Alumni Guest Blogs is a new series of blogs written by various awesome U of T alumni. We give them a rough outline of things they could write about but the rest is completely up to them.

Who is this guy?

Shawn Huynh graduated from Civil Engineering in 2004. He is involved in all sorts of competitive sports activities. We met about 8 years ago when I was a student at Kumon and he was working at the same centre that I attended. He’s probably the most laid-back person I know, including myself (and I’m quite laid-back).

Why should I read his blog?

Shawn often shares with me valuable advice. Now you get to take in a bit of his alumni wisdom about the real world, find out what U of T was like for him 4-8 years ago and discover what he’s up to these days. Enjoy!

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A good friend of mine, in her quest to obtain the ultimate answer to life, has effortlessly coerced me into writing something hopefully worthwhile through the offer of a decent meal in return. I like food.

The answer most certainly is not 42.

Truth is, I’m incapable of answering such a question. More so than that, it was never asked. I was, however enticed with a meal to elaborate further on how I never had a strong grasp of the English language (not really but let’s see where this thing goes from here). Reinforced by my English teachers in the last two years of high school, I made little effort in continuing education that would prescribe the need for extensive writing and stumbled into Civil Engineering. Like many of us, I don’t recall much of what was taught but certainly wrote a heck of a lot more than I had liked to endure. It’s inconclusive speculation that about 80% of the prospects applied for engineering trying to avoid writing any more essays. The other 20% probably applied thinking it was cool, but hadn’t a clue what they were getting themselves into and regret not choosing Psychology, or worse, Astronomy.

I never cared too much for marks; I acknowledged that I wasn’t the brightest in the class and chose to invest more time and effort into what I had enjoyed more in life. For this reason I managed to be relatively stress free and I did just the right amount of what I needed to do to get a degree. I’ll be honest; I like to brag about maintaining a very low level of stress. It beats the onset of ulcers any day of the week and not to mention, at the end of that week, your chances of landing a better job than ulcer boy are pretty good. The ultimate test isn’t climbing out of that hole that is the 90+ page exam some of the ECEs had to write (or the 25+ page Materials exam courtesy of Prof. Ruda some of the Civs and MSEs had to write); it’s the interview, and marks don’t impress. Gone are the days where we would sincerely poke fun at our Ryerson friends, for their friends may very well be deciding your salary. Comforting isn’t it? Don’t kill yourself over the marks, the cost-benefit ratio’s pretty steep, unless of course you’re self-taught and still maintain a 3.0 GPA.

I, myself, am employed with one of most well respected companies in the housing industry. I didn’t have the marks to show for it at my interview but I was never asked. Much like it was throughout my life, I don’t kill myself over work but some might suggest that I have an overdose regiment of physical activities. This is my mechanism to staving off the stress; there’s no reason to adjust that which I enjoy most.

And a side note, if something is free, take advantage of it. It must be legal and should agree with your principles and morals. Everyone’s generally happy about free stuff. Don’t accept free ass-kickings though, if you do, Ryerson’s down the street.

Looking forward to the free meal I just earned myself.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 10:03 am and is filed under Guest Blogger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.