Helloooo everyone! Hopefully some of you remember me from writing for The Inside Word
last year, since I’m assuming most of you guys reading this are first years. Well, guess
what? I’ve decided to continue my promising career as a blogger, because clearly that’s
pretty much all I’m good at. We can call it… Part II: Electric Blogaloo.
So, right now I’m studying Software Engineering (as was my plan this whole time, yay happy
ending right? Last year ended on a cliffhanger) and HOO BOY are you in for a doozy. Let’s
run through the checklist, shall we?
✔ Going to uni for an 8 AM class, have a 6 hour gap, then finishing class at 6 PM, because
we are all slaves to the timetable schedulers. But hey, you learn about optimal scheduling in
SOFTENG 250, and it is quite complex. I should cut them some slack, but if there’s one
thing we engineers like to do is complain. And call ourselves engineers even though we’re
really not.
✔ Two hour lectures. Try not to fall asleep halfway through.
✔ Every course has time-consuming assignments. Can’t pull an all-nighter when you have
multiple assignments due and an 8 AM tomorrow.
✔ Each assignment for different courses is due at around the same time. It’s like they
coordinate with each other to ensure maximum suffering.
✔ All the tests are done at around the same time. See above.
✔ Three hour exam in a two hour time slot.
✔ 23% test.
✘ Please send help.
You might be wondering, why am I even doing this? Why?? …Why not just drop out and do
Compsci?! (lol not really)
OK, so the prompt I was given is to tell you why I chose my specialisation, and that’s a really
difficult question for me to answer. I can honestly say that, unlike many other people, I really
only had eyes for software from the moment I stepped foot into my first day as an
Engineering student. Having discovered programming at a young age, yada yada yada. In
that regard, I’m quite lucky. You guys have a whole year to decide what to do, you may think
you’ve decided but will soon change your mind, or you haven’t decided and will have a grand
ol’ time with ENGGEN 131, or you’ll switch up your preference list a day before the deadline.
You might even miss out on your #1 specialisation and end up loving whatever it is you end
up with, even if it wasn’t your first choice.
You can go read my past blogs to get a gist of how obsessed I was with getting into my first
choice. I mean, y’all know how competitive Software is at the moment, right? It’s getting a bit
ridiculous. And your cohort is huuuuge. Hopefully they’ll increase the number of spots next
year, but if not, that’s okay. Because it’s not the end of the world, and don’t forget that it is
your first year. You’re allowed to make mistakes.
So go forth. Do your best. And good luck.
-Samantha