u/reddit_on_steroids

I (18 twopeasinapod) just got to uni this year, and my roomate (18 two-re's-inatard) has been watching inappropriate corn in our room all day, even when I'm trying to sleep! (He doesn't use headphones). Like I get it, everyone needs to tickle their pickle every now and then, but he is strangling his snake 24/7! You'd think he'd get sore or something but he never stops! His tastes are also VERY unusual. It's coming to the point where I get home from a long day of classes and I hear Judy Hops taking it at max volume. Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with this? I can't take it anymore!

To prefice: I'll define some terms so the words/initialisms make sense in context

EngSoc: The Engineering Society, borderline like a clique or a greek life organization imo (which is funny since my institution outlawed greek life more than a century ago)

FREC: Orientation Leaders for engineering

Chief FREC: The one organizing funds, sponsorships, relationships, advice, and pr, among other stuff, for orientation

FYPCO: first year project coordinator - an opportunity for 1st years to be involved in EngSoc

OTIS: The "backups" to make sure orientation is running smoothly for the incoming class and the orientation leaders. A lesser role than FREC

EngWell: Student Mental Health/Wellness organization in my uni

"erasedbyfeas"/"stolenbysmith" : former spaces (that have now been forsaken/inactive since 2020) for people/alumni to share their negative experiences with racism/discrimination/injustice by students/faculty/other alumni (think "blackatharvardlaw" for reference)

I (19m) am gonna write it kinda like a timeline style, and I think this is the appropriate subreddit for shi like this, since I got bullied into deleting a post on my uni's subreddit about my overall experiences with my engineering classes (albeit, i did come off a bit ranty there then).

Let me describe my first-year journey - partial naivety, partial realizations, partial curses, partial stress - Beware of my rambling lol:

September starts and I am ambitious asf. I first tried competing for exec year slots but didn't get any roles (cuz i suck at public speaking lol) like fine, whatever, moving on. then applied for a FYPCO role - got in for Equity/EDI, but that lead to nothing since the mentor didn't even bother showing up (which i didn't know until later), so i couldn't even put down any experiece down or what i've learned. We tried complaning until April and we were told by the upper years/more powerful in engsoc that "we'll deal with it" yet nothing happened at all. I tried leadership positions for a networking club and a general member application for another - didn't get into either. also tried for Chief FREC - didn't get in so another "fine, whatever, moving on".

October rolls around and I discover VEX U robotics at my university and decide to join - and got in. also same time I met the dude who got one of the year exec roles in September and we chatted and he said to me "you're a very ambitious guy, and I know that. I'm surprised you didn't get any year exec role" and i'm like "it's whatever". Unfortunately was the time the "last name only with no prefix addressed" emails started coming, and didn't think much about it. I applied for a delegate role for an engineering conference and got the result of - not a delagate, but you can still participate and attend the workshops, which was worth it imo cuz i had the opportunity and meet new people.

Also in October, I ended up staying up all night that day and was somewhat intoxicated when drinking with a group of 1st years in my faculty/program. I watched my friend hangout with that group because he begged me to attend after our chem exam in the evening, to which I reluctingly agreed. What followed that night was a night of tomfoolery I'll never forget:

We entered this dude's (important later) dorm room and he brought a couple of girls from different parts of the residence he lived in. One thing led to another and he ended up punching some girl in the nose and making her bleed. Some drama ensuded yet they tagged us along into the games room of the building. At this point,I was exhausted (and later tipsy after the beers, but before that girl's nosebleed took place), so I ended up sitting on a couch. My friend approached me when I was on the couch and asked me why I wasn't participating. I told him I didn't feel like it, that I wasn't even close with most of the people in the he befriended a while back, and that I had a bad feeling about the popular guy (the dude who punched the girl in the nose) and how he was getting erratic and out of himself. He reassured me nothing bad was gonna happen. So, I belived him and stood up to talk to the others in the room.

I was playing pool with one of the guys and cracking jokes. Something in my brain told me to record this moment so I'd never forget being an obnoxious first year with shenanigans. I had a couple of clips of that night before I felt tired and decided to sit on the couch. I was so tired that I felt like I was slipping in and out of my conscioussness. The popular guy then ended up lifting my friend (a scrawny 5'7" lightweight) up multiple times. Unbenownst to myself, I was recording them. Eventually, the popular guy didn't catch my friend on his fall after many lift-ups, and he bruised (or accuratly as we found out later, fractured) his arm. The popular guy saw my phone out, but thought I was about to fall out of my chair and didn't really confront me, so then I snapped out of myself and gave my seat to my friend who just hurt himself and told him to rest. I saw bruising and a bump on where he fell and landed. So, I let him rest and didn't want him hurt even further.

Other wack stuff happeded, such as someone girl throwing apples at her ex and it landed on a wall and caused a mess, of which I cleaned it up, and the popular guy's gf thanked me for my acts and apologised on their behalf. Then, I got so tired I ended up resting on the ping-pong table. I was so out of it from being sleep-deprived and intoxicated I ended up falling off the ping-pong table. Only then when they saw what happened to me was when they decided to end the night's tomfoolery. That popular guy was out of his mind when he decided to lay back-flat on the asphalt of the road where cars would still be passing by, and I with 3 others had to drag him off the road and put him on the bus back to the other residences so he could cuddle with his gf in her residence.

