4B (January - April 2021)
The journey ends.
For the final semester, I finally moved back to Waterloo, it wouldn’t feel right to finish the degree anywhere else. Few of my peers felt the same way and the city was a ghost town, aided by an especially grim winter. I rented a basement with one of my former teammates who had now graduated and was working full time. I had always imagined the final semester of university would be similar to the final months of high school - the most lively, people relatively stress free and focused on enjoying the last bit of time together. I think even notwithstanding COVID, the last semester of university is instead a lot closer to an epilogue. Life paths branch broadly from this point onwards and there is limited alignment in what these final months represent to one another. I learned that some of my peers who had liked one of their co-ops enough saw little reason to drag out their degree and decided to accelerate graduating and had already begun working. Others had already mentally left the academic setting behind and were eager to disassociate with school. Some had even decided to jump start their grad trips and were finishing their degrees online in far away countries.
Fresh off the internal deliberation of grad school, I wanted the flavour of a proper school semester just a few more times. Though campus buildings were all closed, on any day warm enough to not need a scarf, I’d hang out in the outdoor spaces, hoping to soak in the energy of the campus. On the large majority of days, I would spend an entire afternoon there and not see a single other person. With a job offer already signed and academic stress at an all time low, I wanted to fill my time making the most of the spontaneity that comes with student life but was struggling to find it.
The academic component of the semester really did feel like a formality at this point, but two classes did make an impression, one of which being my final music studio term. Surprisingly, I felt that the dropoff from in-person to online learning was actually minimal with the studio lessons compared to other classes. The majority of the work for studio semesters comes from individual practice and with an abundance of free time in 4B, I got to do a lot of that. The ensemble component however was barely functional and the discrepancies between people’s microphones and internet latencies was too much to overcome.
The other class which stood out was DAC300, another course within the Digital Arts and Communication faculty that I had a great experience with in 4A (the artsy sound class). This time, the topic was photography, a notable interest of mine. However, like many, the majority of my experience spent practicing photography at the time consisted of vacations or special days, mostly serving documentative purposes with maybe a little emphasis on aesthetics. I felt confident in my technical abilities and rarely struggled to get proper exposure with manual settings but like any art form, in order to improve, one must be pushed out of comfort zones, forced to iterate, and be self critical.
The format of the course was foreign to me, as a true arts class, the focus was on actually producing material. There were semi weekly lectures mostly on the artistic and aesthetic elements of visual arts. We had photo batches to submit every other week or so and had peer groups to meet regularly with, share and discuss drafts, and in general, have a circle of other photographers to collaborate with. These group meetings were a highlight of the semester and it affirmed to me that art is meant to be shared and discussed. The photo batches were fairly large in volume of images and there were some loose guidelines on certain techniques that should be achieved. I enlisted the help of a high school friend who was studying visual and mixed media arts at another university to accompany me in driving around the KW region to complete these batches. These were memorable days and I noticeably saw my “photographer’s eye” develop - forced to be more creative in finding compelling perspectives around me. By the end of the semester, we had amassed a decent library of photos which were filtered to a final portfolio in which I am quite proud of. Here are a few of my favourites from it:
Though the start of the semester wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, as the weather warmed up and sunlight became less of a treasured scarcity, there were signs of life in Waterloo. The track team was able to hold small practices similar to the cross country ones in the fall and those sunny mornings in the newly constructed fieldhouse felt good. By April, evenings around the bustling university plaza strip was once again how I remembered it, the sun setting over the hill of University Ave illuminating the countless silhouettes of students walking about. With many indoor activities still closed, Waterloo Park became a sort of grass beach on warmer days with swarms of people on picnic blankets scattered throughout.
It felt a bit ironic seeing things come back alive just as I was entering my final weeks but it reminded me that although my time here was ending, Waterloo and the university would continue on afterwards, serving host to future students’ personal journeys as it had mine. On one night walk home, I passed by some of the first year student residences and saw a group of them sitting on the ground in the middle of a vastly empty parking lot. In the middle of the circle they had formed, there were some half finished bubble teas and they were lost in the middle of some soul searching discussion, the type that feels distinctly more profound in the late night. I felt like a witness to a special memory and I was happy for them.
This final month had a lot of moments that gave reason to pause and appreciate. One in particular was the final last minute rush to complete overlapping assignment deadlines, a quintessential university experience. I savoured this final unhealthy ritual, happy to put it behind me in life but also slightly proud of how productive I had continually proved I could be when desperate enough. I put t.A.T.u.’s hit 2006 CD Set, “The Best”, on repeat and after hours that felt like minutes, I finished my last set of assignments with a whopping 30 minutes to spare.
If there’s one memory from the final few weeks that I think I’ll carry for life, it would be the morning I went to go get my grad photos taken. With the majority of students out of Waterloo, the university was accepting self taken photos to be used for graduation but I wanted the authentic overpriced “official” portraits. By some stroke of luck, I managed to snag a session at the greatly reduced in capacity campus grad photo studio, bright and early at 8am. It was the only time all semester that I had a real “reason” to go to campus. I was told to bring props that I felt represented my time at Waterloo so I brought my track race kit and my violin.
The photo session itself was pretty short and in all honesty, not that remarkable. As I was packing up to go, the photographer and I exchanged a few words and she congratulated me on “making it to the end”. It was a quiet moment and one that really shouldn’t have been anything notable but there was something about it that carried weight. In my eyes, she was a stand-in for the university organisation as a whole, acknowledging that yes, I had existed here, it has been a journey, but now I had reached the finish line, an external affirmation that validated what I was coming to terms with. I thanked the photographer for her time and as I walked out of the studio and made my way through the completely empty student life centre, I felt the spirits of my time in university around me.
I could see myself entering this building for the first time on move-in day, I saw the poster fair being held in the great hall, the ghost of Campus Bubble by the stairway, and the swathes of people hurrying to their next class. I exited the building into jovial sunlight, the type that distinctly feels like a sunrise and not a sunset. I continued walking to where I parked my car, each step echoing into the past, like tracing the edges of a deeply familiar story. Buildings, landmarks, even particular trees, things I had walked by probably thousands of times, now sharply in focus as I passed them. I approached the “Blue North” side of the Physical Activities Complex, a place that served as the meeting point for all things cross country. On sunny warm days like this one, it’s especially easy to be reminded of the excitement of that first fall practice, friends catching up and anxious rookies intermingling. Then, almost as if scripted, I saw a group of student-athletes hanging around by its doors, laughing and seemingly waiting around for something.
As I arrived at the parking lot and got into my car, I waited for a moment, in no rush to leave, knowing I had just experienced something profound. There was an overwhelming sensation of conclusion but not in the way that brought discomfort as it had before. After a while, I turned on the engine and drove off.
Scattered memories:
- Morning Ring Road tempos
- Blue Mountain during reading week
- Saturday morning hills and banter
- Outdoor Catan at the park
- Subway sandwich phase
- Wilmot run
- Oscars
Classes took:
- CS489 (Special Topics - Neural Networks) w/ Jeff Orchard
- CS456 w/ Noura Liman
- MUSIC240 w/ Bonnie Brett
- Music Studio instructed by Lance Oullette
- DAC300 (Special Topics - Photography) w/ Aynur Kadir
Songs:
- Crown - Stormzy
- Excellent pre workout song
- deja vu - Olivia Rodrigo
- Magnolia - Laufey
- Fell in love with Laufey over the pandemic
- Ya Soshla S Uma - t.A.T.u.
- The “119 Club Edit” was the specific song on repeat for the final assignment grind, highly recommended
- death bed (coffee for your head) - Powfu ft. beabadoobee