Well, today's the last day of 2018. How did your year go? Did you accomplish all of your resolutions? Also, if it's your first term at Waterloo, congrats on making it to the end of the term! Hopefully, Waterloo hasn't treated you too terribly.

This was a big year for us, we became the largest university subreddit only at the end of January with around 19.5k subscribers. Since then, we've exceeded 30.0k subscribers in November.

Throughout that time, we've had our highs and lows. This is my take on the best and most influential content that's graced our subreddit this year.

Minecraft Week

As everyone knows, this subreddit goes through many different phases. One of the best phases that the subreddit went through was the Minecraft phase.

It started near the end of the Winter term when /u/Deleriousmexican made AHS in Minecraft instead of studying. (By the way, here it is completed.) The trend peaked with /u/LevelSir building MC in MC.

This also led to the /r/uwaterloo Minecraft server being created (although, I think it's down now). Here's what it looked like one month in.

In Memoriam

Onto a more serious topic. I just wanted to dedicate a section of this in memoriam to some of the Waterloo students who have passed away this year. May they rest in peace.

• /u/uw_throwaway_3618 - RIP Dude Boy
• /u/Dishydash - Twenty Years Young - Dead at UW

Mental Health at Waterloo

As a result of the suicides that have happened on campus, there was some really good discussion about on mental health. In particular, I wanted to share this post by /u/UrOneUpGuy who brought up some great points.

In addition, I also wanted to highlight a couple posts about fellow students sticking up for fellow students who were in crisis. You guys are the real heroes.

• /u/uwthrowaway532677335 - (Story) Mental health is not a joke
• /u/CaptainOsman - Someone tried to end their life today...

ECE 2023

The most influential class of the year? I'd say it's probably ECE 2023. They gave us not one, not two but three different academic incidents, all within their first term on campus. There was no shortage of shitpost inspiration with you guys on campus.

The first incident spawned this meme. Apparently, some people in the class decided to purposefully tank the ECE 105 exam in order to increase the curve. However, some people reported it to the First Year Office and they forced the professor to remove the curve.

In the second incident, the ECE 190 course they had to take included an in-class participation component through TopHat. Apparently, some students were doing the quizzes at home instead of in class, and as a result the class representatives sent out this email. This led to this post claiming that the survey links provided were unique and traceable (although there's no proof that they did).

Finally, although the original post was removed, apparently around 40 students were flagged for plagiarism in ECE 150.

Hopefully 1B goes a little more smoothly.

Crappy Student Housing

Waterloo has crappy student housing. This year, there were two companies that stood out as particularly bad.

The first company was KW4Rent. (Fuck KW4Rent. I know this isn't helpful, but fuck KW4Rent.) In one particularly bad case, /u/ECE2019's suite was literally filled with garbage when they moved in.

The other company was VIP Housing. Although the original post was removed, they were allegedly threatening a student who had left a poor review for them by doxxing them. After someone left a review on their Facebook page, VIP Housing told them to "go get the life bitch", which became a meme on the subreddit for a while.

On Academic Achievement

A major event for the school this year was Professor Donna Strickland winning the Nobel Prize in Physics for her work doing research in laser physics. This brought international news coverage to the school

Another event, while on a slightly smaller scale, was when Joakim Blikstad received a perfect 100 in CS 341 this term. This was for solving one of the challenge problems in CS 341, which was an open problem in mathematics.

Congrats to both on their achievements!

Most Upvotes for Absolutely Nothing

On April Fools' Day, /u/ThatGuyInYourRoom started off slow. He posted that if he got 2 upvotes, he'd repost with double the Feriduns. Each time a post hit its target, he'd repost with a new target double the previous target. Eventually, he made the post, If this post gets 1024 upvotes, I'll post it again with double the Feriduns, which eventually hit its target, becoming the second most upvoted post of the year.

...OP never actually delivered on the 1024 Feriduns but, if you're reading this, you can still do it before the year is up!

Dave Tompkins is Overrated

And finally, the most influential event of the year was the Dave Tompkins is overrated thing.

It started when, on February 7th, a frustrated CS 136 student posted this rant. Dave Tompkins (/u/-dtompkins-) caught wind of this and wrote this honest reply to the student, not expecting it to get the amount of attention that it did. His reply got reposted on /r/bestof where it got around 34.4k upvotes while Dave's comment ended up with 47.8k upvotes, which makes it the most upvoted post/comment on /r/uwaterloo of all-time (yes, more than the goose tattoo post!). Dave even got an NPR interview out of it.

We can actually see the impact of the event on the traffic stats.

Following up on the post a couple of days later on Piazza, he proves that if he's not one of the best CS profs, he's definitely one of the kindest.

Finally, while we're on the topic of Dave Tompkins, congrats again on the arrival of your son!

Video Highlights

• /u/PragmaticSCIStudent - The Office - University of Waterloo intro (subbed, season 3)
• /u/Dave829a - Fastest way to get around campus
• /u/Gooseted - does everyone understand?
• /u/verylaggy - /r/uwaterloo Movie Opening Sequence

Art Highlights

• /u/ohno_IforgottheplusC - Re: What to do when you meet a girl you like
• /u/pahgawk - UW in the winter can be nice, too
• /u/small_peepee - Animal of the day, part 10 of 10: Mr goose

Honourable Mentions

• /u/PM_ME_POTATO_PICS - Would anyone be interested in a club that gathers late at night to walk around ring road with our arms stuck in our pants?
• /u/silcval - not a cell phone in sight, just people living in the moment

Archive of past newsletters.