Gilbert L 梁敬暉

This is a multi-part series summarizing my college life. There was a Prelude to this.

There are many things to dislike about the University of Waterloo; career development (for a Computer Science student) isn’t one of them. That the school was ranked number one on Macleans never moved me; rather, the idea of working six co-op terms intrigued me. Choosing a career is a difficult problem and I wanted every opportunity to guess and check - while getting paid! The co-op system alone was convincing, but Bill Gates finished me off with this quote back in October 2005

Most years, we [Microsoft] hire more students out of Waterloo than any university in the world, typically 50 or even more.

I said this four years ago and I’ll reaffirm this today: a Computer Science / Software Engineering education at UWaterloo is comparable to - if not better than - one at Stanford or MIT.

For some reason, moving to a new place where I have not a single friend never daunted me. I had, after all, transitioned from Elementary to High School by ditching all my elementary school friends; what could go wrong at university?

I grew up in a part of Vancouver that was dominantly “Canasian”: everyone was Asian, but everyone spoke English. It was a strange mix of culture, but one that I considered normal.  UWaterloo Math Orientation taught me otherwise. People I met were either thoroughly white-washed or “freshly” Asian. That left me in an identity crisis: join the group that plays Mahjong or the crew that plays Dungeons & Dragons?

I know I’ve made it sound like a silly matter, but in all seriousness, it’s tough to hang out with a group with which you belong “half the time.” At one point, I wondered if I could hold up a sign saying “Looking for CBC friends!” In the end, I decided it was easier to fit in a Cantonese speaking group; it’s amazing how quickly people bond if everyone shares a mother tongue. I met a few life long friends, but I never found a group with which to hang out.

Dorm was interesting: I shared a room with two other roommates - one Latvian and one Jamaican. Now, everyone who has heard this have screamed at such a horrendous idea, “One roommate is bad enough… you had two!?” Ironically, I think having two roommates in this situation was better than having one. Enrollment into these three bedroom setups was voluntary, so everyone came in knowing they’d be sharing space with two other people. My roommates were quite tolerant and understanding. Neither kicked me out to make out with their girls =)

In any case, meeting friends wasn’t my top priority. I had never been a very social person and I certainly didn’t travel 5000km to “have a good time.” Coming off a summer in which I practiced piano 5-7 hours a day to complete my ARCT Performers Exam, I was fixated on working harder and achieving more. For the first time in my life, I had complete freedom to accomplish anything I want. No more distractions at home; no more useless high school classes.

So Gung Ho was my attitude that I enrolled in advanced math courses that don’t contribute to my Computer Science degree. The math in advanced courses are very different to that of regular courses. For the first time in my life, I was asked to “prove” things. Problems were open ended and unnerving: where should I start? How am I to know?

High school education had not prepared me for this; every problem in high school could have been categorized as either “I know this” or “I don’t know this.” If it was the latter, a quick search on the internet would change that. Stumped by practically every question in the first assignment, I told my friend in the same class that I was going to get some hints from the internet. His reply shook me: “Dude, that’s no fun.”

My outlook changed. Perhaps it was the sudden realization that other people were still fighting; perhaps it was the realization that what I was doing wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I don’t remember what I ended up doing in that assignment, but I was quite determined to overcome this “proof” thing.

Then, I failed my first quiz.

People like me were called into the professor’s office and asked to leave the course. Many of them did (class size went down at least 50%); I refused. By then, I felt like I was making headway and even though the gain hadn’t been enough to pass the quiz, I had seen too much of the promised land to give up. Proofs, as I came to find, are very beautiful things. A good proof warrantee an “Eureka” moment - a moment of truth, creativity, and intuition. To me, this was real math - everything else was just mere computation.

To put records straight, building proofs (and other creative thinking processes in general) is not some kind of miraculous feat done at the snap of a finger. Intuition doesn’t just pop up because one happens to have an IQ over 120; it’s more like a background process that spins and works until suddenly one is conscious of its existence.

What I am saying is that I worked incredibly hard in my first term. Dawns were spent at the gym, mornings were spent in lectures, afternoons were spent in libraries, and nights were spent in my room. I had been using something similar to the Pomodoro Technique - 40 minutes work, 8 minutes break. So thoroughly exhausted was I that there was always a few of those 8 minutes breaks where I’d just collapse onto the table napping. Amazingly, that routine sustained for the entire term (and arguably still being sustained today). In the words of my Software Engineering roommate Andrew, “Gilbert, you’re a machine” (said in a tough Latvian / Russian accent).

I had a “breakout term” as much as Jose Bautista had a “breakout season”: 97% GPA over two math courses, one Computer Science course, one Psychology course, and one Accounting course. Back in high school, my average hovered between 80-90; nobody - even me in my wildest dreams - expected this.

Unfortunately, I didn’t quite know how to handle this success socially. You see, people like me aren’t very well received in first year. The general attitude was well summarized in a conversation that took place at an Entrepreneurship Conference last year:

Guy from Queens: [Talking to a High School student] Oh, university is tough. Most people’s marks drop by at least 10% in university.

HS Student: *gasps*

Guy from Queens: … but not everyone is like this. There are some geniuses out there who still get 90 something in university.

2 Other University Girls: OMG, I [fucking] HATE those people.

I felt “different” enough already; I didn’t do more to foster that feeling. The more my life revolved around academics, the less I wanted to talk about it. I didn’t know what to say.

This isolated bubble continued to grow even in the Christmas of 2007, when I returned to Vancouver to celebrate with my friends. Unlike me, they had embraced the orthodox college life that is filled with drinks and parties. The distance between me and everyone I knew was palpable.

In many ways, second term at UWaterloo was a mirror image of first term. I struggled mightily in another math course, but the tough times passed and I ended up with another decent GPA.

Things were great outside the classroom as well.

Even before university had started, tech entrepreneurship seemed like something I wanted to do. Half way through the first term, I began building a Reddit clone with minor improvements. The work continued in second term, teaching me invaluable lessons in databases, regular expressions, Object-oriented Programming, design patterns, web frameworks, and more. I didn’t know it back then, but what started as a bit of passion and ended as a silly project pushed my Software Engineering knowledge well beyond those of my peers. 

This was apparent during my first interview cycle. Like every other first year students, I applied to 40+ job postings; unlike other first year students, I got 20-25 interviews. In the span of three weeks, I went through more interviews than some people do in their entire life. In the interview with IBM, I handled their database questions competently and beat out two senior students for the job. Between an offer from IBM and an offer from Montreal startup Akoha, I settled for the one that would look better on my resume. Even though I second guess that decision today, I must say a job at IBM is pretty damn good for an 18 year old.

Meanwhile, second term saw me tired of the lack of people in my life. I began hanging out with a tiny group of three - two guys and a girl that bonded through geekiness and aloofness. As time passed, I developed an intimate interest in the girl. Details aside, I cock blocked some idiotic fourth year ActSci student and started dating her.

So as I left Waterloo in April of 2008, I had an incredible GPA, a girlfriend that I trusted, and a job to which I looked forward.

Life was good.