Letter from the Editor: Halloween, Jobs and a Big Hello to Other Universities

With the colours changing, leaves lowering, and brisk breezes blowing all over the place, it is plain that the fall months are upon us. Although winter looms, autumn has plenty to offer; pumpkins and gourds are ripe for the picking and corn mazes exist in abundance. We have feasted and spent time with our families. Now it is time to usher in the end of this season and embrace our fears of those things that go bump in the night. After all, the nights are growing longer.
Halloween is said to have begun as a Celtic festival called Samhain where people dressed in costumes and lit bonfires to ward off ghosts and bad spirits. They also believed that that was the best time for telling the future and discovering what was in store for the following year. In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as All Saints Day to honor all saints and martyrs. The night before became known as All Hallows Eve, and later as Halloween.
Halloween is different in every place. In France, for instance, it is begrudgingly celebrated. However, October 31st is a time strictly for scary costumes. They then have Carnival in March where everyone dresses up in fun costumes. Halloween only started to be celebrated in North America in the mid 19th century with the influx of Irish immigrants, eventually being commercialized to what we know today.
As a kid, Halloween was always my favorite holiday. Not only did we get to dress up, but it was also an excellent opportunity to scare people without getting in trouble. Before university I volunteered at a local haunted marsh walk. The best moments were always surprising people just when they thought they had made it past the danger. Some years, I also ran a haunted house indoors. It was always the most fun scaring people from the bush. It may have been cold standing in the dark behind the cover of trees wearing spooky costumes, freezing for the occasional chance to pop out in front of a group of people or, better yet, tap the shoulder of someone in the group that had just passed me on their tour of the marshlands causing them to practically jump out of their skin in fright.
In addition to corn mazes, haunted houses and general revelry, Trick or Treating is also a big bonus to the Halloween season. As a kid, I used to sort all my candy and graph it before hiding it around my room to discover later in the year. As I got older, it became more fun to dole out the candy and admire the costumes of local kids.
These days, Halloween seems to be about dressing up and going to parties. With Halloween falling on a Friday, this is all the more true. Dressing up at Waterloo is a relatively big thing; the nerdier the better. I’d like to encourage all of you to dress up. Wearing a costume is like wearing a suit. It changes how you perceive yourself and how you interact with others. While a suit tends to make you behave more formally – a sit up straight and dot all your i’s type thing – a costume lets you express parts of yourself that you might not regularly show to others. For instance, initiatives that place individuals with autism in mascot costumes have found it greatly improves their interpersonal skills.
Dressing up is fun. In my class there is an ongoing, but informal competition every Monday to out-dress MJ, one of our class mates. People do it because it’s fun to be a little bit fancier than normal and because it’s always fun to have a little bit of competition. Halloween can bring that sense of competition to a whole new level as people try to outdo each others’ costumes. Competition aside, wearing costumes is just a good time; after all, you can be whatever you want. You can dress up with a group or rock a costume on your own. You can go for the scare factor, or simply live it up as one of your favourite television characters. Then of course, there are those pun-tastic costumes. The options are infinite!
Personally, between midterms, assignments and production weekends, I’m beginning to attain pasty skin and dark circles under my eyes that would make any ghoul or ghost envious! For those of you with slightly better sleeping and eating habits than me, I present a list of easy and cheap costume ideas for the semi-enthusiastic Halloween lover.
Worshiper at the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: grab a spaghetti strainer, place it on your head, and voila! costume made. If at any time you feel the need to not be dressed up, simply remove said strainer and away you go! Suddenly you are just a person carrying home a device for your kitchen, easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Stick person from xkcd: Use black tape to create stick arms, legs and a torso. Wear a top hat to seem especially devious.
Ghost: An old one, but a good one. Cover yourself in baby powder…okay, well maybe a bed sheet would work just as well.
Mummy: Ooops, where did all the toilet paper go? Definitely not into my super awesome new costume, not at all. This would also be a great surprise costume. Just don’t physically injure your friend in the process of wrapping them up!
Modern Alice lost in Wonderland – Simply act dazed and confused, ask people “where is the Mad Hatter with my tea” and “Will this cake make me shrink?” Scream and chase any white rabbits you encounter.
Now that I’ve gotten those out of my system, I’m going to ruminate briefly on the excitement that is Jobmine. For many of you, it has been but a couple of days since discovering where you will be next semester. This knowledge, perhaps after a weekend of tough decisions between several offers, is undoubtedly quite the relief. If you have been matched with a job, it’s time to sit back and relax, after sending your employer a nice email or phone call and looking at your housing options. Undoubtedly it is not without it’s trials and tribulations. Some of you have accepted an 8 month co-op that will cause you to switch streams. Others may be headed back to their hometowns to live with their parents while working, or heading abroad.
Even though there might be some cons with a co-op placement, the pros inevitably outweigh them. For one, it is satisfying to actually know where you’re going, and to be able to plan things in your life two months from now or even further away. As I write this, I am on tenterhooks waiting to see if my rankings will become offers. That said, I’m not terribly concerned; not getting a job in first round doesn’t mean you’re unemployable, nor does it mean you’ve missed out on the best jobs. Continuous round is not second tier jobs by any means. There are still tons of amazing employers and opportunities. Not to mention, interview stresses have diminished somewhat with fewer (or no) midterms to contend with. Don’t give up now! Never give up! Rankings take place within days of the interviews, so there is less waiting. Now, if only getting midterms back was like continuous round! I could do with knowing how much I bunged up a midterm instantly after I wrote it!
Finally, and unfortunately very fleetingly, I want to give a big shout out to all the other engineering schools out there! I know you receive copies of our humble publication. Hopefully you enjoy reading it! I know I enjoy reading other university publications whenever I visit other campuses. It’s always interesting to see how other students handle the trials and tribulations of the engineering student lifestyle! If you’ve read the ‘Engineering Traditions’ column you will know that we enjoy learning about other schools traditions. Let us know what you think by writing to our email, theironwarrior@gmail.com or maybe even sending us your engineering newspaper! Lots of love from Waterloo Engineering to all you awesome people across Canada!