It took me so long, but I’m finally beginning to go towards getting some co-op experience. The intake takes place this week. After taking a good look at some of the paperwork, I really want to kick myself now. I really do.Why? Because I’m stupid, lazy, naive, and full of regret.

Here I am in what pretty much is considered my fourth year and I am finally going to attempt getting into the co-op program. Why am I starting so late in my undergraduate career, you may ask.

I got into CS from high school on guarenteed placement, which is essentially I get in if I get my GPA high enough. Getting fully into the CS program took a bit over two years. If only I studied harder and better and cared more about my marks instead of going on with a slacker attitude, only then would I have gotten into the program sooner.

So finally, after getting into the program, I didn’t start going towards co-op right away simply because of them saying on their website that you need to maintain a GPA of 2.5 or better to be in good standing with the co-op program.

I finally take Bridging Onlne I (BOL I ) six months after declaring my major, a pre-requisite pass/fail course for co-op to help you think of how to apply skills you have now into your resumes and such. But still, I did not go on and do all the intake stuff that I can do after completing BOL I. Yes, my GPA still was not good enough.

But then, just last semester, people were saying that co-op doesn’t care about the GPA anymore. Yet I still did not take action. My excuse was simply “I’m too busy.”

But was I really? Most of my time was spent doing jack squat, playing games, watching anime, reading manga, and other things; procrastinating in general to avoid all the things that I should be doing like schoolwork, study, and tasks related to things I volunteer for, like Scouts. That all just led to the constant mediocre marks that make me kind of disappointed with myself, considering I actually did alright in the world of academics before university. But high school was never that hard to begin with.

But yeah, back to apply for CS co-op. Turns out after this semester, I will have 96 credit hours out of 120 credit hours complete my degree. Somehow, I need to fit in four work terms into this somehow with the conditions that I must adhere to:

• Each work term must be followed by a school term.
• I cannot have two consecutive summer work terms.
• I cannot end my degree with a work term.

So that will be tricky to fit the bill to say the least. But I guess it could work somehow, but I will need to be very lucky to get it all to fit.

Considering how I take 3 courses each semester these days, which on average means 9 credit hours per semester, I can actually squeeze four semesters in between now and my graduation. This means if I do get a summer work term, that means I can do the alternation between school and work.

However, from what I hear, the best co-op terms are the 8 month ones. And then, I am still considering doing Coop in Japan as well.

One of the things that has lingered on my mind is getting a minor. Maybe I should make up my mind and go for a minor to extend my degree time. But what? CRIM was pretty fun. CMNS was too. PSYC.. I can see it being interesting, but I burnt out last semester, so it didn’t really leave too big of an impression on myself.

Oh the choices.

I have lots to think about if I am going to fit in a co-op education with my degree. If only I could start it all over again, then maybe I would have made the right decisions and be a better student.

First week of classes is over, and you know what that means: first impressions of classes!

I’m currently registered in three classes, like always. This semester’s three lucky courses are CMPT 307 (Data Structures and Algorithms), CMPT 471 (Networking II), and JAPN 100 (Introduction to Japanese I).

CMPT 307 is going alright thus far. So far, we have been doing some review on topics touched on in CMPT 225, MACM 101, and MACM 201, going through stuff on O-notation and series so far. This is reportedly a weeder course, so I shall be on my guard and focus better.

CMPT 471 so far has been review on stuff in CMPT 371 (Data Communications and Networking), mainly on Ethernet. The first class was a sleeper, with it on how to use Unix. Unfortunately, I found myself falling asleep in lecture for all three classes so far. I guess there are several reasons why this is the case.

• The class is immediately after 307.
• We have been covering topics that we already covered before in a previous class that just so happens to be a pre-requisite for this class.
• The lecture slides are all PowerPoints, each with extensive amounts of notes and points. Not exactly what I like for lecture materials..

I just hope things pick up next week.

JAPN 100 is my first class ever at the Harbour Centre campus, let alone a SFU satelite campus. But so far, it’s quite interesting. Just after four hours of class, our instructor wants us to learn all 46 ひらがな characters! Taking this course has opened my eyes to what I have forgotten about in terms of how to learn: following through on course materials learned that day. Of course, going to the “On Your Way To An A” course helped with that as well.

When I went to Nancy, one of our academic advisors, to talk to her about not going to CUTC anymore due to personal academic worries, she suggested I do something on time management from SFU Learning Commons. I ended up going to the first offering of “On Your Way To An A”, since that has stuff on time management and study tips. Going to put those things learned into practice!

Going to go do some work and sleep earlier – sleeping constantly at 3 because of Infantry does not exactly help me follow through on my New Year’s Resolution.

Today was the beginning of a big change in my university career.

For most of my time at SFU, all of it actually, I was up on the Burnaby Mountain campus. For the first time, I have a class at one of the two satelite SFU campuses: this being Harbour Centre, where I am taking the evening session of Japanese 100.

Leaving Burnaby Mountain at 4 PM, I figured I would have plenty of leeway to get downtown, given the heavy snowfall we had today. What I would not have expected was the bus getting jack-knifed while turning off of Gaglardi Way onto the Burnaby Mountain Parkway, effectively blocking passage into that way down Burnaby Mountain (unless you went through University Drive East, but that area is the steeper way out.

The funny thing about this was that as soon as it happened, the bus driver got out of the bus and proceeded to take pictures of his jack-knifed bus. Nonetheless, this incident further deepens my dislike of Translink’s articulated buses. Sure, they are fine on the B-Line routes, especially the 99 route, as most of the paths are straight lines and flat roads, but when you use those things on the curvy, steep roads at SFU, it doesn’t really work all that well.

Obviously, because the bus is completely blocking that path for other 144s and 135s from getting off the hill on Hastings side, we had to get out of the bus and start walking in the snow to get down to somewhere that I can actually catch a bus from. That ended up being the intersection of Hastings Street and Inlet Drive, a good 3 kilometres in the snow down from where that poor bus got jack-knifed.

Now there with a few other hikers who made it from the stranded bus, we rejoiced as a 144 headed for Metrotown Station showed up. Now normally, the 144 does not even come here at all, but heads south at Duthie and Hastings, but a bus is a bus, and it will get me to where I want at possibly a faster time, since it means I can SkyTrain. Yay SkyTrain!

In the end, this supposide 45 minute trip took 1 hour and 40 minutes, leaving me late for class by 10 minutes, which really sucked. Oh well. The trip itself was a welcome change to the same old boring routine, even if it was inconvenient.

I just hope it doesn’t happen again, because we will get quizzes for JAPN 100 and if we miss 3/20 quizzes, we get 0 for that 15% of our mark.

Ouch.

I don’t know what to do.

Here’s the thing: in January, I’m thinking of going to CUTC, the Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference held in Toronto around that time each year. However, there are several things that have recently come about to make me second-guess my decision:

• My CGPA has been dropping ever since I declared my major in Spring 2006.
• No one else I know is going besides myself.
• I’ll be missing eight hours of instruction time: two hours of CMPT 307 and CMPT 471, as well as 4 hours (ie. the entire week) of JAPN 100.

I guess the point is, I haven’t really been best at focusing on school all that much. My dismal grades, which averages C+ (2.333…), doesn’t really cut it for Computing Science, which requires an average of 2.4 to declare your major. The big question is, will I be able to catch up with my classes? Sure it may be “just the first week of class”, but still, lots are covered during the first week of class, especially with the language classes.

I just don’t know..