Hello World

Midterms start NEXT WEEK what the hell????

This post will be about my first month of University

Oritentation week

Oritentation week was really tiring - partly because we were walking around all day but also because of the social aspect. You could tell everyone was "testing" each other. They would slide into small talk to measure how similar you were to their past group of friends. If both parties thought they were sufficiently similar then they would speak more and more and eventually become friends. Of course I'm describing it extremely cynically - as if it were a stratiegic calculation.

"hmmm my detection of his knowledge of Association Football Rules parameter is 5 points lower than acceptable. I predict that making the first move towards a second interaction would not optimize the integral of my joy function!"

I believe its probably driven by an emotional desire to meet new people and then another emotional desire to talk to the people you liked talking to before. Two emotional pulls that happen to leave you with friends once equalibrium is reached. I was extremely aware of the testing however so the entire situation was pretty stressful. When people talked to me I worried a lot about if they would be offended if I didn't initiate a second interaction to signal they passed the test (which I didn't want to do because I'm terrible at talking). Also I just I don't have an emotional desire to meet new people for some reason. Social anxiety wins by default because I guess its foil died in the womb.

Almost all the people in my group were intending on majoring in Computer Science like me. I was kinda stupidly shocked when conversations went to programming and I found out they also were self taught and had their own projects and had competed in competitions and stuff. In High School that was enough to make you special but I guess in University it's expected.

Vancouver and Living on Campus

The University of British Columbia (UBC) is completly separate from the city. It takes a half hour bus ride for me to get downtown. I've only been to downtown once (I went with a friend from junior high a few days before school actually started). The buildings were really tall! The day I went into the city was the only day it has rained so far - so I really did get the quintessential Vancouver experience! Also a lot of the buses in Vancouver are these Trolleybus things. I had never seen vehicles like that before. It seemed pretty clumsy looking with all the wires but not needing batteries probably has a lot of advantages (and I'm glad they were not gas).

Living on campus is interesting. I'm glad I don't have to travel hours every day to get to classes. There are also lots of cool things here like museums and gardens and libraries. There are also the fraternities. I haven't been to any of them. The concept of them doesn't make any sense to me. To me, a fraternity sounds like something your parents would force you to join if they found out you didn't have friends at school. In reality fraternities are the center of "party life" on campus (the terrible cramped in a loud dark room kind). I wouldn't go to any of them becuase they seem like the most miserable time imaginable and also there is a PANDEMIC but I always hear people talking about "the frats" in the cafeteria so evidently not everyone shares this view.

Also also because the campus is disconnected from the city there are a lot less cars which is good because I HATE cars. A bad thing about it though is that its so difficult to buy things. When I was in downtown I got new soft skateboard wheels because I accidentally bought hard wheels (which I hate) to replace my original wheels (one of the wheels fell off and I lost an important part). Anyway I got home and realized I didn't have a wrench to take the hard wheels off. I still haven't taken them off because theres no hardware shop on campus and going farther than campus for it seems not worth it. Another bad thing is that my entire life is school. I wake up in school, I eat at school, I attend lectures in school (obviously), I do homework at school, and then I go to sleep in school... I'm drowwwnning in school.

Dorms are cool. Mine is like this: My room is 132 Tec de Monterrey so unfortunately I'm at the bottom floor. People are very loud right outside my window at night sometimes which is quite annoying! The worst part of living in dorms is that I have nothing to eat when the cafeteria closes. I could buy food but that feels like wasting money when I have unlimited access to the cafeteria during the day. Also the common room with the fridge is very smelly. Because of my reluctance to use the smelly frige room I have been needing to drink green tea instead of black tea when in my room. Sometimes the cafeteria also doesn't have English Breakfast (the best tea) and I have to drink something else. I've found I actually do like other teas. Earl Grey is actually pretty good... but English Breakfast will forever be the king.

Communal bathrooms seem like they should be the worst but they aren't. Maybe I'm desensitized but I think ours are actually pretty clean. In the first week there was a horrible moth problem but that has since subsided. If you are about to enter a communal bathroom situation and worried about it I have an innovation that I think you would find great use in!

