before - term-review-2024fall
intro
the lastttt term review has come to an end. I ended my last term this past fall and it was a very chillllll term. I prepared the easiest 3-course workload for the brutality of new grad seeking.
The courses I took this term weren’t particularly useful (at least directly). the heaviest course of this term is still lighter than the lightest course i took last term (fall 2024). Only spent 4h of school work weekly and had to skip a lot of lectures due to time conflicts.
courses
cmpt 477 - introduction to formal verification (Yuepeng Wang)
course experience: 4.5/5
pros: easy-ish exams, fun mathy course feel that gives you that deep work feel when doing assignment, nothing is particularly difficult, FULLY RECORDED
cons: nothing tbh, maybe the final project can have more guidelines
self-feedback: do assignments early and look at piazza.
most of my friends are in this course so it’s fun. I finally got to touch my ipad again and write some mathy stuff (it feels good).
the logic for this course is like discrete math and I really like it. A lot of prove-type questions and I loveee it. coz with proving, you know whether you are correct in the end, especially during the exam.
assignments every 2 weeks-ish, 3 coding assignments, and 1 final project. overall manageable, this is the ‘heaviest’ course this term for me but it is aight.
Did some janky mistakes on some assignments but did well on the exam, got 90.12 (90-95 for A), so an A.
cmpt 376w - professional responsibility and technical writing (Felix Lo)
course experience: 2/5
pros: light workload
cons: lecture I found isn’t particularly useful, not much information gained, attendance tracked
self-feedback: do it earlier again lol
I was looking forward to a technical writing course as from my perspective, definitely a useful skill to have in the workplace.
But personally, I found the instructor to be a bit lacking(?) he is kind and accomodating, but the matters discussed in the course can be summarized into simpler stuff. The professional responsibility part was insightful, but the course also taught a lot about ethics from the ancient past and it’s not something that should not be included too much imo.
not much ‘technicality’ in the technical writing too, just teaching general writing stuff. I wished it taught more about writing stuff in a company style like design doc or others, but i guess i am expecting for too much.
overall unfortunately meh, good thing is the workload is on the lighter side so you do not spend too much time on the mundane stuff.
idk how the grading works tbh but I got an A- and only doing the assignment mostly the day before.
mse 112 - mechatronic design studio I (Mohammad Narimani)
course experience: 3/5
pros: light workload, lab is fun, exam is suprisingly chill
cons: lecture very broad and not much depth, but i guess as expected for intro course
self-feedback: nothing really
a course I had to take to graduate. I am a 6th year in a first year course. Lab is fun, you are borrowed a fancy robot that has computer vision camera, wheels, arms built-in.
you code python for a line follower and object recognition and sorter. lab is quite easy and it’s partly understanding and partly trial-and-error for the correct values.
was afraid of the exam as it contained a lot of mathy stuff in the slides, but suprisingly none at all and just mostly about the labs, which i am really grateful about. I thought I may get a meh grade, but ended up with an A+.
clubs
sfu surge
i lowkenuinely retired from surge and has only been an advisor for the term, but still want to put a highlight on the club as I am really grateful to be part of the surge.
Last StormHacks was the biggest event (~900 hackers), 3 full end-to-end SUB judging.
The team was even bigger than before and has so many hard-working people :D:D. though most importantly, the people are brainrotted too.
intervarsity sfu
I was also not that much part of InterVarsity SFU anymore, but I enjoyed attending the weekly wednesday event.
We have a staff and interns working for the campus and it really helped the logistics compared to the year I served.
InterVarsity will continue to be part of my heart. I have attended 6 of the retreat camps and learned a lot from each of them.
treehouse
Highlight of the term, together with Chloe and Avni, we started a club from the summer.
Treehouse was such a joy and the perfect club to be in. so whatttt is treehouse? it’s a coworking club, you meet for weekly to build for something that is not your school or work and demo it to your friends.
It holds a special place as most of my university time, i see it’s very hard for most to build anything. We just spent our time surviving the school life. But with treehouse, it’s even easier to build stuff with and there’s also the social accountability aspect too.
We welcomed over 100 guests on SFU SUB Ballroom, serving free pizzas and drinks by begging people for money hehehe (insta post).
btw, the root club is from socratica waterloo. I attended the toronto node weekly on Jan-Apr 2025 :D.
job seeking
I was fully prepared to do a lot of job seeking and now forever grateful to be returning from my second co-op, SAP.
hearing from friends, it is definitely the play to spam co-op during your uni years. getting a new grad job is way harder and for co-ops, the playing field is so much easier as the competition as only your uni peers, not some senior dev from asia migrating here.
it also helps that you build a lot of credibility not just from co-ops, but school. I also see a trend where some friends got jobs from referral. thus, club matters as I barely got friend from classes in SFU.
if you are stuck and in need of help during this crazy season, please please reach out to your friends and people around you. know that you are not fighting alone!
sfucourses
On the first few weeks of school, I work for sfucourses more than sfu courses, aha! please check it out https://sfucourses.com/
i am resigning from sfucourses to focus on more life stuff, but I got to tackle the most important thing I wanted to do, which is aggregating RMP.
If I have more time (or if you want to do it), here are the major features I wanna make:
- Automated RMP cron job fetcher (as I run the RMP script manually) to update the RMP data at sfucourses API
- contact me for more details as script is private rn
- group when2meet scheduler from your school schedule
- can also make it full-stack and you can submit your review
- degree planner if you are cracked (need to make your own requirements)
- better courses tree traversal
SAP
my second-half, I got to work part-time for SAP. So happy to meet my coworkers again!!
what went well
- meeting people at 3pm eating big hot from sfu sub is banger
- or especially if you go to bigway lougheed after
- relationships once again is good and i think overall still well rounded
what could have been better
- maybe I should have travelled mid-semester
conclusion
I got the highest grade this term while spending the least time as the courses are even chiller, honestly GPA even matters less now. More leverage to focus on more impact stuff and touching grass with friends. Disclaimer: unless you have specific goal like grad school.
touching grass matters as you develop taste of what’s good and what’s not in life, and it carries over to everything you do.
fall is good and i am signing off from sfu, thank you very much
brian ೭੧(❛〜❛✿)੭೨