1B: First Summer in Waterloo

Prior to my university career, I had done summer school twice:

Grade 3: I spent all my time playing Number Munchers on Apple computers,
Grade 11: I was exposed to the "thug" culture at Wexford Collegiate while pretending to read MacBeth. And I had a sexy teacher.

However, the summer of 2004 was my first full summer in school. The term "summer school" doesn't exist in the UW vocabulary due to the large number of co-op students that are on campus from May to August. These students take full course loads, not the bullshit 2 courses that students at other universities take. In other words, they rough it out like they would in any fall or winter term. Summer vacations are rarely heard of.

Lesson: Never ask a UW co-op student about his/her summer!

We, the first year students at Eby Hall, had it really rough that summer, particularly the boys. Picture the following....

- Stuffy rooms with no air conditioning
- No girls, because the *all girls* floors had moved out
- The only first year students on campus are in Math or Engineering... no other faculties have co-op in first year
- LINEAR ALGEBRA, CALCULUS, JAVA PROGRAMMING!! Assignments! Exams!

I was also bitter about returning from a failed work term and having to work a bullshit telemarketing job, just to have money for school. Looking back, I don't know how I survived, but somehow... just somehow.... I managed to pull through.

MUSIC 140 saved me from a disaterous academic term. It was a class I would look forward to attending every week. I read the textbook from cover to cover and couldn't believe that my knowledge of The Beatles and Muddy Waters would contribute to my GPA. Without this course I might have fallen into academic probation.

The greatest accomplishment of the term was the construction of the "beer tower" in my residence room. We built it by, 1) Drinking a shitload of beer, 2) Putting the empties back in the boxes, and 3) Piling these boxes on top of each other in a pyramid shape. To this day I am still impressed by how much we actually drank and never ended up in the hospital.

We also made a trip to the Brick Brewery with one goal: To get as shitfaced as possible! It was a fun time, but it might have been too much fun... enough to get me into trouble, but I won't get into that!

"Working towards useless accomplishments" would be a good way to sum up the term.