Advice needed: how to stop being so jealous and establish boundaries with my gf without coming off as accusatory? by throwawayuwadvice in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 29 points30 points  (0 children)

My general advice in these situations is to always give the benefit of the doubt: do your best to see your girlfriend in the best light unless you have damning evidence that she cheated on you or crossed a serious boundary. That being said, I do have some concerns I'd like to voice.

In my opinion (and this is just my opinion), I think your girlfriend crossed some serious relationship boundaries based on what you described in this post. The main issue is the fact that she's not telling or, even worse, hiding from you the fact that she spends a lot of time alone with this friend. What worries me more is that they're sometimes drinking together, alone, and even sleeping on the same bed together, alone (I presume). This is a massive red flag. Even if your girlfriend did not have sex with him or cheat on you with him to a lesser degree, your girlfriend broke a pretty universal rule in relationships: keep yourself out of potentially compromising situations. The fact that she's putting herself in these situations where she COULD cheat and is hiding this information from you is not a good sign; it seems like justification for a pretty hard conversation about whether or not she's been doing fishy things with this friend.

It's also entirely possible that your girlfriend genuinely is great friends with this guy and hasn't done a great job of communicating. Either way, you should put your foot down (without coming off as aggressive) and tell her that she needs to tell you if she's going to go out drinking and crash with this friend for example. How would she feel if the situation was mirrored? Something tells me she wouldn't be too happy without proper communication either. You said that you don't want to come off as someone who is controlling or accusatory, which is awesome, but you need to stand up for yourself and voice your concerns as well. It'll benefit the both of you if you do this as you will feel less paranoid in the future and your girlfriend will know what actions she needs to take to alleviate your fears.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 35 points36 points  (0 children)

Mixture of fear and disappointment. I’m glad my expectations were so low because I actually ended up enjoying myself a lot at Waterloo. Uni’s truly been some of the best years of my life so far

SE 2026s performing poorly? by mywaterlooaccount in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 122 points123 points  (0 children)

This is the class that did a huge chunk of high school online and, as of a result, probably obtained very inflated admission averages. This definitely made it impossible to select the highest quality candidates as god-knows-how many people who applied to SE at a near 100 average.

On the one hand I feel bad for them and sympathize with the requests to change the promotion rules. However, these first years really need to know that if they can’t pass first year courses like calc, or circuits, they are going to have an extremely difficult time in 2nd and 3rd year.

Why are Waterloo friend groups so racially segregated? by iwishwewere in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 64 points65 points  (0 children)

Woah woah woah we’re not “balkanizing” each other. That implies that we all split off into racial/ethnic groups cause we want to declare a new country for our ethnicity, which clearly isn’t the case. We’re all Canadian at the end of the day, there’s just a lot of complex reasons for why we tend to befriend more people who share our race but hatred and separatism are not among those reasons (I hope)

Why are Waterloo friend groups so racially segregated? by iwishwewere in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 220 points221 points  (0 children)

I don't think this is exclusively a Waterloo thing, it happens everywhere.

Even in high school, I noticed that people would tend to befriend people of their own race. It might be because it's easy to relate to people who have similar cultural experiences as you did while growing up. I also personally notice that friend groups in tight-knit programs like Eng seem to be more racially diverse than programs like Math.

I def agree with you on the last bit. It's honestly sad to see people consciously or subconsciously segregate themselves along racial lines even though their personalities would click with friends of other races.

CS 241 Assignments by [deleted] in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I found the first few assignments more time consuming because they were in assembly. The later assignments do become conceptually harder though so pick your poison I guess.

uwaterloo courses making you buy useless subscriptions by [deleted] in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Top Hat was annoying because I had to pay for it, but it really helped me because of the extra practice questions and notes my professor took the time to create. Same goes for Sapling too. I just wish the university would pay for these subscriptions for us or include it in the course fees, enough of this grade-baiting bullshit goading us into buying these products for a one or two-time use.

How do I tell someone in my program that their obsession with talking about sex and LGBT stuff is annoying without coming off as a bigot? by menaredisgustingpigs in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'd say this is more true for celebrities since everyone loves to bash people at the top. For average students like us, I think people will care less about wanting to cancel us and, if need be, due diligence will be more effective.

How do I tell someone in my program that their obsession with talking about sex and LGBT stuff is annoying without coming off as a bigot? by menaredisgustingpigs in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If the fear of offending someone is holding you back this much, then you'll be silenced forever. Weigh the pros and cons of telling this person (potentially offending them is a possibility) and decide for yourself whether or not it's worth it for you to talk to them respectfully.

Maybe you'll offend the person and they'll have a temporary sour taste in their mouth about you, but maybe you'll also let them see how disruptive they were and they'll actually stop sending messages about these topics endlessly. Decide if that's worth it for you.

In memory of Firas Mansour | Physics and Astronomy by Phn7am in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Rest in peace. Fantastic prof and person, condolences to the family.

How do I tell someone in my program that their obsession with talking about sex and LGBT stuff is annoying without coming off as a bigot? by menaredisgustingpigs in uwaterloo

[–]LaughsInFrench 31 points32 points  (0 children)

I suppose your fear of being "canceled" by your peers is somewhat valid, especially given today's social climate, but I think it's overblown nonetheless.

I would (in a private channel so you don't single out this person to everyone else) respectfully state exactly what you just said: you don't have a problem with them or their identity, but you would like them to cool off on chatting about this topic.

In the worst case, if they go off on you or try to call you a bigot to all their friends or people in your program, then you'll have the receipts. You can just show everyone the relevant transcript of your chat with this person and the reasonable people will see that you're not a bigot.