School

Studying History...one BA at a time!

While working on my undergrad in engineering I also took a lot of history courses. So many course that I almost ended up graduating with a BA in addition to my engineering degree. Right now I occasionally take night courses in history at the University of Guelph. This will eventually lead to a Bachelor of Arts in History. I find history a very interesting topic for study, particularly the revolutionary period of early-to-mid 19th century Europe. We can all learn a lot by studying our history and where we come from.

Future Plans?

Maybe. A few options that spring to mind are: an MBA in a technology field, a M.Sc. in an electrical engineering related area, or maybe even a M.Sc. in human-computer interfaces.I can see an attraction and benefit of each of them, however I'll have to see. Right now I think I'd rather concentrate on getting my career started.

Back in Engineering School...

I did my engineering degree at the University of Guelph as a part-time student. Though I started in 1997, I soon ran out of money and had to switch from full-time to part-time studies in my third year. By taking another five years to finish my degree whilst working, I discovered the joys of trying to work and study at the time same. I will be the first to admit it wasn't easy. Some good thing did come from it: I learned a heck of a lot about differential equations and how crucial time management can be. I also managed to get a minor in Computer Science. It was a good degree.

Participating in the Ontario Engineering Competition was one of the highlights of my stay at univeristy. In this annual event, I competed against students from other schools in areas such as entreprenurial design, team design and debating. I never won but it was always a lot of fun. It was also a great opporutnity to meet other engineering students from across Ontario.

In my latter years of my degree, I got involved with the IEEE and ended up starting up an IEEE Student Branch at my school. It was fun but also frustrating at the same time. Running a student chapter is a lot of work, and engineering students don't have a lot of spare time. At the very least I did manage to organize some events from students and also go to a couple of conferences. From what I hear, the student branch is now quite active at the University of Guelph.

The other part of university that I really enjoyed was working as a Teaching Assistant (TA). For four semesters I worked as TA for a business information systems course in the university's marketing and consumer studies department. It was great to be able to be involved in the learning experience from the other side of the lecturn! I think the most interesting experience I had was when I invigilated the final exam for my the students in the gym one day, and then me, myself, wrote an exam for one of my engineering courses in that very same gym the next day. It was a pretty odd feeling.