Comments!

Hey! Thanks again for all of the comments and compliments on the blog

Huma, firstly I am flattered that I have readers from so far away, Dubai I think that’s really neat! Unfortunately I was not able to find an e-mail directly related to the Connections newsletter. Although I did find an e-mail that may be of some use to you, it’s an e-mail for mature student services and they should be able to help you with this question or direct you to someone who could. E-mail is areed@watarts.uwaterloo.ca I hope that is some help to you. Also I’m not enrolled in the Russian 272 course and all I am finding on it is probably what you have already read online. “Russian thought and culture – A survey of cultural history from 1861 to the present. Lectures will focus on major developments in literature, philosophy, art and music as seen against the background of
Russia’s historical past. Discussion will be devoted primarily to works of Russian literature”To get more information on this course I’d recommend contacting someone in the Arts department. Try Betsy Zanna she’s an academic advisor and she would most likely be able to help you with any questions on this course. Her e-mail is bzanna@watarts.uwaterloo.ca or you could also try Eric Breugst e-mail is ebreugst@watarts.uwaterloo.ca I these people are of some help to you. Lastly, for your inquiry about the ELPE exam, since I am in environmental studies I haven’t yet had to write the ELPE exam so I’m not much help to you. http://elpp.uwaterloo.ca/ but this site may be, so check it out!

Erin, the environment and resource study faculty is not extremely hard to get into in my opinion but that doesn’t mean you can slack off in high school! The ERS program asked for a minimum of 70% in grade 12 English and a final average of no lower than mid 70’s. I’m pretty positive that the ERS faculty told me they only accept 75 students into co-op. In my ERS classes we have exactly 103 students and almost all of us are in co-op. The best advice I can give you is kick major butt in grade 12 English and just keep your average up. Residence as you may have read rocks and the professors in ERS are the best in the whole university hands down ha-ha. Especially Steve (no I’m not kissing his butt) but if you ever want to see a Prof wear a bra in class his class is where it’s at. Hilarious times all around.

Emily, for how hard it is to get in read my answer to Erin’s question and as far as courses go they’re extremely fun. In your first year here you would have to take ENVS 195 which is an Introduction to Environmental Studies. ERS 100, which is an Issue Analysis and Problem Solving Class part one for Environmental studies (Steve is the professor for that) ERS 101, which is part two of ERS 100. ENVS 178, which is an introduction to Environmental Research methods and lastly the cool part about ERS is you get to pick a lot of electives. 6 of them to be exact. The work load in all of these courses is extremely manageable, but if you ever feel as if you’re slipping behind there’s always TA’s to sit and help you. They’re friendly : ) As far as co-op goes, since the ERS work term doesn’t start until next year I can’t tell you a whole lot about that except statistics. 97% of graduates from co-op are employed within 6 months of graduating and within the time ERS students finish our degree we could earn up to $45,000 over the course of our studies. It all sounds pretty awesome to me anymore info can be found on this site. http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/admissions/systems.html

Time fly’s when you’re having fun!

Wow, I haven’t written in a really long time and I apologize, I swear I have been busy! To get into what I have been up to lately and what had taken time away from my blogging, I have one word for all of you “midterms”. Yes, it is that time of year I am sorry to say, but before I get too far into talking about my midterms, I want to thank all of those who have taken interest in my blog and have posted! I promise you I’m going to do my best to answer all of your questions now and in the future more frequently.

Now that that’s out of the way, I have to tell you all about residence! It’s so fun and I am so glad that I decided to live in rez. I have met so many awesome people from all around the world! People in residence are so easy to meet too, everyone is just so friendly you’ll always be able to find someone who is interested in the same sort of things you are at all times of the day or night…literally. Whether it is playing ping pong at 3am, indulging in Village One pizza nights on Wednesdays or getting a group of people together to play Ultimate Frisbee in the Village Green. There are always people ready to hang out and have some fun to take a break from classes. I’ve also realized so far during my stay here residence becomes your home. I mean sure there are weekends where I did head home to see my family, but while I was there I missed residence and my residence bed. Its funny how quickly I adapted to living here and how much I missed it when I was away. Before I end this paragraph on rez I want to add in how awesome some of the people working here are. Tuesday was Halloween and man oh man did the North 1 basement ever make a cool haunted house to go through. It was perfect let alone free to get in. Everyone who went seemed to like it and I sure did, so if you ever move into residence next year and you hear of a haunted house in the basement of one of the buildings don’t rule it out as “lame” or “un-cool” you really have to go it’s a fun time!

