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The Rusty Knight: Looking back at Iron Warrior’s history.

    Hey! Just a description of this column; I’m going to be digging down into the older issues of the Iron Warrior to give a little glimpse of the past of the newspaper and Waterloo Engineering as a whole. This term, I’m going to review issues from Fall 2011. If you really want, you can get ahead and read them yourself (I would recommend doing this for your classes instead of this column) at http://iwarrior.uwaterloo.ca/

    Fall 2011 issue 3. Exactly 6 years ago, E6 was opened. They celebrated by hosting a reveal with rows and rows of chairs commemorating the building’s opening. They even had an edible periodic table of elements made up of cookies, with each element hand-iced into the cookies. Now I don’t know about you, but a titanium cookie sounds pretty legit, and painful to digest. In the article, they also mention how E5 was opened just the year before, and it’s crazy how time flies, because guess where I’m writing this article from! Today, E5 is filled with design team garages and studious people occupying the very few study spaces on the second floor. E6 is home to a lot of chemical engineering labs, about which I’ve had the opportunity to speak with a lot of professors. It’s also nice to just gaze at the posters (that I barely understand) and realize how much research is being done at the university. They started building in September of 2009, and cost around $42 million; I’d have to say that was a great investment.

    TEDxUW also happened at the same time 6 years ago. So it’s pretty cool to see  events like these keep returning to the University of Waterloo. Although I wasn’t able to see it in person myself this year, I’ve heard it’s a great opportunity to see some great speakers. Check out our 3rd issue this term to see our writers’ experiences at the conference.

    Also included in this issue was a shave/no shave PCP, which was done in the interest of Movember. Advocated for the ‘shave’ side were reasons such as professionalism, cleanliness, and maintaining a positive image. Another reason was “if you have a beard, no one will touch you,” which I greatly disagree with, as beards are not primarily for others; they’re for you. That’s why I’m on the side of no shave. Apart from Movember reasons, this side of the PCP indicated that maintaining your beard is important, and that’s how it actually remains clean. Also, winter is coming; the time I’m actually writing this article is Thursday, Nov 9th; which was the first snowfall of the season. I’m now trying to grow my beard as fast as possible so I can retain warmth for the harsh Waterloo winter months (unless these coops take me to warm places, wish me luck). Another good reason suggested was that you are easily identifiable with a beard. This is good if cops need to rule you out as an innocent. I guess this is a double edged sword though if you’re guilty. Long story short; don’t do crimes my friends. They’re illegal.

    For my last article, I want to point out the P**5 update posted by our VP Internal (wow, it was called VP Internal a while ago instead of the positions we currently have). I’m posting this because I’m the P**5 director, and you need to DO MORE ACTIVITIES! You win money for your classes if you’re in the top 3. So, email ptothefive@engsoc.uwaterloo if you have more questions (personal plug).

    Anyway, that covers the 3rd issue of Fall 2011. Hopefully you’ll stick with me for the end of the column. Peace.

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