Words I Learned this Year: uOttawa Frosh Edition 2016

A couple of days ago, I completed my last exam of the year, marking the end of my first year of university. I have just now realized the amount of new terms that have entered my everyday speech and terms that have a new meaning to me since last year. I’ve compiled them here:

uOttawa Lexicon

101 Week: uOttawa’s version of frosh week, where purple engineers argue with arts students about who gets paid and who gets laid. A drunken distraction from the impeding wake up call into early adulthood that is university.

24/7 Campus Cafeteria Buffet place (popularly known as “The Caf”): The most controversial and affordable place to eat on campus. Beware of bugs in food, a no bags policy that doesn’t hold them accountable for your stolen items, arguing staff members, inconsiderate, ill-mannered pricks who leave stacks of dirty dishes on tables, endless rants/debates on Facebook groups, and that one person who hogs an entire booth. Enjoy the video games, random printer, staff drama, live pasta bar, occasional Mariachi band, better food during high school tour season, and snappy comebacks from whoever runs the Food Services Twitter that appear on the TV screens. If you were a frosh in 2015: the caf sucks. If you’re a returning customer student: the caf is wayyyyy better than the one before, and ‘all first years are a bunch of entitled whiny babies’.

Academic Advisor: The person you will see 3 times during the first week of the semester to change your courses around. Or change programs. Or change institutions. Or drop out. Either way, academic advisors = change and correction.

Blackboard Learn: The virtual campus where your syllabus, class announcements, Powerpoints from the lectures (hopefully), and grades (sometimes) will be posted, and where you may have to hand in some assignments as well. The point of origin of mass e-mails from people asking for missed notes. A play on words, since blackboards are old school and this is new technology (get it *badum tsss*).

Butt of every joke: (see “Carleton University”)

Carleton University: (see “Butt of every joke”)

Coursepack: A spiral-bound textbook you buy at print shops made of photocopied texts you could probably find online.

Cumulative exam: It’s like if you were being quizzed on your life and the questions went from the exact moment you were conceived until today.

Defy the Conventional: A slogan created for a uOttawa marketing campaign that has become a punchline for anything odd/dumb/funny happening at or done by the university.

DGD (Discussion group/Groupe de Discussion)/Laboratory: The practical part of your course. One of the few times in uni when your attendance in class is tracked.

Financial Aid: Imaginary. An illusion. Something that mostly exists before you enter university and vanishes once you’re in too deep.

Exam season (stylized as “Exam SZN”): The wettest season in Ottawa, where the collective tears and sweat from stressed students engulfs the campus and social media for 3 weeks. The warmth of the summer term, however, manages to evaporate the flood before it exterminates us all (because otherwise, who would pay tuition???).

Flex Dollars: Currency you accidentally acquired when you put a 20 dollar bill in the student card loading station on the first floor of Morisset Library because you needed to print something. You thought it would let you chose how much you wanted to put in your card. It didn’t. You now find random things to print at the DocuCentre and buy 15 bags of chocolate covered pretzels from Pivik for your 3 hr Psych class because who tf else takes Flex Dollars??

Grade report (uoZone application): The webpage you spends hours staring at, dwelling on how much better your grades were in high school.

Lecture: Your 1.5 hour – 3 hour class time. A strategic period of Facebook scrolling, messaging, sleeping, assignment completing, and executing various unrelated tasks. A chunk of time you will skip or sleep through at least once in your uni career.

Midterm: One of the tests/assignments you will probably have in each course. Not actually in the middle of the term, but all of your midterms will fall around the same period to create 1-3 weeks of misery (see “Midterm Season”)

Midterm Season (stylized as “Midterm SZN”): The second wettest season in Ottawa. Characterized by the collective pooling of students’ sweat and tears as they take on their first set of big tests and assignments. Not nearly as fun as a Netflix season.

OC Transpo: The red-colored university school bus, except it’s never on time. And all the other residents of the city get on it too. And if you don’t have your bus pass or another proof of payment, you get kicked out and fined. But it’s basically the same as the yellow bus.

