Campus Life & Future Careers

For anyone sticking around this summer, whether it be for a course, an internship, or an employment opportunity, below you will find my favorite summertime activities:

• “Batobus” crossing between Parc Saint-Louis and Parc René-Lévesque in Lachine 
• Jean-Talon Market 
• Laronde
• BIXI biking
• Festivals
• Saint Lawrence Boulevard’s sidewalk sale
• Saint-Jean-Baptiste / Canada Day celebrations
• MTL Zipline
• Wednesday nights at Terasse Bonsecours
• Point Au Roche State Park

~xoxo~

PS: Blogging for CaPS was an honor, and I hope readers learned as much as I did from my posts. 🙂

During the month of May, I immersed myself into the world of three very different, but equally pertinent concepts: physical education, animal welfare, and energy conservation.

The 2019 PHE National Conference

As a volunteer at Physical and Health Education Canada’s event held right here at the Currie Gym, I mainly helped with the registration of attendees. Meaning, I got to see many faces, and finally got to experience what career and academic advisors have been telling me for the past two years — that career paths are certainly based on your grades, on your interests, and on how well you respond to that “tell me about yourself” interview question, but nowhere near as much as they are based on your personality.

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Throughout this past year, I’ve attended my first (and perhaps last) set of SKILLS21 workshops. For those not familiar with this undergraduate program, SKILLS21 “aims to provide students with opportunities to become contributing global citizens in the 21st century.” (Um, woah there.) It includes workshops from five different areas (Citizenship, Collaboration, Discovery, Leadership and Wellbeing).

After completing the “Wellbeing” stream in addition to attending several workshops from other streams, I’ve put together an honest review of my participation experience.

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Increase your Worldliness, Save Money, and Check in with Yourself

• Attend an advance movie screening. Back in December, I sat in on the Montreal premier of On the Basis of Sex. I got my tickets through the History Students’ Association of McGill, but if you keep an eye on this page, it won’t be long before you’ll have experienced viewing a film before its Canadian release date.
• Send a message/suggestion/opinion/remark to the Mayor of Montreal. Whether this has only been your city for one year or twenty-one years, you can’t not have ANYTHING to say to her. Back in November, I proposed an idea pertaining to our public transport system, and I received a response within a month’s time. Express yourself!

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It’s hard to think that your choice of study may have been the wrong choice. Some common thoughts are: “maybe I’ve enrolled myself into a program that I thought would give me a good shot at a well-paying job” or “maybe I enrolled into a program for the passion I have for the subject despite knowing the job opportunities are slim”. Sometimes we only realize that we may have made a mistake only after receiving our degrees and entering the work-force. If you’re in one of these places right now you’re probably feeling trapped or anxious. But hey, a semester just came to an end and you owe it to yourself to search for some clarity in all this… (more…)

Credit to: Calvin and Hobbes (Scientific Setbacks)

As graduate students, we are often assigned teaching jobs, most commonly lab and course TAs. I really enjoyed my time with students when we did lab work together (I’m a lab TA), and we chitchatted about life, study, weather, or  future. My colleagues have various working styles, but in general we are a bunch of cooperative ants focusing on our tasks. On the other hand, grading several dozens of lab reports is the most painful moment at the end of every experiment cycle – we are sad to see people forgetting what we emphasized during the experiment, not double-checking the formatting, giving us blah-blahs without even reading the background information… (more…)

1. Take advantage of the resources here. 

McGill has endless opportunities designed specifically for you to learn new things and meet new people. I can vouch for the fact that there is literally something for every single person sitting in Leacock 132, so be sure to soak up all the benefits you could from your undergrad/graduate experience. Because, as cliche as it may sound, before you know it, it will be too late.

2. Office hours. Never. A waste. Of time.

Whether it be with your professor or your TA, you will ALWAYS learn something useful… Even if it means learning that emailing might be the better option for next time.

3. #SELFCARE

The single most important thing you could do for yourself, because only once you are in a healthy mental and physical state, can you perform your very best and go on to helping others. 

4. Attendance

A direct determinant of your grade.

(Okay this was a controversial one, I know)

Now I suck at math, but here is a formula based on my personal experience:

f (attendance) = grade

5. Find what works best for you.

EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT, to each their own. That being the case, college is also about learning who you are and how you function as a person — from learning how you study best, and what teaching styles and methods of evaluation (if applicable) work for you, all the way to learning how to dig up your real priority at a given moment. Sounds a little tricky eh?

*Number 5 is only possible through this thing we call experience, so don’t get discouraged and just keep going, but more significantly, remember to LEARN as you go ❤

~xoxo~

Source: George Seif (Towards Data Science)

Since last year, I have heard of ‘Machine Learning’ for so many times that I become very curious about what it is. Montreal has become a hub of Machine Learning thanks to talented scientists in this city. For me, it is both exciting and mysterious to witness the birth and development of Siri and Google Home, and to benefit from search engines on a daily basis. Although the ads on Facebook become sometimes annoying, I have to admit that the automatic playlist on YouTube is quite convenient. (more…)

Before coming to McGill, I lived in Asia. While I was there, I was a part of several volunteer groups through my school, most notability an after-school program that offered English classes to children from displaced communities. My experiences volunteering with these kids were some of the most rewarding and valuable ones from my time living there. Volunteering is often overlooked during the school year when students are busy with their courses and during the summer when students gravitate towards jobs and internships. However, volunteering is truly a remarkable experience, and doing so abroad is bound to be unforgettable.

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At the end of the winter semester, I found myself in a scramble to find a summer job. In the end, I started working as a sales associate at a popular clothing chain. While it may not be a prestigious internship, the experience has been awesome, from a learning standpoint, but also socially, since I had great coworkers. Notably, this summer I learned a lot about customer service from my experience in retail. Overall, based on the past summer, I have found retail experience to be more valuable than I would have expected. (more…)