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Losing Track of Time: My experience @ UTM

A reflection on my experiences @ UTM

May 27, 2024 — posted by   Aaron H.

Losing Track of Time: My experience @ UTM

A Quick Intro

After what felt like a flash, I feel like my learning journey is progressing towards a new chapter. With that in mind, I finally feel like it's a good time to review my experience as a student @ UTM.

“Good Food Heals the Soul”: What I Ate, a Small Rant, and Ramblings

Honestly, I don't think that I have too much to say about the food at UTM. It's mediocre, and you'll find that most university cafeterias are the same.

I basically survived eating soups from DH (Deerfield Hall) in my first year — they used to be pretty affordable, and well made. During my recent visit, I was a bit sad to find out that the soups had become analogous with store bought (canned) soup. I remember there being mountains of chicken at the bottom of the chicken noodle soup: it was an amazing value at the time. If you're going to UTM for the first time this fall (2024), I highly recommend that you stay away from OPH. The food there is hideously expensive (even if you need to burn through your meal plan), and I found it quite difficult to track my spending there. The UTM eAccounts page looks like an ancient monolith (what appears to be a 3,000 year old .NET fossil), and we don’t share a balance system with UTSG/UTSC. There’s no app, the web view is miserable to use, and I’m surprised ITC Systems still has a contract with the university. Anyway, beyond the ancient meal plan system, I’d say to stick with Blind Duck Pub (though, I will admit that they are quite slow) and probably the Davis (DV) Food Court. My favourites were:

• Harveys (DV)
  • You can’t really go wrong with a bog-standard burger. I wouldn’t suggest going here if you have a class to go to (especially at 11 AM - 2 PM), as the line is often quite long.
  • Prices are reasonable, and they are a far cry from what Thai Express serves (expensive garbage — I say that as an East Asian who desperately wanted good Chinese/Korean food on campus).
• Breakfast bar (next to Harveys, DV)
  • The lady that usually worked there was SUPER nice, and I miss seeing her the most in my mornings. In general, the staff at the breakfast bar and the “Fair Trade” booth in the middle were super nice! :-)
  • Breakfast there starts at under $10, and you get quite a bit of food. It made bearing my 2.5 - 3 hour commute much more bearable.
  • I've attached a photo of what it looks like below:
    
• Bento Sushi
  • Bento Sushi is one of few restaurants on campus that serves “asian” food. Prices are on the higher end, and a small bowl of ramen will set you back nearly $15. A nice treat after a midterm, I guess. Somehow still cheaper than Thai Express (!!!).
• Blind Duck Pub
  • The Blind Duck is run by the UTMSU (student union). It's one of the most affordable food spots on campus, and the food is decent enough.
  • Service is slow during peak hours and between classes (i.e. students trying to grab a bite before their next class)
  • Here's a photo of their fish tacos:
    

The Campus Wireless Network

Believe me — it was worse 4 years ago. Like, people were struggling to obtain an IP address on their laptops during lecture. Hell, the professors couldn’t even connect.

It’s gotten better in recent years (so I’ve heard), but it’s still pretty unreliable. If you have something critical (job interviews, meetings), I’d suggest you go to a local library instead. Save yourself the hassle of dealing with terrible Wi-Fi, a chronic lack of seating (they replaced 8-seaters with single person meeting pods — the admin makes some interesting decisions at times).

Campus Politics

It’s better to stay away from this. Every year, you will get an (equally) corrupt cohort of “leaders” that ultimately do 1-2 token actions and leave claiming “extreme success.” We've had people (i.e. the friends of those working at the UTMSU) propping the legitimacy of the UTMSU up, even though some of their statements were unfactual, misinformed, or simply did not represent the opinions of the student population.

Students are often busy, and to have 10% of students claim to be the “voice” of the other 90% is unacceptable. I won’t pull up any specific examples, but there’s a great Instagram account that documents their shenanigans.