Introducing The Box Method

This fine practice errodes all the many ills of communal showers. Simply bring all your showering items in a plastic box and then stand in said box while showering! This way you can shower barefoot and have your feet actually get properly washed! The loose body hair of your fellow dorm mates has no chance of contacting you at all! Now head on over to COMPANYNAME and get yourself a nice plastic showering box! Thank you for your time!

Job

I got a job!!! I haven't had a job before. My residence's cafeteria was advertising jobs for students and I wanted a job (for experience and to feel like less of a leach on my parent's income) so I just applied and I got it! I was kinda expecting not to because all the other jobs I've applied to I did not get. The interview was pretty nice. I didn't do particularly well though. When he asked "Why did you want to work here" I said "because its close" and when he asked "do you cook at home at all" I said "no." But I got the job so whateverrr. I put things away once they come out of the dishwasher. This dishwasher probably isn't what you are thinking of. It works more like a car wash. Once the dishes come out the other side I stack them where they are supposed to go. At the begining I found it really fun to try and develop the most efficient technique for picking up and stacking things. I feel like I've found them all already though - except for sorting cuttlery I'd need to actually time myself with multiple trials using each of the techniques to actually know which was the fastest.

Here are some of the possible cuttlery techniques: I have pretty low confidence in the Two Hands Scramble but one of the people that worked there reccomended it to me and I enjoyed the name I came up with for it!

They didn't give me any orientation when I started. They just told me to put things away when I got there and I had to figure out where things went or ask other people. I like it better that way becuase if there was an orientation then there would be an expectation I memorize everything (which I would not do).

Another job I have sometimes is collecting the dirty dishes. When people are finished eating they empty their plates into the bins and put their stuff on racks with the appropriate label (plates, bowls, cups, or cuttlery). Well thats what they're supposed to do. Some people do not do that. There will be stacks of bowls and someone will place a plate on top. Whyy???? Sometimes people don't even put their food in the bin. They just put it on the rack. When on these shifts I make it my goal to decrease the amount of these disruptions. I ended up finding a really good arrangment of the dishes that influenced people to stack them correctly. The reason it worked was that people were less willing to place big things on top of small things and they were more likely to place things in the front than the back. So if you have a big thing you go to place it at the front, see a small thing, and decide to put it further back instead. If you have a small thing you go to place it at the front and nothing stops you. Also square plates were more common than round ones which is why I put them on the left (people enter from the left).

I was pretty proud of myself when I reached this XD. It worked really well and it was fun to watch people follow my subtle social engineering. There were still disruptors though sadly so I still had to be there to maintain the stack.

During one of my shifts theres an adult employee who talked to me like an equal which was really strange to experience. He was swearing and joking about his past job like he would to anyone his age. I know as I'm 18 I'm technically an adult but I'm not reaalllyyy one. That was maybe the first time I've ever been treated like one.

Classes

The homework is INFINITE. Every class has a weekly cycle of homework. It never ends. I wasn't really ready for it at the begining but I think I'm okay now? Also they use SO MANY WEBSITES. Its so difficult to keep track of anything. I think I'm used to it now but its still really annoying. I'm taking five courses this semester:

I hate CPSC 110 because they use a fake programming language

I like CPSC 121 cause the teacher is cool and its interesting

I like MATH 120 because the teacher is cool but also I got 17% on the first homework (don't worry worst gets removed) because I didn't know how to write proofs which is what the entire honours class is about. I'm excited to learn about them though!

I like PHIL 220A because its asynchronous online and the textbook is pretty fun to read

I don't like BIOL 111 because the teachers forced us to buy a $100 textbook that THEY wrote so that we could partake in the class. The textbook is actually a website and we do quizes on that website so we can't pirate it. We also don't learn anything in class cause its all taught on the website but we still have to go to class because we do a group assignment every class that we get graded on. Also its at 8am.

This Website

Heres where I acknowledge that this is my first post on this new website I made. I developed it over the summer but then procastinated hosting and buying the domain. I've done it now though! I'm not sure what tubbdoose.com will lead to. Maybe it will be with me for the rest of my life. Maybe it will slowly fade and be forgotten over the course of the year. Maybe it will be my key to greatness and global influence - power and mastery - dominance over a domain. Maybe this will be my only post...