Featured in mathNEWS
I was recently interviewed for the student publication mathNEWS, Waterloo’s bastion of erudite thought. My interview is found in Volume 155, Issue 5, but for posterity’s sake, I’ve also included a copy of the questions and my answers below.
verdanik: much debate is had over the so-called “british accent,” with many contending that no such thing exists and is rather the generalization of many regional accents. thoughts? also, what is the best accent?
That’s definitely true for me. Most British people struggle to place my accent. I lived in Montana from ages 7–13 and in PEI from ages 13–18, so my accent is a lot weaker than it was originally. For a while I had two accents: I would use a quasi-North-American accent at middle-school/early high school and a British accent at home. Eventually, I got tired of explaining why I spoke to my parents differently and morphed them into one. My girlfriend initially was unsure if I had a British accent or if I just had a speech impediment, and as a result was worried about asking me where I was from in case it turned out to be “a weird question.”
I would be hard-pressed to call any one accent the best, but I’m a big fan of the various New York accents.
usman!: what drew you all the way to waterloo?
My parents didn’t like PEI after living there for four years and decided they were going to move back to the US after I graduated high school. So essentially I was going to be far away from my family wherever I ended up attending university (Canada or the UK were my only affordable options, with Canada being more affordable than the UK). I knew I wanted to study CS so I essentially just Googled “Best CS schools in Canada” and applied to Waterloo, UBC (Kelowna campus, not Vancouver), and Toronto. I got into all of them, and, after a bit of a laboring between UBC, which had offered me a large scholarship, and Waterloo, which hadn’t, I ended up choosing Waterloo. I figured that with co-op I’d earn the difference back (which I did), and I was enticed by Waterloo offering the advanced CS courses and not requiring chemistry as part of the degree requirements (which I think UBC did at the time).
Jeff: what’s your favourite bathroom on campus?
I have some nostalgia for the bathrooms on the 7th floor of DP. They’re not particularly nice facilities, but that was my go-to study spot throughout undergrad, so they’re familiar. Plus, with the extra distance, you’re less likely to encounter someone who’s just eaten Lazeez as compared to DC.
Quaaaaack: are you a wizard?
Being a grad student doesn’t feel particularly magical.
headphones97: how are you so energetic at 8:30 am with no coffee?
It’s only when I’m teaching; most days I wake up between 8:00 and 8:30. When I get the choice, I much prefer a 10:00 AM slot, but sessional lecturers have less influence on their time slot than continuing lecturers or professors. It helps that most of the time I’m presenting stuff I am genuinely passionate about, and that I do really enjoy public speaking. I only don’t drink coffee, because I’m saving it for when I (eventually) have a kid. New parents always talk about how tired they are, but I’m going to have a leg up, because I’ll be experiencing a real dose of caffeine for the first time!
aaQsr: did you take any of the big 3 when you were an undergrad? why/why not?
I didn’t, although they all seem very interesting, and I would have liked to take them given more time. One reason I didn’t was because Trains and Compilers have big group components, most of my undergrad friends were outside of CS, and I wanted to avoid pairing up with randoms. In addition, my 3B to 4B terms were all impacted by COVID, so Trains wouldn’t have been as feasible. The most difficult courses I took during my undergrad were CS 466 in 3B and CS 467 in 4A, and I would nominate them for a “big 5” of sorts.
aaQsr: what concept from cs 246e did you understand least, but felt like you should’ve worked harder to understand?
I try not to fault my former self for not working harder. I think he worked hard enough on the course — I was happy with my final grade, and my project partner (former mathNEWS editor unsophisticatED) and I got 100 - ε on our Vim implementation. With that being said, I struggled with some of the course concepts that utilized complicated template metaprogramming techniques. If I really wanted to grasp the material, I should have spent more time on the terminal experimenting with the language, asking myself probing questions to dig deeper, and utilizing course resources like office hours to expand my understanding. But by the time I had developed these more advanced study strategies, it was too late. At the time I was taking MATH 235 and I found it easier to spend time every day working on textbook practice problems. And although that was also a valuable use of my time, I didn’t realize that becoming an expert in a subject requires cultivating your own curiosity and exploring information that isn’t packaged neatly into digestible chunks as is done in textbooks. The ability to grind through practice problems and the ability to ask yourself meaningful questions and then find the answers are both incredibly useful skills, but I found the former to be an easier skill to develop than the latter.
aaQsr: favourite piece of british slang?
“Oi! Shut your trap you dumb bird… or else, I’ll bollocks ya!”
aaQsr: how was the transition from isa to instructor? which one do you enJoy more? are there things you did as an isa that you now realise must have annoyed your profs?
Becoming an instructor meant more responsibility, but didn’t change my fundamental approach: try to help students succeed and be a friendly face while doing so. As an ISA, I got to do far more office hours than I do now, which I enjoyed. But also my tutorials were infrequently attended; it’s not super fun teaching to half a dozen people who aren’t that engaged. I experience this much less frequently as an instructor. Every class I’ve taught has had at least half a dozen students who are fully present and asking useful questions. (If you were one such student and are reading this, THANK YOU!) Whether they’re questions extending slightly past the course material or just clarification questions to make sure I’ve properly explained myself, they’re all useful and improve the quality of a lecture substantially.
