Frosh Fun at First Year Integration Conference

Eleven UW engineering frosh, three days, and six hours sleep added up to a great time at the First Year Integration Conference at McMaster University.

Five first-year students from B-soc and six from A-soc (including myself) attended the event Jan. 20^th-23^th in Hamilton. The goal of FYIC is to promote leadership, teamwork, and spirit to help students throughout their university experience.

The conference got off to a great start Friday night with improv comedy, engineering mini-challenges and Scunt, encouraging first years to get to know one another. My team won the rope challenge by building the strongest rope (we used only newspaper!), earning us some nice McMaster swag to take home.

A variety of informational seminars followed on Saturday and Sunday, covering topics such as conflict resolution, PEO, engineers and public policy and engineering traditions. It all concluded with Michael Seliske’s “What I wish I knew in First Year”.

Some of the important ideas and lessons I gained from the conference:

• If you want something to happen, do something! Write a letter, vote, make your voice heard.
• Upper years aren’t scary; spending a weekend with the VP-Externals helped us realize they are just students like us.
• We learned the meanings of engineering organization abbreviations such as ESCO, CFES, CEC, and OSPE, and what purpose they serve.
• There are many engineering traditions, which can positively or negatively represent the image of engineering students. We need to consider the pros and cons of our traditions.
• University is as much about developing socially as it is about education. A decade from now, are you going to remember that time you got a 98 in calculus, or that time you drank beer and… had a great time?

Sami Rahman from B-Soc had this to say about his experience at FYIC: As amazing and inspiring as it was, the conference wasn’t just about the speakers or the presentations.  I wish I could have brought all the frosh with me on the bus rides around Hamilton. The forty something fresh faces, all strangers, yet we all cheered, and screamed to our heart’s content. We were all representing different universities yet we were united by our discipline’s rich and deep rooted traditions. It was a weekend entrenched in learning what engineering in Canada’s all about: the camaraderie we share. It opened my eyes and I gained a new found respect and understanding of what our EngSoc does on campus and off. Dear fellow frosh at Waterloo: let’s laugh, run, yell, play, and make our mark on the school.

Some of the other highlights of my weekend included writing a parking ticket to a parking ticket officer, winning the jackpot at the arcade, and surviving three days with only six hours of sleep.

Everyone at FYIC had a great time, learning about the engineering society and sharpening their leadership skills. I look forward attending it again in the future as a volunteer or VP-External. I would like to thank Dean Sedra, Michael Seliske, Yasser Al-Khder, and Lisa Belbeck for making it possible for us to go – and while I’m at it, how about a standing ovation for Scott Rankin.