From 2013-2018, the UWaterloo Life Blog revealed many highlights of the University of Waterloo student experience. What started as one story all the way back in 2013, snowballed into over 300 unique tales of adventure and perseverance, a little failure, and a lot of success. If you liked the blog, you’ll love our Instagram! Follow @UWaterloolife to discover new stories of student success and follow along with student takeovers.
I'm Hannah Sesink, and I’m in my 4A term studying for a Joint Honours in Recreation and Leisure Studies and Social Development Studies (SDS)!
When I arrived at Waterloo, my passion for community pushed me to seek out new opportunities and get involved from the very beginning.
Faculty and students at Waterloo have brilliant minds and conduct innovative research. As such, a number of students get involved by becoming Research Assistants (RAs). I volunteered as an RA in my first year, and one of the best parts of the position was the opportunity to learn from, and learn about, other students. Naturally, I was excited to speak to current RA Seth Mahon about his interests, his experience as an RA, and what he would like to say to other students who are interested in research positions.
Life as a Waterloo student is unique. Students settle down in one place for four months, only to find ourselves on the move once again at the end of term. Especially during the spring term, many of our friends could be scattered across academic terms, work terms, or taking a term off back in their hometown.
While our friends may fall out of stream with us, that doesn’t mean they’re gone for good.
Our university experiences are our own. Even so, we can stand to benefit from learning about those of our peers. We may be part of a large university with a variety of unique programs, but we can all relate to, be inspired by, and appreciate what other students are doing. With that in mind, I interviewed second-year student Alex Tummon Simmons, an internal transfer student who, in his spare time, decided to co-found an entirely new conference in his area of interest.
The wretched April snowstorms have passed, and we’re finally seeing campus come to life with flora and fauna! That being said, this is my fourth year at UWaterloo, and I don’t actually know a lot about the fauna around here. However, I do want to learn — birdwatching is pretty cool, you know! Thus, I’ve done a little research and found a lot of information on the birds that you should be keeping an eye out for. And no, I’m not talking about geese.
Podcasts have really blown up recently. At least, it seems that way to me. I was first introduced to podcasts in high school; they sounded interesting, but I wasn’t interested enough to look into them. I listened to the radio and to my iPod, I read books, I watched TV… what was the point of podcasts anyway? However, a couple months ago, so many of my favourite public figures started podcasts that I decided to give them a try, and now I love them.
Every year the University hosts a two day conference of workshops and keynotes to encourage personal and professional growth of staff at the annual Waterloo Staff Conference. This year one of those workshops, titled “Creating Inclusive Co-operative Education Workplaces: Insights from LGBTQ+ Students,” was hosted by Beck Mallozzi, a fourth-year undergraduate student.
Towards the end of March, the peer health educators of Stand Up to Stigma held the Spotlight on Mental Health event in the Student Life Center. The event sought to bring mental health into the spotlight, encourage conversations about mental health, and promote mental wellness at Waterloo.
