Mental Health and Experiences as an ECE Student

Author’s note: This article was originally submitted to EngSoc’s Mental Health Awareness blog. I have reproduced it below:

As a soon-to-be graduate from Computer Engineering, I want to address my experiences with mental health, and how it’s impacted me during my time here as an undergrad.

Mental health, quite frankly, isn’t a comfortable topic for people to discuss. Students often try to appear in control of their lives, being on top of the problems they face every day. The university has typically shied away from this topic, instead highlighting the achievements of its students and staff. But the recent suicide of a student back in March has upended this mentality, and suddenly there were questions being thrown around: Why is this happening? Why isn’t the administration discussing mental health? What should the university do to prevent another incident like this from occurring?

The study-work cycle

The engineering curriculum is known for being rigorous and demanding, with many hours each day being taken up by classes, labs, and tutorials. Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is a broad field, covering many topics such as circuits, software, and wireless communications. Since most students’ interests are focused on a particular topic, they often find certain topics to be more challenging than others. In addition to schoolwork, students must also balance finding a co-op job, social life, and taking care of themselves. Oftentimes there will be some compromise and one or more of those areas gets neglected.

Assignments and labs often take a significant amount of time to complete. Many hours are spent figuring out why a program threw an exception, or why a calculation produced an incorrect answer. Deadlines are tight and frequently overlap with deliverables in other courses. Final exams are also a significant source of stress as they’re almost always worth 50% or more of the final grade. Some courses lower the weighting of assignments and labs if a student does poorly on the exam, and others require students to pass the final in order to pass the course. These policies increase the stress on the students to do well on the exam, or risk failing the course.

While on co-op, students must find housing and move, learn new skills on the job, work on a PD course, and possibly write a work term report. As the co-op term ends, they need to secure housing again for the school term. This cycle of studying and then working repeats every 4 months, leaving little time for a break.

The competitive culture

Engineering is also known to be competitive. Students are generally judged based on two factors: grades, and co-op placements. At the end of each term, the faculty releases class rankings for each student based on their grades and term average. Scholarships and opportunities such as undergraduate research assistantships (URA) and exchange terms are only available to students possessing a sufficiently high average. When it comes to co-op, comparisons with peers are frequently made. Internships at a Silicon Valley based company earns respect from peers, and the notion that these internships are superior to others has become ingrained in the culture. Struggling with getting interviews is discouraging when seeing others appear to land jobs effortlessly.

The personal struggle

The transition from high school to university proved to be a difficult one. I finished 1A with a low 60s average and one failed course. The next term was no better as I ended up failing 1B and had to repeat. By the time I got to 4B, I’ve failed two terms and am graduating two years late. My cumulative average hovers in the mid 60s, and until 4A, I’ve never been above satisfactory standing academically. One term, I had a co-op job taken away a few days before I was scheduled to begin because the company’s investor pulled out at the last minute. I was unable to find another job in time and lost out on a co-op term as a result.

These experiences have taken its toll, both mentally and physically. During school terms, I suffered from frequent headaches, and test anxiety to the point where I couldn’t talk to anyone before an exam. I would often forget to eat, and had difficulty sleeping. On three occasions, I had to petition the department for exceptions to rules given my circumstances. Unfortunately, the ECE department hasn’t been very accommodating with my struggles, and even attempted to challenge my petition for a reduced course load even though I provided medical documentation explaining why I was making such a request.

I’ve attended engineering counselling to help deal with my problems, and it’s proven to be a valuable resource in my undergrad. However, a constant problem is scheduling: even with three counsellors, appointments are often booked weeks in advance, leading to a long waiting time for students who need help. This points to mental health issues being common in engineering.

Many of my peers are excited to be graduating, but right now, it’s difficult for me to say the same. While completing an engineering degree is something to be commended, I feel that it came at the cost of my mental health. The experiences I went through has made the program feel painful and frustrating, rather than rewarding. At best, it feels bittersweet.

A step in the right direction

I was motivated to share my experiences because I noticed that there was much talk about the caliber of engineering students, leading to the general belief that we are confident and intelligent. Although Waterloo engineering’s reputation is well earned, the strong focus on grades and co-op over mental health has led to students hiding their insecurities, instead of speaking about them openly. My experiences aren’t exactly what Waterloo would advertise, but that doesn’t invalidate them. Failure shouldn’t be shamed; without failure, there can be no success.

Despite my rather rough experience with ECE, there are promising signs that things are slowly starting to get better. The department is now actively soliciting feedback from students, establishing a much-needed dialogue between the two parties. One professor I spoke to acknowledged that the department should be teaching students how to actively manage their stress. Furthermore, the department now grants reduced course loads in cases where medical documentation is present, without the need for a petition. People are more openly having conversations about mental health, instead of it being treated as a taboo subject. The actions seen from the department are a step in the right direction, but there is much work to be done.

This article was inspired by “The Pressures of Success in Undergraduate Computer Science Programs” by Julia Nguyen.