Alan Li headed west on the 401 from Markham, ON to start his postsecondary education in Waterloo. He chose the University of Waterloo because of its co-operative education program and the practical education of a computer science degree.
Since 2016, he has completed his degree, been an undergraduate teaching assistant, member of a couple of clubs, a Feds councillor and MathSoc President. Along the way, he learned a few things (beyond writing code or integrating a function).
Hold on to things you can depend on
This became more apparent through the end of Li’s last term as the pandemic sent everyone home from campus. Math courses taught him to take the things he could be confident in, like identifying axioms, and to take them to build the rest of the theory on top of them.
“Identify the friends, family, hobbies, and ideas you can rely on, in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer, and build out the relationships that support the rest of your life,” reflects Li.
Have confidence in yourself
When Li started in the Computer Science program at Waterloo, he had no previous coding experience. He felt that he had a lot of catching up to do when he started classes and didn’t do a lot of extracurricular activity beyond Poker Club. Even though there were hard problems and tough assignments, he graduated with a degree in computer science.
Li reminds students, “Just because you don’t understand something at first, doesn’t mean you can’t do it. There’s always an implicit ‘yet’ after an ‘I don’t understand.’”
Have empathy and collaborate
While studying mathematics, Li learned to generalize things and spot similarities through object-oriented programming, matroids and linear algebra, and then he learned to apply it. All people are alike in some way, and through programming, Li learned that “it takes a lot more than one person to make something good.”
Li is grateful, and proud for his time at Waterloo. He asks his fellow graduands: “What are you going to do after leaving today, diploma in hand, to further our legacy and pay it forward to the next wave of Waterloo students?”