To Enjoy UWaterloo

Alternative Titles

• How to Stop Dreading Waterloo and Start Loving It
• The Anti-Dropout Playbook From a Waterloo Near-Defector
• Why Whimsy Beats Ambition at Canada's Most Competitive School
• A Field Guide to Dropping In Instead of Dropping Out

Key Takeaways

• The author, once pegged by friends as most likely to drop out, argues that enjoying Waterloo starts with a deliberate decision to stay and a thought exercise: imagine what the school would look like if it were a place you actually wanted to be, beyond employability. Accepting that your experience is malleable is uncomfortable because it transfers responsibility for quality onto you, but that belief is a precondition for making it good.
• Her personal reasons to finish the degree shifted over time: the O-1 visa argument has weakened as that visa becomes more accessible, so she now stays for concentrated opportunity (leading researchers, facilities, licenses), exposure to unexpected subjects like Bessel functions, signals, and fluids, low opportunity cost since she compresses coursework, and simple fun with friends. She flags a major caveat: this reasoning assumes financial security — she's on scholarship, and positive framing can't rescue a degree that bankrupts you.
• To 'drop in' rather than drop out, map interests across Brain, Body, and Heart buckets. For Brain: cold-email professors (experts.waterloo.ca is an underused directory), hunt URA/URSA postings for labs, scan the WUSA club list plus Reddit and uw- Instagram tags for emergent clubs, and browse the full course catalog for electives or drop-ins. She personally worked through Blueprint, Socratica, hackathons, Cybersecurity club CTFs, and the Climate Institute.
• For Body, she claims she's 50% functional without regular activity. Waterloo offers intramurals at every level (including inner tube water polo and dodgeball — a 10-friend comeback dodgeball win is a top memory), student-run casual clubs from archery to Muay Thai via the Warriors portal, and roughly 20 weekly drop-in classes like barre and spin for lower-commitment athletes.
• Concrete student cheat codes: 'Log In With Your Institution' unlocks IEEE, ACM, Nature, and other journals for free; software licenses cover Altium, SolidWorks, MATLAB, LabVIEW, all Autodesk, Cinema4D, discounted Adobe, Pitchbook, Statista, and Bloomberg Terminal — worth tens of thousands annually if self-funded. WUSA insurance is underused and has reimbursed her for x-ray, chiropractor, dental, optometry, and nutritionist visits. University news pages surface funded groups faster than word of mouth.
• Finding your people is the 'final boss' and is structurally hard at Waterloo: social infrastructure favors tight course-based groups, the only student bar closed, there are few open gathering spaces or Greek life, the co-op stream system rotates friends off-campus, and weather pushes people indoors ~40% of the year. Counter it by showing up in person at clubs and workshops (not just lurking in Discord), using the internet as a beacon by writing publicly (Twitter changed her life, pseudonymously if needed), organizing your own gatherings without waiting for club status, becoming a regular at one spot like Williams or PAC to accumulate familiar faces, and relentlessly doing the legwork of DMs and cold emails.
• Social micro-tactics: attend the term-opening club fair (2–4pm at SLC) which covers everything from cheese tasting to deception games; always carry snacks like HiChews or Timbits as instant icebreakers; work in public spaces with noise-cancelling headphones ('garage door open'); linger after class; and spend summer evenings at Waterloo Park. 'Whimsy is in much shorter supply than ambition' — optimize for wholesome fun, not just résumé building.
• Coursework guidance is deliberately thin: email aggressively to get into classes without prerequisites or outside your major — it's almost always approved. In engineering, an 80% average keeps all doors open (grad school, research, internal scholarships, exchange); pushing past 90% usually costs more than it returns relative to what you actually care about.
• Co-op is framed as a built-in vaccination against staleness, and the author recommends micro-dosing that refresh during school terms via part-time work (but beware endless paid contracts crowding out skill growth), values-aligned side projects, fellowships like Contrary, Interact, or Emergent Ventures, and volunteering with local charities (Adventure4Change, United Way Waterloo, via SVP Waterloo and WRCF). Most conferences — ICML, DEFCON, Config — offer free or discounted student tickets.
• Exploration tips leverage Waterloo-specific quirks: one of North America's best 'complete streets' (light rail, pedestrian, bike, car), a large Mennonite community with excellent food and occasional horse-drawn carriages, and a tunnel system connecting campus. Named food picks include City Cafe Bakery (bring cash, sells out fast), Four All Ice Cream, Gol's Lanzhou Noodle, Watami, and Jinzakaya AYCE; destinations include Gustav Bakos Observatory public tours, the Perimeter Institute, and LSI Switchboard. Use the ION light rail (already in tuition), get a bike, and hit St. Jacobs or Kitchener farmers markets with cash for surplus produce.
• The closing thesis: magic isn't found, it's chosen. Like entering a party, you can either try to squeeze into existing conversations or plant your feet and trust the people around you are also interesting. You have the capacity to raise communities from scratch — the place becomes whatever you decide to make it.

Readwise Summary (short)