Computer Science (1^st year)

As a CS student, you’ll go through a standard set of courses:

1. CSC108
   • This was probably the easiest course for me in my first year. If you have any background in programming (particularly in an object-oriented programming language), you will do just fine. Make sure you keep up with PCRS (I believe it’s still part of your overall grade), and make sure you take advantage of the TAs’ office hours.
   • If you don’t have any programming experience, that’s fine too. Many students take the course just for personal interest too, with no experience whatsoever. If you keep up with lectures and solidify your understanding of the taught material, you will do just fine. Obviously, I cannot predict how others will do in the course, but the most important concept (at least IMO) would be understanding recursion. This concept will come back in later courses if you pursue a minor/major/specialist in CS.
2. CSC148
   • Ironically enough, many students do better here than in 108. Some chalk it up to maturing study habits, and others just say that the material is more interesting. You’ll learn about basic data structures (trees, stacks, queues), and more. I’d recommend visiting the CSSC (Computer Science Student Community)’s page on this: https://cssc.utm.utoronto.ca/resources/csc148#topics-in-csc148.
3. MAT102
   • This was the hardest course for me. Coming from an Ontario High School, proofs were never really used (hence the saying: “plug n’ chug”).
   • I had to take the course twice before I was able to meet the requirements for POSt. It’s an easy course for some, but rather difficult for others.
   • The course is usually structured with a combination of recurring quizzes, problem sets, tests, and the exam.
4. Calculus I (MAT135/136, MAT137, MAT157 if you’re a genius)
   • I took a combination of MAT135/136, so I’ll comment on those. MAT135 is basically “high school review.” It’s designed to get everyone to the same level (or that’s what I assume anyway), and most people breeze through. Topics covered include derivatives, functions, curve sketching, et cetera.
   • As for MAT136, you get to learn about series, series convergence, sums, integration techniques, integration, and more. For those entering after having done an AP Math course, this course will be quite straightforward.

Other Courses I Found Interesting/Challenging

• STA256
  • Did not do very well in my first attempt, but did well enough the second time. This course is very computationally-heavy (what I mean by this: proofs aren't super rigorous, and you'll often be integrating/deriving in the second half of the course).
  • I found the most challenging part to be counting rules (this still doesn't really make sense to me). Integrating and deriving to find the PDFs/CDFs or Joint Distribution Functions (etc.) were straightforward enough provided you followed the instructions in the textbook.
  • I did not find counting rules to be easy in earlier statistics courses, and it still gives me some trouble today.
  • Keep in mind that this is strictly my opinion: many students do well and 4.0 the course easily.
• ERS201
  • I have great respect for geologists that can ID minerals and other geologic details (the setting, etc.) in only a few seconds. It takes SO much practice, and I have nothing but a "props to you"!
  • The mineral ID'ing was super cool to look at under XPL/PPL:
    
  • "Shiiiiiny"!
  • My favourite part of the course was the "suggestions" box. After every lecture, we would get the chance to ask a question, or submit a suggestion on a piece of paper (fun way of doing attendance). There were some pretty awesome jokes that were submitted, and ERS201 was one of my most enjoyable courses @ UTM.
  • Additional thanks goes to Paul Ashwell — he's an amazing professor and made the course much more interesting.
• EAS120
  • EAS120 (or Modern Standard Japanese) was a fun course to end off my degree. I met so many new (and awesome) people, and it made the challenging content easy to digest.
  • The professor I had was super patient, always smiled, and wanted to help whenever she could. I think this was the closest I felt to being back in High School: you essentially see the same people every few days.
  • As someone with Chinese heritage, but with little proficiency in Traditional Chinese (writing), learning how to write and apply each character was difficult to say the least.
  • Overall, though, I'd still give the course an 8/10. It sets you up with a good foundation in grammar that is built upon in both future courses (or self-study, whichever you prefer!).
  • このブログをまだ読んでいるなら、本当にありがとうございます。すごく嬉しくなります！

Spaces Around Campus

I had the opportunity to do some field courses as part of my other major. UTM has some amazing nature trails, and the areas surrounding Credit River are beuatiful in the Fall. I'd recommend taking advantage of them: the trails are calm, and a nice disconnect from studying.

I've attached a picture below:

Conclusions

I'm sure you've heard this already (at least a few thousand times), but your experience here is dictated by you.

Whether you choose to study hard for a 4.0 (I certainly was not a 4.0 student), or choose to spend some time finding courses you like, I think your overall experience @ UTM will be pretty okay. Have an awesome semester!