On Track 2018: 14 years after the O-Train started operations, OC Transpo and the City of Ottawa finally got their ish together and started construction on a much-needed light rail track running East to West. Unfortunately, that means campus station station is closed until #2018. Expect classes offered in Desmarais, Tabaret, Arts (Hamelin), Simard, Séraphin-Marion, Hagen Hall, and SITE to fill up faster.

OSAP (Ontario Student Assistance Program): “You will be my slave for the next 20 years,” said OSAP as it handed you your student loan. Occasionally, under certain conditions, OSAP shows some compassion by giving education grants.

Professor: The person teaching your lectures. A student’s death wish is addressing their professor as Mr./Mrs. instead of Dr. or Prof in an e-mail (the horrorrrrrrrrrr).

Rabaska (uoZone aplication): The place where you pick your courses and find out whether you have all your necessary credits, or if you’ll have to do another semester. The closest you’ll get to the Hunger Games, except you want them to have a spot for you in the course.

Reading: Assigned text you have to read that may or may not be addressed during the Lecture. Something you leave to the week (or hour) before the exam (or you just never do it 🤷🏿)

Reading Week: A break from the stress of school in the midst of Midterm SZN where you will not read.

SFUO (shortened version of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa): An organization whose controversial nature and collective resentment from many students beats the Caf. Has achieved the uPass, the yoga ban controversy, the management of clubs on campus, near bankruptcy, the high in demand Food Bank, 10k$ worth of unused fireworks, the discounted textbooks at Agora Bookstore, voter apathy, jobs for students, recent austerity measures that threatened said jobs during the summer term, the Foot Patrol, and it’s own watchdog/rant page on Facebook, among other things.

Spotted at uOttawa: When you see a relatable post that makes you laugh so hard you start sobbing, because those memes about your sinking GPA and inability to find motivation hit too close to home.

Sleep: Lol, what’s that? The meaning of this term will be lost on you by Midterm Season and completely foreign by Exam Season.
Statement of account (uoZone application): The sobering start of adulthood: bills. The moment reality collides with your avoidance. The page you refresh regularly, hoping a scholarship will magically appear and lessen the amount you owe for the semester.

Stripper: The fall back career most students threaten to go to when the going gets tough. Typically used in a sentence as such: “I give up! I’m gonna drop out of uni and become a stripper! I’d be making more than most recent grads anyway.”

Syllabus: The most important document of each course. It is your prof’s FAQ. “What are we learning today?” Look at the syllabus. “When’s the first midterm?” Look at the syllabus. “How much is the exam worth?” Look at the syllabus. “What chapters do we have to read for next week?”Look at the syllabus. “When are the prof’s office hours? Where is the office? What’s her/his e-mail?” LOOK. AT. THE. SYLLABUS.

T.A. (short for Teaching Assistant): The person/people who most likely write and correct your exams. May or may not attend the lectures. Will one day graduate and have the honour of not correcting the exams of the classes they’ll be teaching. The real MVPs (most of the time).

The Campus Bookstore: Home of the textbooks at full retail value, obnoxiously expensive wearable billboards university merchandise, and anything else you’re too lazy to go get elsewhere for less. Before wasting spending your money here, consider buying your textbooks used.

UCU (Univercity Center/Centre Universitaire): A building of many aliases. Flyer distribution mecca. Dance studio. Church grounds. Convention center. Filming location. Bake Sales galore, Cultural Host Family. Home to the Bookstore, the Caf, SFUO HQ & its services, two mini Timmies, a Sushi place, study spaces, Campus scams repair, the DocuCentre (cheapest place to print documents that I know of), that guy who sells cellphone covers for too much, and the poster sales. Make sure you visit the UCU at least once a day

U-Pass: A status symbol. Yes, a status symbol. That piece of plastic cost each of us 385.40$, so wear it with pride and have a little smirk on your face as you flash it to the bus driver or bus guard! And for the love of God, don’t lose it!

uoZone: Your university portal, where reality hits you left and right: the 20 unread e-mails in your uOttawa gmail, your class that starts in 20 mins, the cost of tuition, your GPA and grades, the 30 positions you applied to on the Work-Study navigator and the 0 responses you got back, the zero spots available in the course you want, and your packed exam schedule. uoZone also gives you access to handy documents such as your tax forms, request to change programs, and cancellation of registration.