What would you warn yourself about from the end of the semester?

Written by: Nathaniel Tok, Peak Associate

Dear four-month-younger Nathaniel,

Hi there, bud! It’s been four awesome months at school. The buses reach the station just in time for you to catch the SkyTrain, your code compiles on the first try, your paper comes back from your prof with no red ink, and we all live happily ever after…

Oh, god. Of course I’m joking.  

Listen very closely: if you want to get through this without mentally crapping yourself, you’ll do a real close reading of this letter. It’s going to be one arduous, terrible semester.

I would tell you to run, but at SFU, where could you run to? You’re literally on top of a mountain surrounded by forests.

First of all, just as the semester begins, a massive snowstorm is going to hit. How hard, you ask? Well, bloody Whistler is going to tweet out a shut off its chairlifts because of “unforeseeable severe inclement snowy weather.” Guess where you’re going to be when that happens? At the end of a 145 lineup longer than the reading list for HUM 113: Appreciation of France, the elective everyone called a GPA booster. Seriously, how can a country have 246 varieties of cheese? Make sure you bring your skis to class if you want a guarantee of getting home this term.

That’s not all. Remember your favourite study spot at the basement of the library? Haha, well, the first-years who have survived their first semester have grown up, and they have annexed your study spot! They fell upon it as you took a definitely well-deserved coffee break and rudely swept aside your stuff, exactly the same way CHEM 282 swept aside your med-school dreams. You could organize a decisive counterattack to seize it back, but let’s face it, you can check Facebook anywhere in the library.

And for the love of the free stuff from Career Fair Day, print out your readings! Not so you can do better in your courses — that’s hopeless — but so you can sleep better. What do you get when you print out and assemble hundreds of pages of papers, articles, and random literature? A textbook. And we all know that in a pinch, reading a book is a great technique for sleeping. In fact, after this semester ends, you should work on a way to soften hardcovers so that university students can double their massive textbooks for use as pillows in between classes and in transit.

Also, having readings around your person makes it easier to pretend you’re studying and shoo your family away so you won’t have to attend the anniversary of the death of your great-aunt’s goldfish.

With love from a very concerned friend,

Your future self.