November comes around, and my friend (who had a broken arm) didn't show up to classes for 2 weeks, and I had the vid of the footage that my friend (and the events leading up to it) had his arm purposly broken (even if the popular guy didn't mean to). I showed that footage to one of my friends who was also in my group for a final project (more on that later) and he understood why he couldn't code the project (it was a coding class). My biggest mistake was sending the footage to my friend's friend, whom he showed it his friend, who then pulled a hissy fit and ran to his friend, the popular guy, like a pussy, saying I had footage. Later, he cornered me after class, and forced me to walk backwards in a corner. He got up towards my face, and threatened me by impling he would've ruined my life and beat me up if I didn't remove the videos, and I (who's like 5'10"~5'11", clumsy, chubby-ish at the time, and a cowardice yesman) followed the popular guy's (who's like 6'2"~6'3", athletic, and from a powerful family) orders, and got rid of the footage in front of him. I felt like shitting bricks in that moment, and it definitely fucked up my persecption of myself.

Then December comes, and I applied to be a FREC for engineering orientation for September. Got placed in a group of 5 for the appliacation. Then the whole group got interviewed one by one in January, and lo and behold - out of 5, 3 got in, and i wasn't one of the 3. A week later, I met with two people who happened to get the FREC leader position, and one of the topics came out with a white-passing girl who said "yeah they were poking fun at my British accent like I'm from Hackney in London, not from Leaside in Toronto. Also, There's barely any POC people as FRECs, and 90% of those POCs have european-sounding names." That thing struck with me, because what she describe was what I saw since September - White-majority with some token POCs. And Two notible things: the rejection email did the same last-name only address since October (and still happening until the end of the Academic year in April), and that's when I noticed how long it started before I gave a shit about it.

Honestly, the only good thing that came out of December was me winning a prestigeous $52K bursary that would pay off my fees for the remaining years of undergrad and then some. The only people who applauded me were the project dude (another friend of mine) and my friend with the broken arm. But, I didn't care, bc I would later learn that my region/premier/leader would slash student funding for subsequent school years, raise tuition prices, and do these acts in the middle of midterm season so we would be forbidden to protest the chainges, if at all.

And then, when I mustered up the courage, I told my white friends about my FREC rejection + last-name address, and their responses ranged from focusing on only the rejection at best, to the more common questioning about how a "pretigeous committee" could ever have a hiring bias and shifting the blame onto me. They've lowk been like this since I met them: from trying to make me say racial slurs with tounge-twisters (they're white, I'm a non-black POC) yet be anti-homophobic, to leaving me unread and skipping over my trauma when I share it with them yet gladly support others with their traumas, to dismissing my experiences with racial discrimination/bias within a student hiring group for orientation week at our uni (with the open secret that you gotta be a chill/bro/pretty white(-passing) person) to which one of them told me "How dare you assume students from our uni have a hiring bias. Like, what bias bro?!". That's when my demenor changed from acceptance to bittterness.

If I thought January wasn't bad enough, hold your horses: I got dragged into an academic integrity situation because my friend (the broken arm guy who was in my group) decided to copy another group's code and put it in our final project from the previous semester (which I didn't know until I got an email from the prof). Well, I was surprised I didn't get a grade yet when others were getting their grades. Turns out my friend didn't bother to do shit (because of his broken arm) and used that group's code instead. Long story short: Me and another dude got off scot-free after being bombarded with hypothetical defenses for 3 weeks to prove our innocence (with marks off our final project, and our final grades), while my friend (who committed academic dishonesty) ended up getting a 0 on the project, and got a shitty mark overall in the course. This dragged my mental health into shambles into February due to all of the stress from and leading up to the meeting, and it was totally fine for it to intercept back-to-back exams from mid-January until the end of March.

In comes February, and I apply for OTIS. I was not expecting to be chosen for that role, but by some miracle, I was chosen, and I felt proud of myself for once. Once again, the only people who were proud of me were the people from my final project group.

March rolls around and I apply for director positions - didn't get in either. I was bummed out me not getting director positions in EngSoc (Director of Equity, Director of IT), but watching a first year get his/her role in a different director position (Director of Design). That means I shouldn't even bother about Engsoc and focus on something else entirely. IT director would've been a nice expansion for what i would do in my major, but Equity was something I also wanted to do, bc I witness the Director not show up to his mentor-mentee meetings and used the "i have a busy schedule" excuse as a 3rd year, me noticing the lack of spaces for engineers of colour other than black and indigenous (yet watch others open a space for "latino engineers" for which i prob got rejected for saying that), and after the events of "erasedbyfeas" and "stolenbysmith" at my uni which made headlines back then allegedly. Then EngWell advertised for Mental Health Stewards and I finally got in a position for once.

Then in April, I applied for the roles under the Director of First Year, such as the FYPCO lead and another which I can't remember at the moment. Never got into both of them. I genuinely think I am worth nothing and don't amount to anything. For 2nd year, my best bet would be to drop "EngSoc" and those people, and turn into a hermit crab loner who's only focused on himself. What good has associating with EngSoc and those people brought? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. None of my "friends" from my gc showed up for my birthday at all, after bending my ass backwards and giving them so many chances. I don't another birthday with them again.

What have I done in my past for me to deserve this fate of me?

I don't want anyone else to suffer like me.

I lost a lot of my ambition, and self-confidence, and self-worth as a result.

They lied to me, said that uni would've been a place to find my people, but where are they? To make me look stupid and naive, perhaps.

TL:DR - Rejection, Threats, Exhaustion, and Hopelessness

Just in your personal experience, not that you're claiming it's objectively the hardest course there is

As a 1st year enginnering student here's mine:

MREN 178: Had me by the throat of playing catchup with APSC 143 concepts (the prereq course) with a bad 143 prof TA-ing (and the sole TA) MREN 178.

do NOT ask me about the final exam, i am very much traumatised by the unholy April 17th, 7:00 PM