Ah, the wonders that a co-op term can do on my journey to recovery from 1A.
All of us at UW know how much co-op means to us and to our school. For a lot of us, co-op was the deciding factor that persuaded us to choose Waterloo over other schools, especially for engineering programs – at least this is true for my fellow froshes to whom I’ve posed this question.
Aside from gaining valuable work experience, co-op provides many other learning experiences along the way that you would not get in a classroom.
It has certainly taught me the value of money. Instead of looking at a price tag and concluding whether or not a product is worth buying based on my mental scale of price relativity, I measure a product’s value in the number of hours that I would have to work to pay off said item. Admittedly, I’ve always known that my parents work hard to put food on the table, but when I’m spending money earned from using my own wits and sweating off of my own back, it hurts to splurge. Besides, living according to a less materialistic creed wouldn’t be too shabby a decision either. It was a pain to have to move my plethora of belongings out of residence and into my temporary home for the winter term, let alone continuing to do this for the rest of my university career!
Another lesson I’ve taken away from my first couple of weeks is learning how to learn when time is limited. I had never coded or played with devices like Arduinos and breadboards before taking on this job in engineering outreach, so you can imagine my simultaneous sentiments of anxiety and thrill. To me, I liken learning these new skills to learning a new language – only with practice, persistence, and patience will I get better. Being in chemical engineering, it’s highly improbable that I will have the chance to play with hardware and software again. Therefore, I might as well take advantage of any occasion to play with these toys while I still have access to them.
The most rewarding part of my job is working directly with the campers, who range from elementary to high school students. I’ve discovered that inspiration works reciprocally. My job is to create and lead activities that engage schoolchildren in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields, and their enthusiasm motivates me to do an even greater job.
It’s astonishing how much these kids already know. The most exposure to technology I had in high school was using Microsoft Word for English and limited Excel for data management – notice how I never took computer science? However, our campers are literally born into the technological age. Some of them have already played with Scratch (software created by MIT to produce games and animations) or have even coded before – and they’re only in elementary school! Outreach programs run by institutions like UW ensure that future generations are as ready as they possibly can be in terms of possessing hard skills, such as computer programming, in order to tackle imminent issues of the future.
But post-secondary institutions cannot work alone. Governments should also play a role in promoting the STEM portfolio to succeed in the 21st century, such as PM Trudeau’s characterization of Canada by its “extraordinary high-tech sectors, innovative manufacturers, a really strong biotech and mostly an educated diverse work force” before the world stage in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum. There is also U.S. President Obama’s recently proposed “Computer Science for All” campaign to prepare and engage American students from kindergarten to high school with the computer science skills that they will need to thrive in our digital world.
Above all, co-op keeps us informed about which skills employers hope that their employees possess and are able to learn on the job. By being in university for four years, it’s easy to become out of touch with the demands of the “real world”. To counter the side effects of the University Bubble, we have work terms to keep ourselves grounded in reality. Truth be told, we should consider ourselves lucky for having the opportunity to work under the wing of companies in all fields and sizes.
The next time your co-op term is giving you a hard time, think of at least one of the positives that come out of working as a co-op student. If that doesn’t do it, think about it this way: at least you (typically) don’t have to take work home with you!
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