Greetings everyone! My name is Lucas Hudson and I am the outgoing Editor-in-Chief. For those who have never read The Iron Warrior before, this newspaper is the Official Newspaper of the Engineering Society of the University of Waterloo. Even though we are an Engineering newspaper, we cover things from arts & culture to events around campus and news from around the world. For those who are regular readers, I want to thank you again for choosing to read The Iron Warrior.
You are going to hear a lot of advice in the next week or so about how to tackle university. While some of the recommendations you will hear or read will be sound, not every piece of advice applies equally to every person. With that in mind, I decided not to give you a list of general tips on how to “survive” university or how to make friends. You’ll figure those things out on your own. What I decided to do instead is to use this space to recount some memories from my last five terms at Waterloo, and tell you some of the things I have learned. Hopefully, you will be able to extrapolate some meaning from them that will help you in your adventures.
Over my time at Waterloo, I have made a multitude of mistakes. One of the biggest mistakes in my university career appeared in the fifth issue of The Iron Warrior in the spring term. The department of Housing and Residences was scheduled to publish an add detailing the availability of winter housing. Instead, what got published was an irrelevant and outdated ad about fall/spring 2013 upper-year residences. Not only did Housing and Residences not get the opportunity to spread the information they wanted, The Iron Warrior was spreading misinformation. I want to take complete responsibility for this mistake and would like to make an apology to Housing and Residences for printing the wrong advertisement. If you are looking for housing in winter 2014, whether you are in co-op or studying, the application is now open at uwaterloo.ca/housing/apply.
I have tried to find a way to transform each mistake I’ve made, from small missteps to colossal fumbles, into a learning experience. What I learned from this last mistake is that a lot more planning needs to go into big project than I previously thought necessary. Of course, I plan what goes into the newspaper well ahead of the production deadline, but I need to be more organized about how documents are stored and pay closer attention to the individual details.
The last four years (I just finished 3A, but I took a year off between 1A and 1B) have also taught me a lot about myself. It’s weird how being around other people will do that. I have learned that no matter how much I tell myself I will get up early the next morning, it doesn’t actually make it easier to get out of bed. It turns out that I am very good at convincing myself that I don’t actually need an extra 15 minutes in the morning to get ready and that sleeping in is a great idea. I am most always wrong. How do I prevent myself from falling into the same bad habit? I don’t. It’s something I still struggle with to this day, and even struggled with this morning, but that doesn’t mean I have given up with trying to change. I try to keep my alarm as far away from my bed as possible, get a good night sleep every night, and even try to set my alarm so I don’t interrupt a REM cycle. There hasn’t been an easy solution yet, there rarely is. It turns out even the smallest thing like waking up in the morning takes motivation, self control and practice.
Besides learning that I am a big grouch in the morning, I have also learned about what kind of person I want to be during the day. I soon realized after starting university that I was not acting like that person I wanted to be. I wasn’t following the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It has been a slow and difficult process turning into the person I am today, and to be honest, I am nowhere near the person I want to be. I want to be someone who is always kind, thoughtful of others’ feelings and able to express my own feelings. I want to be someone who isn’t influenced by absurd social pressures to dress or look a certain way or expect others to dress or look a certain way. I want to always be questioning the status quo, taking things for more than face value. I want to not always rely on spell check! The list could go on and on. Realistically, I will never be the person I want to be, because I am always going to find something that I dislike about myself, or a situation in which I should have acted differently. But, I am okay with that, because I know I am trying, and sometimes all you can do is try.
It looks like this is all the space I have, good luck with your studies and don’t forget to be awesome!
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