Our Purpose
For Students By Students
We hope that you find the site useful when you are first transitioning to a post-secondary institution like a university: what to expect, what you can do to make the transition easier – this is one part of the site and will take you through a journey of what it might feel, look like as you start 1A.
The site can also be used like a first-aid station – you have hit a speedbump, faceplanted on the wall and you need some ideas for how to deal with the crap you just landed in. Perhaps your study habits from high school do not work so well, perhaps you do not now how to best use the course TAs, perhaps you failed your first assignment or test, perhaps you are having trouble grasping with the challenge with co-op? Lots of possible bumps and scrapes as the term progresses. Once you know you have a challenge to deal with, the site might be able to help you, to minimize the impact, and to figure out a new, different strategy for being an university student.
We will continue to enhance and improve the site. Suggestions can be sent to kmckay at uwaterloo.ca.
At the end of 2020, we did a small push and added about a dozen new topics and pages. Monika Mikhail co-authored many of the new pages on co-op experiences and helped edit the others.
You might have noticed the Japanese version! The site has been translated by two students in Japan - Nagisa Takahashi, 高橋 渚 and Utami Nishioka, 西岡 詩珠.
The photos used come from unsplash.com, a free photo source. The quotes come from the 'web' and are uncredited because if you are interested - go find the source! It is a good skill to develop.
From Whence It Came
Starting in 2015, the introductory ‘concept’ course for the Management Engineering program at the University of Waterloo, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Management Sciences has been taught by Prof. Ken McKay and has focused on supporting the incoming 1A students transition from high school to the university experience as one of its main objectives. In 2019, the various messages and material associated with the course were gathered into 30 one-pagers shared with the F19 class. This packaging worked WAY better than the previous style for a number of reasons. Long story short, a joint initiative was launched with student volunteers, UW's Housing, Centre for Teaching Excellence, and Centre for Career Action to make the material available to other students, not just Management Engineering. The students were involved because we wanted to make sure that the information and material was actually student friendly and helpful; Housing because of their focus on being a learning space and ‘touching’ about 75% of the first year students; the Centre for Teaching Excellence to help make sure that the learning/teaching bits were solid and to help let instructors across campus know about the site – as a resource their students could use, and the Centre for Career Action with their focus and support for students as they start their job adventures and pursue their careers. We also got great help on the pages from Erm Lombardi, a certified coach who volunteered her time to help! (her site).