So both roles as an instructor and as an ISA have their positive and negative qualities, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed occupying both roles. And both roles are important: ISAs are often just as important in ensuring a successful course offering as the instructor and ISC are. As an ISA, I always appreciated it when the instructors I worked for acknowledged the impact of the work I was doing (Caroline Kierstead and Brad Lushman are good at this) and so, as an instructor now, I try to make sure I do the same.
I don’t think there was much that I would have done to annoy my instructors in the past. And given that this question comes from my ISA, I’ll preemptively say: you’ve done a great job so far!
terminal: how do you really feel about the se students?
I’ve only taught two cohorts of SEs and I’ve found that the atmospheres of the two groups are substantially different, so I’m not sure if I can comment in broad generalities. One thing that’s different about teaching CS 247 as compared to teaching CS 246 is that student abilities are more varied, whereas in CS 246 they’re more uniform. The really strong CS students will opt for CS 246E and so I won’t teach them, whereas in CS 247, I’ll have students who have the C++ standard seemingly memorized mixed in with students who are still struggling with pointers after forgetting the prerequisite content from CS 137 and CS 138. Pacing lectures that are engaging to both groups of people simultaneously is challenging. The only other big difference between teaching CS students and teaching SE students is that because the SE students have academic reps there is more substantial pushback against any unpopular course policies. As an instructor, navigating this can be difficult, although I imagine as a student it’s probably quite useful.
one first name haver: what are your thoughts on having two first names?
Just wait until you find out that I actually have three first names! (My middle name is Peter.)
not_a_uw_student: it’s clear that you are an amazing developer, and your past employers love you. why do a master’s instead of going into industry? has it been worth it?
That’s kind of you to say, but I’ve never felt like that amazing of a developer. I’m fairly good at building projects from a practical sense, but I’ve never been interested in solving LeetCode style problems, nor am I very fond of the practi- calities of being a good developer. The mundane things like writing good tests, writing good documentation, and writing maintainable code are all crucial to being a good developer, but I find myself hard to be motivated in these areas. I would much rather write messy, unmaintainable code that explores some new ideas or functionalities. In fact, my 2nd work term feedback stated “Ross is happy to complete tasks as assigned, but did indicate some disinterest in ‘non-glamorous’ tasks” and that I should “continue to embrace the more menial tasks” after I incessantly complained when I was asked to spec out the pricing of using different AWS services (not my finest moment).
I did a master’s because I found that I had enjoyed my co-op terms as an ISA the most and my work as a developer less so. My dream job is to become a teaching professor. But if I can’t make that work and instead I end up working in an industry role, then I’ll take that as a success too, so long as I find it more interesting than the frontend web dev work I’ve done in the past. Whether or not this degree has been “worth it” I think is hard to judge at this point in my life, but it’s been a largely enjoyable experience.
I feel lucky to have had such a good supervisor (Douglas Stebila) and I feel lucky to have had the privilege to teach during my degree (which I must give thanks to Douglas for allowing, to Dave Tompkins for taking a chance on me, and to Brad Lushman and Caroline Kierstead for advocating for me when I first started).
aaQsr: what are your plans now that you’re done with your masters?
Essentially just staying on course: I’m starting a PhD in September also in the CrySP lab here at UW.
not_a_uw_student: over your entire academic career so far, how has the workload changed? do you find it’s a linear difficulty curve from highschool to masters?
Definitely not linear for me, but I think the experience will vary from person to person. I found completing high school significantly more challenging than university, but that’s probably anomalous. I did the IB diploma in high school, because PEI high schools aren’t treated super well by university admissions due to the low standards of education there. Thankfully, the IB program was free because it had low enrollment, but as a result the course offerings were limited, forcing me to take higher-level English, History, and Biology and standard level Math, Chemistry, and French. In addition, during my grade 12 year I got very sick from undiagnosed type 1 diabetes; so I found it very difficult to simultaneously come to terms with having to manage a lifelong illness and also finish my requirements for the program, which included 15 exams in a three week period, covering two years of content, for subjects that I mostly do not possess a natural talent for. In contrast, when undergrad simply asked me to write five exams for four months of content that I (mostly) enjoyed studying, it felt like a breeze! And I had developed time management skills to succeed and the ability to get good at a variety of subjects, even those I didn’t enjoy or have a natural talent for.
A master’s is a different beast entirely. You take some courses as part of it (four for UW) but most are designed as seminars that are just trying to expose you to current research for a particular niche. The real workload comes out of doing your research for your thesis, which is going to vary depending on your supervisor. Some supervisors will crack the whip, others are much more laissez-faire. On a day-to-day basis though, what work gets done and how much of it gets done is up to you. So, if you’re the type of person who needs a lot of direction to succeed, most supervisors won’t have enough time to fill that role. On the other hand, if you have workaholic tendencies, grad school can exacerbate that because you’ll always feel like you could be doing more. It can be tricky to calibrate the work-life balance so you’re getting enough done to make progress while also not burning out, and I doubt the average grad student (myself included) has it very well- calibrated. At the end of the day, the workload depends on you and how much you want to push yourself to succeed academ- ically. In a way, I suppose that’s similar to undergrad, but I feel it more strongly now since there are less obvious deadlines/ markers like finishing assignments, finishing midterms, finishing courses, etc.