I have also ventured off campus and into the great city of Waterloo! Early on in the month I attended a concert off King Street at the Starlight lounge. It was awesome and a ton of U of Waterloo students attended the concert too, I was surprised. It fell on a Monday but that didn’t stop a lot of us from coming out and having a good time, so that was pretty awesome. Go U of W! I’m not going to go into the City part of Waterloo too much today, if anyone else has any questions on what’s around U of Waterloo I’ll for sure get into it and answer those.

Now onto the academic side of school, I have survived my first oral presentation; I’ve survived getting some of my first marks back, labs and all of my midterms! I will admit that I was super scared of my midterms and cried ha-ha, but I soon after found that I got myself all worked up for nothing. My first set of midterms fell on a Thursday where I had two midterms with a 2 hour break in-between them. I panicked and stayed up the whole night before studying and drinking a gross amount of Tea and Red Bull. I got to my exams wired but feeling confident and finished them with flying colours. It’s better to be over prepared than under prepared, but I recommend to anyone reading this coming to U of W, don’t stay up the whole night before panicking then heading into your exams with zero sleep like I did. It turns your body into a sleep deprived mess, when you have plenty of time to study. All of my midterms are now over they ended last Thursday and man was it a relief to walk out of my final one and know I could finally relax and go home without opening any books ha-ha.

I think I’m going to end this post now and make another one dedicated solely to the people who commented and I’ll answer all of the questions the best I can there.

Thanks for reading Until next time – Michelle.

Water water water Loo loo loo

 Hello U of Waterloo, and everyone out there in cyberspace reading this! I suppose I should start of this year’s blog with a quick introduction of myself to you, so you all know who you’re reading about. My name’s Michelle and I’m also a first year student at Waterloo just like my other fellow bloggers. I am in the faculty of Environmental Studies and I’m majoring in Environment and Resource Studies. I currently live in Village One and if I could have it my way, I’d live here for the rest of my career at Waterloo, that’s how much it rocks! This year I’ll be bringing you the scoop on what’s happening in my life being in the ES faculty and living in Village One and anywhere else I end up on campus this year!

 

Orientation and my first week of classes are now over, and I will have to admit both experiences were really great. Now while I have the chance I’d like to thank all of the co-ordinators and people who helped make my frosh week one to remember. I have some advice for any students who are looking to come to Waterloo next year: Come for Orientation Week! Even if you’re not planning on living in residence, I can’t stress that enough; it’s extemely fun and really beneficial to take part in it.

 

I moved into my residence on the 4th of this month with a sort of uneasy feeling of what to expect during the infamous “Orientation week” or as it is better known around here “Frosh week”. Frosh turned out to be so much fun though. It was a chance for me to step out of the box and meet so many new people in all faculties, not just my own. During frosh week if you’re in residence, you get a chance to meet the don of your house and have a chance to take part in a pile of games set up to help you meet all of the people living with you. And for those of us who aren’t living in residence there is an excess amount of frosh week events to take part in as well. The first of those being an event called “Playfair” and it was CRAZY. Literally, I’m not kidding every single person who enrolled in frosh weeks events was there approx. 5000 new students just like myself all in one big field where we played a bunch of icebreaker games to help everyone meet each other, it was hilarious to be honest. There were so many people there I was shaking hands with and meeting and dancing with, by the end of the event my stomach hurt from laughing so much.

 

I also took part in a lot of Environmental Studies faculty events. My favourite one being “Big Banana Day” where our faculty hung out with our mascot the “Big Banana” and for those of you who are interested here’s a little scoop on our mascot, it was found by an ES student I believe 11 years ago in a dumpster and it’s been our mascot ever since then and rumor has it that the Banana costume has only been washed twice?…I LOVE IT and I strive to wear it one day! ES loves the Big Banana. Also at the end of the Big Banana day the Environmental Studies faculty and the Applied Health Science faculty got to be the first two faculties to party at the newly renovated campus bar the Bomber before it officially opened, woo hoo and cheers to us!

 

Alright, I think that’s about it for today now that I’ve written you all an essay, which was supposed to be a small blog entry. I apologize for the length but frosh week was far too much fun, I could rant on forever. It’s time for me to get reading now *Sigh* if only frosh week could have gone on forever.

 

Take it easy. – Michelle