The Great October Update

Hi!!

It has been a while since I last wrote! Apparently my recent post was around the time when I submitted my last assignment! I'll always remember that date aka April 22. Kind of felt so weird to actually be done and finished with my undergrad degree!! I was supposed to write somewhere in summer, but I frankly didn't think of this website nor did I have any urge to write anything that would be publicized lol.

So basically, I had a pretty long vacation at home after undergrad ended! Since COVID-19 existed for a while and is obviously still ongoing (pretty disappointed at my province to be honest), not much can be done outside of my house. I'm not really complaining though since I love staying at home and doing my own thing! First time I had a 4 ish month long break!! Enjoyed it to the fullest. Oh so basically, the only significant event that happened was maybe in the beginning of May, beginning of June, middle of July, and I guess September and onwards!

So in the beginning of May, after I got all my official final marks back and confirmed that I'm 100% graduating, I did my usual routine of emailing my professors a thank you email to show my appreciation and give feedback. Though this time felt special since it was going to be the last time I would email anyone from my uoft email. I only emailed like 3 of my current semester professors, though a lot more thought was put into my favourite professors obviously. Definitely enjoyed physics, psychology and law, and KIND OF an upper level course for statistics. My last email was reserved for my most favourite, and I think most impactful professor at uoft. I had him for first year in the summer term and it was the first time I interacted so often with a professor. He helped with my confidence and self-efficacy, and provided more guidance with where I was going in terms of academics and school. Honestly the first time I felt a professor cared. I truly was touched that he til this day maintains that accessible to all his students, despite getting so popular over the years. I'm so happy for him!! I managed to only take one upper level class with him, since the waitlists for the rest were so long...despite me having priority as a senior at that point LOL. Anyways, long story short, I wrote him a really long email. I did get a response back and it was even longer than what I wrote lol. It was touching and honestly I cried. But I felt it was the perfect way to officially end my time here at uoft.

In the beginning of June, my degree came in the mail around the time that my convocation was supposed to happen. Due to the pandemic, I didn't get to have a physical convocation and my school literally cancelled it so my parents won't get to experience that with me I guess. I remember my boyfriend would express his want to come to my graduation throughout the years but :( sad. OUTSIDE of that, I'm not too bothered by the lack of convocation since I didn't want to sit through all the speeches and ceremony. Also the fact that I didn't know anyone outside of 2 people in my college who happen to be graduating with an honours BSc too lol. That's how my school works. Most of my friends made at uoft were in other colleges or programs that don't have an associated college, so they didn't have the same convocation time or date as me. And some of my other friends were either going into their 5th year or graduating in the fall instead. I will miss them because I don't think I will be seeing a lot of them for a while.

In July, the only major event was just course enrolment. I don't think I mentioned this before on my website but I actually am current enrolled in a postgraduate degree program! After having a bunch of different experiences throughout my undergrad, I ended up pretty lost on what type of career I could see myself in, until the beginning of fourth year to be honest. After consulting with my coworker, guidance from another coworker, and participating in a mentorship program with a professional in the field, I felt that this profession fit more with what I was looking for my future work life. I already had a solid idea of the work conditions I wanted, what I liked and disliked, my strengths and weaknesses, but I didn't know an exact profession lmao. So here I am enrolled in a human resources management program at GBC! I felt that for this certain aspect of the field that I am aiming for, it was a perfect combination of my psychology, math, and statistics background. Thankfully I really do love certain aspects of it so far academically wise. I do have that mindset where learning is a continuous process though, and am open to the idea of pursuing more education if stuff doesn't work out. I do aim to get a Masters in my late 20s though. Course enrolment day was hectic, but I did a lot of research prior, and with my experience with uoft's system, I felt prepared lol. I ended up getting a pretty good schedule with the professors I wanted. Since this program is really specific, everyone has to enrol in the same courses available for that term, but there are multiple sections and different professors associated with each section.

So September hit, and I was a bit nervous and scared, but confident too since I came from a really rigorous school knowing that I can handle pretty much anything school-related to be honest. Although my learning is spent mainly online, it is a pleasant experience. It feels weird having to take 6 courses. Unfortunately, this program is pretty demanding too. A lot of my peers and boyfriend thought that it would be easy since its college, but...in terms of workload, it is pretty heavy. Though, in terms of academics, it's not hard lol. Just a really reading intensive program where all my courses have mandatory group work, and assignments on the side. Only one class is less reading heavy aka my financial and managerial accounting. I enjoy this class a lot. I always wondered what I would have been like if I went with the accounting route. I knew for sure that it fit with my personality and interests. But since I never took accounting before, I was nervous. Math and statistics was/is totally different from accounting. Thankfully, I am doing quite well in all of my classes, especially my accounting class! Maybe it's because of my math background?

