- Vote in this little poll on the side if you think
this will turn me into an alcoholic. (laughs)
(hip-hop music)
Hello, friends.
Welcome back to another episode of Engineer and Beer.
(beer can opens)
That's just the most perfect sound. (laughs)
Episode 21, I think.
As always, guys, this week's video
is sponsored by DevMountain.
Do you wanna learn how to make apps?
Or if you wanna learn how to make a website ...
Trust me, writing a for loop or doing
simple manipulations in Excel and in MATLAB
are also considered programming.
It's the basics of programming
and it's really not that difficult.
So just pick it up; it's a useful skill to have
and I guess it impresses people.
I don't know.
You can learn all of that with DevMountain.
If you're bored, if you wanna visit the US
and have somewhere to live and also learn to code,
you could totally go check out their program.
Do what you want, I'm not gonna pressure you.
But at the same time, you asked me about
learning to code, and I'm telling you
how you can do that.
I guess updates on my life;
I'm super busy right now.
I've been invited to a few events
that I'm gonna vlog about.
So I'm going to upload those.
You're gonna be able to follow along.
If you wanna follow along in real time,
you can follow along on Instagram, I guess.
But those are not full vlogs,
or at least I try.
I try, okay?
If you wanna criticize me,
do it in the comments. (laughs)
More updates about my life.
Some people have been asking me
if I can do a book recommendations/uni schedule
/exercise routine video.
If any of that interests you,
can you please let me know in the comments below?
Because I won't do it if y'all hate it.
I would like to know.
One more update is that we are revamping
the podcast if you saw.
So basically what we wanna do is
we're gonna continue doing what we normally do,
which was we pick a topic of the week
and we talk about it.
But we're gonna cut back from 40 minutes to just
20 minutes, and then the other 20 minutes,
what we wanna do is we wanna take calls.
So if you have a problem, if it's studies-related
or career-related or anything like that,
no problem is too small because if you're
having this problem, chances are other people
watching this are having that problem.
So just email us at podcast@steminine.com.
I'll link it below.
Just email us your problem and if we think it's
a cool problem (laughs) ...
Does that sound bad?
We'll email you back and ask you if we can
call you during the recording of the episode.
Be sure to email us if you're, I guess, interested.
Those are all of my updates.
Let's see if any of you guys asked a good question.
(hip-hop music)
The first year is the hardest.
I'm not even gonna joke about that.
I've done five years of undergrad
because my program was five years.
I did two years master's,
and I can tell you hands-down,
first year was the hardest.
Why was it the hardest?
Pretty much because I had no idea what I was doing.
You go from high school into bachelor's.
First of all, it's a completely different system.
You hear about it, you're like,
"Oh, you're in these giant lecture halls,
blah blah blah," but the difference is that,
I feel like in high school, the teachers told you
everything they wanted from you.
They're like, "Listen up, this is gonna be
on the test," or they give you so many problems.
You do so many problems and then they really
make sure that you can pass their exam.
Because I don't know so many people
that failed in high school.
The fail rate and the dropout rate in
first year engineering is way high.
They try to fail as many people as possible
in their first year.
It's really to weed out the people that can't make it.
If you're struggling, it's just because
that's the way it's designed, so don't get discouraged.
For me, I remember taking first year physics.
I remember after the first exam, I cried.
You're gonna think, "Wow, you're such a baby,
blah blah blah," but I was, honestly,
I was having a panic attack.
I was like, "I'm not smart, I can't do this,
I definitely failed that exam," etc. etc. etc.
That's what happens in first year because I had
no idea what was gonna be on the exam.
It's not like in high school where they
make you do problems.
They don't give you any of that stuff,
so you don't know what you're supposed to know.
So the hardest thing is figuring out what
the professor wants on the exam.
I would say that is the reason why
first year is hardest.
With all that being said, don't drop out
after first year if you think it's hard
and if you think you're not good enough
because of everything I just said.
And additionally, first year is not
whatever you decided to study.
So if you decided to do physical chemistry,
or if you decided to do biomedical engineering,
or if you decided to do pure mathematics,
first year has so much more crap
that you're never gonna see again. (laughs)
So really, don't get discouraged by first year.
That is the biggest advice I could give.
What other advice could I give?
Make friends.
In high school, you were a smart kid, right?
Let's just say you were one of
the smart people, okay?
Now you get accepted to this university.
You're in this university.
You're not the smart kid anymore, okay?
Let's just get that clear.
Everyone in this program is just as smart as you.
If you're on your ego boost and you think,
"Oh, this stuff is gonna be easy," it's not.
It's not gonna be easy, so throw your ego
out the window and make friends
because you're gonna need friends to help you
get through those assignments
and those late study nights.
Suggestions for making friends; join a club.
Seriously, you wanna know what club
I joined my first year?
I joined the McGill Quidditch team. (laughs)
I was a chaser and I was on the B team.
I wasn't even in the A league
because I wasn't that good.
But I made a lot of really good friends
and it makes first year way more enjoyable.
And then I even found people on the Quidditch team
that were in my program and that are still
my best friends to this day.
(hip-hop music)
Whether you're a mechanical engineer or you're
a chemist or whatever, you're probably gonna
need to use Excel
or even MATLAB to generate plots.
You can make beautiful plots in MATLAB,
and if you're in any type of science,
you're gonna need to make nice plots
if you're gonna end up doing research.
Or if you're in any kind of science,
you're gonna have data to analyze,
unless you're in theoretical work.
But let's say you're in every other stream of
science that doesn't have to do with theory.
Then you're probably gonna need to
analyze data, which requires Excel.
Excel gets significantly better if you know
how to use macros or if you know how to use VBA.
If you don't know what VBA is, it's basically
the programming language called
Visual Basic for Applications.
It's the programming language for Excel.
How do you learn how to use MATLAB and Excel?
Literally the way I learned it is that
I learned how to program in Fortran,
don't laugh, and C, not even C++. (laughs)
And with those skills, once I learned
how to program, I took that knowledge
and was able to learn other languages
by just using Google.
I would just Google the syntax.
That's also how I learned Python.
If you can just take a course in any
programming language, you'll be able to
pick up other languages super simply.
I took my Fortran/C class at school,
but I know that there's a lot of courses online
where you can learn to program.
I just found out about Coursera, or Corsra.
You can find tons of different
places to learn programming.
I also did an interview, which I will
link somewhere, with Radwa.
She works at Google, and she gave me
tons of different resources to learn to code.
So if you want that, I'll link them below
if you wanna learn to program.
You're gonna need to use programming at
one point or another, even if it's just
making plots in Excel.
So just pick it up.
It's a useful skill to have
and I guess it impresses people.
Seems like we're actually just about done,
so thank you so much for watching this week's video.
Please ask me more questions because I actually
scrolled through and couldn't find any more
that I haven't answered before.
So come up with your creative questions,
ask them to me below.
Email podcast@steminine.com if you want to
be on the podcast.
Thank you for watching.