__(Undergrad advisor)__
I apologize for the multiple e-mails. I promise this will be the last one until you respond.
I used to be that "grade-centric" person that you mentioned when I was in high-school, and I strove to change in when I entered UBC. After spending 2.5 years at this school, I realized that my true passion consists of a mix of transportation engineering / planning, applied math, and economics. I can promise you that nobody forces me to do any of this. I decided to combine them into my degree because I am truly fascinated by the interactions of these fields, and how powerful this combination is in the contemporary world.
I originally planned to spread these out to a 6-year degree, but unfortunately face constrained by family financial conditions to shorten it to 5 years. (Also, one of my employers has repetitively exclaimed that, "With your skills, if you can stay here full-time, we'll hire you on the spot!"
Here are some of the stuff that I've done (mostly) during last year at UBC:
I helped with some web designs. The most known ones are:
Maintaining the CSCE website and introducing better designed pages: http://ubccsce.ca/
Coding ~70% of the front-end user interface of the Ubyssey's 2017 AMS Election Vote compass: https://www.ubyssey.
I helped organizing some events:
Like the industry nights for CSCE and ITE Student Chapters. I am also one of the designated photographers at ITE events.
Besides from helping to organize these events, I myself attend many of them to network, talk to people and have fun. The following is my team and I winning YPT (Young Professionals in Transportation) Vancouver's Annual Transportation Bowl in 2016. (Unfortunately my team only got 2nd place in 2017.)
Also, I made quite a few regional transit / transportation advocates and proposal recommendations on my own time, in the Broadway Subway Project, North-east sector transit network improvement plan, etc.
The most recent and significant one being the discontinuation of the #480, for which I submitted a 16-page, 8000-word report with recommendations to TransLink, and a condense version to the Ubyssey (which can be found here: https://www.ubyssey.ca/
In fact, I'm taking this advocate position to the AMS starting this March, as their first Officer of Council for Commuters.
The article made use of a program I wrote in second year that extracts, processes and visualizes massive amount of Google Maps travel times predictions, which was highly praised by both my previous and current employer. I like computation problem-solving, especially when I can co-operate it with my own discipline - Civil Engineering. In CIVL 316 (Hydraulics)'s final project, when asked to use the step-method to do backwater analysis, instead of using an excel spreadsheet and manually repeat some processes, I spent some great time with my group members designing a solution entirely in Python.
I am listing all these not to "show-off how smart I am", but to illustrate that I am doing what I want to do out of enthusiasm, and not out of grades. I know people who devote all their time studying five courses and get better GPA than I do. If grades were my ultermost concern, I would have done the same thing without pursuing my minor. I sincerely find myself intrigued by the courses that I am going to take. I want to learn the materials, not to study for grades.
I can completely understand your concern regarding course load, and am extremely grateful that you care for my well-being and future. I had the same worrying and has fallen to be over-stressed in the past as well, which is why I "de-stress" by cycling, going to the gym 3 times a week, taking pictures outdoors once in a while, etc. I also had some truly amazing friends at UBC and all across Canada that I am very grateful for.
At last, I want to thank you again, __(Undergrad advisor)__, for making me think deeply about what I have achieved at UBC so far, and what I want to accomplish in the rest of my life-time. The decision to register for CIVL 441 is yours, and I will respect that without a doubt.
Regards,
Kevin Wong