An interesting thing with me during this program so far is that I adapted pretty well to the online method of learning. I remember having a hard time with self-discipline and procrastinating when I took my one and only online course back in first year of uoft. But here? I'm usually on top of my work! I'm actually those people who read the chapters before class and complete their assignments well before the due date lol. I don't have much procrastination problems here thankfully! It was so bad during my undergrad. Maybe it's because the workload is so heavy that there's barely any room to procrastinate!

This program also changed my perspective on group work altogether. Throughout my undergrad, I avoided group work as much as possible, and only had one class where group work was involved (in my senior year). But that group work wasn't bad since they were my friends lol. So entering this college, I was intimidated and nervous because I didn't know anyone. Though I felt more reassurance seeing how majority of my peers here did not know anyone here either. It was so cool to see everyone come from various backgrounds!! Group work isn't bad! It's actually an enjoyable experience for me, albeit there are some awkward moments here and there. I actually managed to find people who have the same work ethnic as me which was great for the classes that allowed you to make your own groups for assignments that occurred later on in the course. Majority of my classes had a randomized system of making groups for the major group project, but it's really only one class where it had 2-3 major group related work, so that's where I found people like me. Also one of my favourite classes here.

I find the workload manageable kind of, but it sucks how I don't really have much time to slack off to be honest. I know there has been complaints about this program regarding this (my program peers had a meeting with the higher ups regarding this), since on average, you literally spend 6 hours OUTSIDE OF THE 3 HOUR LECTURES on each class. Literally more hours than an actual full time job lmao. Another downside to this program is that everyday you have to wake up for the 8am class. But since it is online, I didn't mind too much since I don't have to wake up and eat, then use the public transit to go to school. Definitely do not miss that life :). I can't travel on the bus on an empty stomach because I get nauseous that way lol. Never liked the commute times either, which was why I crafted my schedule to be around the rush hour times in uoft! Imagine if this program was in person...I'd d word. I don't know how people in the past managed this amount of workload on top of transiting to be honest?? Though I heard that the program was much better in person, so maybe there was less assignments to be done back then.

So yeah, I am pretty busy nowadays. Midterm week was last week (I still have one more next week). Can't believe I had 5 midterms back to back LOL. At uoft, if you had 3 back to back, you can petition for conflict but here?? It's the norm. Thankfully, the midterms weren't too hard. Now it is reading week! Technically I should be free but this is the week where it's the most ideal to work on group projects, since there's gonna be a lot of presentations and reports due in November to December. Progress has been well in majority of my groups so far. Really appreciate my members. I think I am fortunate.

Overall, I'd say my experience in this program has been good so far. Could be improved in some aspects but otherwise, it's good. I am aiming to get extremely high marks here though, especially since I'm trying to get this designation in the future for this profession. An agenda is EXTREMELY necessary for this program. I was always an agenda user for all my school years, and I was happy to see more people get into using agendas. I'm an organized person in general so I felt having an agenda for something like school is a mandatory thing. Oh! and for times where I felt a bit overwhelmed with the amount of work I had, I usually place a hamster sticker on my agenda page! >:D I got into buying cute sticker packs during pandemic so I got two hamster boxes and recently a cute girl one. Wished I used those during undergrad Q_Q. It spices up my agenda.

So I'm always on my laptop (AS USUAL). The downside so far is that I frequent twitter much more often than normal. Maybe it's because I follow more bts related fan accounts now, so my timeline is rarely dead like in the past.

Surprisingly but not really surprising, I didn't crack a tear yet for this program. I do know a lot of my peers experienced really bad mental breakdowns over this program, which really does suck. I think just overall, uoft was much harder. I wouldn't want to relive my undergrad to be honest. The stress was real. I'd like to thank my boyfriend for being a strong supporter and emotional support throughout my whole undergrad years to be honest. He always believes in me, pushes me to work harder, and better myself. I really am grateful for his existence +O+.

Thanks for reading my post! It was supposed to be a mini update lmao.

Until then!

Happy early Halloween (can't believe its in 3 days!!!).

My goal for this entire reading week was to work hard so that my Saturday can be fully off and spent on playing games! I do have a group meeting in the morning, but it's nothing too major. :) I mainly just want to play Sims 4 and ACNH lmao.