Hey everyone and welcome to a new fall term.
First a little introduction, I’m Jon Martin, and I am currently in my 3B term of Civil Engineering, where I am specializing in Transportation. I have been involved with the Iron Warrior since my 1A term when I signed up for the mailing list at the Frosh week student teams lunch. Since then I haven’t missed an issue, writing regular articles before adding my Future of Gaming column in 1B.
I am a lifelong resident of Waterloo region, living just within Kitchener (so I’ve had to switch over from the 12 to the 201 iXpress). So, yes, I do live at home with my family. I also went to the Waterloo Engineering Science Quest (ESQ) summer camp, so I have played soccer on the green where the Quantum Nano Centre is still under construction now.
For my term as editor I have a couple of general goals for the paper, including introducing new content, columns and contributors, as well as generating my cross-society contributors. The first couple components are especially important during the fall term as the entire class of 2016 is here together. Make the best of this time and get to know lots of people because it is great to have friends on both societies when you are involved with events or here on a co-op term. After this term about half of you 2016s will be switching over to the Engineering Society A where you will meet all of the upper years on that society. Get to know them too as they will be great resources to you throughout your careers here at UW.
I want to encourage everyone to get involved with activities outside of engineering academics, because you need to have something that you can enjoy doing besides school work – otherwise your brain will explode. True story, well, not really.
Anyway, being entirely focused just on Engineering can lead to great marks obviously, but I am of the belief that there needs to be a balance between work and life, homework and extra-curricular, and classes and friends. I have a ton of respect for the people who dedicate every waking hour to their engineering degree, but I don’t really know any of them that well.
Of course I am going to advise people to contribute to the Iron Warrior, whether that is through coming to meetings, writing articles, or contributing ideas. Meetings are every Monday at 5:30 in E2-2349A, but you can stop by at any time and there will probably be someone here. If you have ideas for articles let us know, if you want to write that article that is even better. So tap into that inner English major wannabe who realized they should get a degree that could actually make money and leave university without years of debt, and break out the wordprocessing program of your choice. Personally I have found that the continued use of my writing skills has made writing work-reports and course related reports a whole lot easier.
A big project that we are currently working on in the Iron Warrior office is archiving the historical records of the paper. Since the formation of the Iron Warrior in 1980 copies all of the issues have been kept in physical storage in the IW office, where they get skimmed through by each incoming editor. Unfortunately this has contributed to the deteriartion of the papers, which aren’t that sturdy to begin with, being on newsprint. To ‘fix’ this problem we cataloguing all issues of the paper that we have, recording information like Editor-in-Cheif for the term, publication date, and page count. Each issue is being stored in archival safe packaging, before being sent to a large format scanning company. There each issue will be scanned and saved as a pdf before being returned – without the need to cut the issues at all. Next step, hosting all of the pdfs on the Iron Warrior website. For the first time ever, anyone can go onto the website and access the entire history of the Iron Warrior, and by extension, a large part of the history of the Engineering Society of the University of Waterloo. There are years of history in these papers, but even so we are missing some issues, or have issues with significant physical damage, so we will be looking for alumni who may have kept copies for themselves that could be borrowed.
Besides the Iron Warrior another great opportunity for is frosh week – applications will be opening this November. I have always been very involved with Frosh Week, having been a Big, Huge, and then EDCOM this year. Every year has been a great opportunity to meet people and help incoming frosh. If you enjoyed the week as a frosh, I guarantee that you will enjoy it even more as a leader. When you are a leader you have all the same fun activities, but you know more people, you know where you are going, and you hopefully still aren’t freaked out by being away from home.
Another thing that I want to talk about is the opportunities that co-op present and how you can use them to achieve personal goals throughout your career. In my own case I lucked into my first co-op term job through a personal connection which then led into subsequent jobs at another company and other offices. For my most recent co-op term (over the summer) I was able to approach my previous employer and organize a job in the Calgary, Alberta office, they wanted me to return to the company and I wanted to do some travelling and live on my own for a while so it was a win-win scenario. Being a lifelong resident of Kitchener-Waterloo, going to university in Waterloo, and doing most of my co-op terms in Kitchener have left me with the desire to travel and see a bit more of the country.
I can now appreciate how a lot of frosh feel when they come to Waterloo and are living on their own for the first time, the new responsibilities – especially the cooking and laundry, and at times, the feeling of being alone. The best I can say is still the same advice I gave earlier, get involved and meet new people. Having other stuff to occupy your time and keep you busy is the best way to keep away the onset of homesickness. Get out and meet people and before you know it you will realize that months have passed and you will be looking forward to getting back to UW to see your friends again.
From my experiences with co-op so far I have a couple of pieces of advice for job searching, not really JobMine related, as I have never actually used JobMine, but more general advice about networking. As I said I lucked into a job after working for the company during the summers after grade 11 and 12, so the company offered me a co-op before the Fall term had even started. Since then every job I have received, spanning three companies (one was bought out), four different departments, and several provinces, has been through negotiations with the previous employer. Use the connections you make with employers to benefit your co-op career and your future career options as much as you can.
Of course this strategy only works with a receptive employer, one who views personal growth and experience in the corporate environment and will accept the risk of maybe losing co-op student to another company.
So that is my advice, and my extremely rambling editorial for this issue.
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