The Waterloo ‘Bubble’

If you’re a Waterloo student, you’ve experienced this before – the dreaded bubble. Before you enter the Waterloo campus for your four month work term, you’re a normal, functioning human being. After you enter the campus you turn into a hermit, all energies directed within Waterloo’s walls, your full focus on the courses that you have to do…

Well, hyperbole aside, I’m serious about the bubble. I (personally) think that it affects engineers to the greatest extent – probably because of our heavy workload. I mean I too am affected by the bubble. As I sit here today, I realize that I have _absolutely_ no idea what transpired outside the technical world in the last 5 days. None at all. It’s disturbing how quickly one can get out of touch. The problem is simple. For the last few days I’ve been inundated by tasks to do, lectures, tutorials and labs to attend, a work term report to complete and coop to worry about. To make matters worse, I have not had access to a newspaper. I primarily get all my global affairs info from hard copy (I find it easier to read) and not being able to read the newspaper in the morning is a major contributor to the bubble.

The cause of the bubble being located (workload, lack of reading materials) why do I let it happen? I’m not sure really. After all, I put in quite some effort into making sure that I know all about the linux news and any interesting technology info out there. Why not global affairs as well? Habit really. After all, I’ve always checked for my linux/tech news online, so its not really a break in my schedule/habits to continue doing so. However, since I don’t have a newspaper I’d have to actually go out and find alternate sources of info and frankly at this moment, I don’t have the inclination to do so.

Gotta change that. After all, if you let things like this go, its easy to ingrain an apathetic/defeatist attitude in yourself.

Oh, at any rate my congrats go out to Alex Breganza who I just found out got married and is about to have a son :) He’s a jovial person and I wish him the best of luck in life! It is kinda scary though, cause he’s in my CompEng year and its somewhat disconcerting to think of him as a husband _and_ a father. That’s a lot of responsibility for a 3A student.