade 12 physics as one of the major factors for less girls going into engineering. My highschool was small, so they only offered grade 12 Physics every other year. This meant that I had to decide whether I wanted to take physics in grade 10 or victory lap. Physics was that one course that everyone dreaded; I’m not sure if it was the hard teacher or the calculus, but out of two years worth of students – a pool of 300 or so – less than 30 people took the class. There was certainly a feeling that of all the courses, physics was the hardest.  A lot of males took physics instead of biology, whereas many girls in the school took biology instead of physics.  Personally, I thought physics was pretty cool so I made sure to fit that one grade 12 physics class into my schedule, although to do that was quite challenging. Had I not realized at 15 the importance of physics, I might not have even had the option to be here today. I always thought of physics as more of a hands-on type class compared to biology and chemistry, which might be the reason only 30% of girls take physics at a senior highschool level. It is really exciting that the gender gap is narrowing among engineering students, and I await the day when the gender of our future engineers is no longer news.

This Tuesday, Canadians marked Remembrance Day. This year, November 11 corresponds closely with the 25th anniversary of the ‘Peaceful Revolution’ which saw the symbolic collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Germany’s current Chancellor, Angela Merkel, marked the day by attending a service for victims of the former East German regime. At the time of the Peaceful Revolution, she was a 35 year old physicist living and working in East Germany, so the celebrations for victims of the regime were quite personal.

Being in a war is an experience that, luckily, I have never had to experience. However, that is not to say that my family has not been shaped by it. My two grandfathers experienced World War II in very intimate but very different ways. Their experiences were shaped by two important factors: age and location of birth.

For my maternal grandfather, Maxfield Sheppard, who was born in Ontario in 1917, his childhood took place during the depression. This was a lean time for the family since his father was an architect and no one could afford to build homes. He had to work a year to afford to go to university where his parents forced him to take business in hopes he would better weather another depression that way. When the second world war became a real concern, he was a recent graduate and was pressed into military service not just as a common soldier but a sergeant, in control of men and their lives.

My other grandfather, Eduard Kristufek, was born some time later in a small Czech town in 1925.  For him it was a childhood punctuated by memories of road signs changing to German over night, and Czech soldiers being forced to lay down their weapons in town squares. He was an innocent civilian, a victim even. His dark hair and eyes and the fact that his father was the principle in their local school are the reason I’m around today. Although Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia was difficult, and my grandfather was thrown out of school, he was saved when a family friend let him work in their shoe factory. It wasn’t until they were under Soviet rule and he had been kicked out of school again—but this time university—that he truly needed to flee or be pressed into the military.

During the war both men lost people. For Max it was an ambush on a wooded country road that saw his close friends killed and him badly injured. It was actually lucky for him, since his replacement was killed the next day. For my Czech grandfather it was a world that was constantly being pulled from beneath his feet. Friends disappearing or being called in to mandatory military service, rights being limited and finally, long after his escape, the knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to go back for either parents’ funerals.

I suspect if asked who had it worse given these descriptions of the two men’s war time experiences, most people would say, hands down, that it was the Czech man. However, I beg to differ. For Eduard, although he was tossed around quite a bit, he felt no responsibility for what had happened to him. He was a victim surrounded by victims and so he dealt with his losses in the context of many other people who had lost more or experienced more. For Max, his experience was one of responsibility. Although he didn’t really have much of a choice either, he experienced losses of people he was in charge of, and probably felt he could have prevented the deaths. After that ordeal, he was plunged back into a world that was virtually unscathed by the terror. No bombed out buildings, no vacant stares, and he probably spent a great deal of time wondering, ‘why me?’ and, ‘why them?’ To be a soldier is to experience enormous guilt born from that feeling of responsibility given to you. Upon returning from utter destruction it is hard to see people crying over a little spilt milk.

This is why we honor our veterans: they have subjected themselves to this split life to keep our lives so much less encumbered. Lives in which the most we cry about is a bad grade on a test or a break up. So the pain we feel remains infrequent and not commonplace. Although he had lost his home and would never see his parents again, it was the Czech boy, the innocent victim caught in the middle, who was able to live a life unencumbered. In many ways guilt is much more destructive than grief.  When everything is taken away from you there is nowhere to go but up.

I hope you took a moment to honor our soldiers and their families for the unique sacrifices made by all soldiers. At the same time, war makes everyone a victim and it is important to remember that fact. Violence should always be a last resort.

Well, that’s it for me this issue; see you again in two weeks for our final issue! There will be lots of goodies including the Tin Soldier to distract, ahem…motivate…you to study hard for finals!

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