NSR speech

Kind of want to write something, but it'd take a while to gather enough thoughts to put something up for mentorship, so that'll come a little later. Don't really want to cheap out and post random lyrics either, so I guess I'll just put this up.

---
New Student Reception: Speech (Sept 11, 2006)

What is fellowship? The early fellowship was simple. Acts 2 states that "every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts...[breaking] bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people." It was basically a group of Christians that eat, praised and helped each other out. 2000 years later, the world is a bit different than what it used to be, but the very concept of fellowship is very much still the same.

I started applying to the University of Waterloo back in January of 2004. Didn't really try that hard, since I didn't really think it'd be worth it to go to the other side of the country. Kind of did it to please my parents. You know how it is. Being typical Calgarian, my first choice was the University of Alberta. Just far away that my parents can't nag, but close enough to return home when I wanted to. One sunny afternoon in the middle of March, I got a random postcard from UW's Engineering, telling me I could continue my application. A week before the official deadline.

By the time I had gathered everything I needed for the application, it was already 5 weeks late. My marks was a good 5% below the acceptance standard. My Chemistry teacher, who wrote my reference letter, knew I was slacking off in her class and could've easily given me a bad reference. My AIF was only half completed. A few miscommunication emails flew between me and the First Year Office. And yet, through all that...I've just finished my first day of lectures, in 2A Electrical Engineering.

For some reason, I was called out to this university, 1500 miles from home. Before leaving, I asked all the university students I knew the typical questions. How is engineering? What's university like? What about co-op? Is resident food really that bad? I got really mixed answers. Some people tell me they're having the time of their life. Others tell me it's not cool. They all agree res food really is that bad. By the way, don't eat the Chinese food at V1. You'll thank me later.

Fellowship, like school, is really what you make of it. If you put the time and effort in it, you'll be able to walk away from this school with a little more than you came in with. A graduate from last year once said "[Fellowship] needs you to ask, to seek, to knock, for it to have any meaning in your life." And I've found that to be very true.

What you do with the next four, five years here at Waterloo is really up to you. You could run for your society government. You could participate in the juggling club. You could join the engineering teams and help build things like the Midnight Sun solar car. You could be Edcom. You could knock on the doors of any of the six fellowships that are represented here today.

Each of the upperyears standing in this room were all once a frosh. We've all been homesick, or got nailed with a few bad midterms. We've all had long nights, and I'm pretty sure we've all gained weight from Frosh 15, even if we're too proud to admit it. Each of us has a story to tell. My hope is that next year, it would be one of you standing up here, delivering this speech to the new incoming class. We're all here for a reason. I might not know what that reason is. You might not. I'm pretty sure most, if not all, of the upperyears in this room are as clueless as you are! But He knows. And that's what counts.

There will be hard crunch times sometimes, but you know, that's university. We're all in this together. And all you need to do is to ask. To seek. To knock. Welcome to the University of Waterloo.