Reddit mentions of Uni Kuru Toga Roulette Model Auto Lead Rotation 0.5mm Mechanical Pencil, Silver Body (M510171P.26)

I always use a Kuru Toga pencil for anything I can do in pencil. The lead automatically rotates in the barrel as you write so you always have a sharp point. I use the metal version, they make cheaper plastic versions which write just as nicely.

My pen of choice is pretty much any gel ink pen in black. If I can't get that, whatever else the office supply closet has (as someone else said).

Western's first year computer science courses are pretty easy, there's not much prep you need to do for them. That being said, university-level mathematics can be a pain and since it's a skill that you kinda learn for life, you could start learning university level calculus, algebra, and geometry.

Rather than prepare for academics though, I'd prepare for the challenges that are university as a whole. I'm gonna give a bunch of advice, some questionable, some maaaaybe offensive, and some tame. IMO, they're all good advice though you may have to pick and choose depending on your home situation.

• I'll start with a really questionable one off the bat. If you see yourself drinking at some point in the future (even if it's like one glass of wine for formality at a banquet), I'd recommend figuring out what level of alcohol you can take responsibly even if you're academically rigorous. FWIW, my first year roommate who maintained a high 90 average in medsci had two nights where he let loose between then and now. If your parents are chill or only school-strict, ask them to supervise you (drinking scotch over a nice movie is pretty fun). Otherwise, find a day where you can sneak to a responsible friend's place for 12-14 hours. It's better to know that you can only handle 4 shots/4 beer cans going in than to have a rough surprise of getting knocked out by 7 shots or alcohol poisoned at 9.
  
  
• If your parents don't set you up with an allowance or if they're strict about how they let you spend their money, pick up a part time job over the summer. It sucks to have money as a constraint. If you can put away even $4000, then you can put a bunch of that towards your OSAP loans AND still have some "fun" money left over. Having $500 to do whatever with in first year is amazing, after that it's somewhat marginally-diminishing, but it's better to have than have-not when your friends are haves.
  
  
• If your parents aren't on your case all summer long, then be honest and analyze your habits. Do you wake up at 11 every day? If so, I can make a bet with you that you will hate 8:30/9:30 classes. Just because you had them in high school doesn't mean you'll be disciplined enough to go to them in university. If you're (honestly) a morning person than take morning classes, but otherwise don't set yourself up for pain if you can avoid it. This will also help you figure out when your body enjoys having lunch and dinner, like for me I'm a 2 PM lunch kinda guy so that's when my breaks are nowadays. You could be similar without realizing it.
  
  
• Everyone's university experience is different, but frankly, Hollywood tends to get various aspects about the college life and people-in-general right. Watch 90s-00s acclaimed films and observe how the actors act. I found that my mannerisms were all really adapted for my local area - I was somewhat awkward in this new region-diverse campus at first. It takes most people some time to adapt, but you can get a headstart by watching non-franchise movies starring very high profile actors like George Clooney, Robert De Niro, and Tom Hanks. I believe 90s-00s films were the most honest about how people are and that's why I recommend that time slot specifically.
  
  
• I said it once, I'll say it again. Learn and review some math. It's so damn crucial to computer science and lots of other faculties if you choose to transfer/dual major. The average calculus mark is a mid 60, yet so many degrees/majors are barred if you score under 75% or 85% in calculus. Don't let yourself be in a situation where you're forced to do a 5th year because your calculus mark wasn't good enough.
  
  
• If you had no hobbies in high school, the summer is the best time to pick something up. Your summer is at least 2 months long, 60 days. If you find 2 hours a day to practice/learn some easy hobby, you'll have something to impress people with when you arrive to your dorm and you'll have something to pass the time on days where your bored and your friends all have midterms. Really easy, cheap, and impressive hobbies to pursue can be things like card tricks (and magic in general), sports like basketball or volleyball, photography (okay maybe not impressive AND cheap if your phone is over 3 years old but it's just one idea). Go search on askreddit for easy/cheap hobby threads if none of these are interesting you to you, there's a thousand suggestions on there.
  
  
• This isn't academics, but it's incredibly relevant to you since you're pursuing compsci. If you're trying to become a software engineer, you need to understand that you're going to be a tiny fish in a ginormous pond where everyone will have stuff on their resume. Since you're not at an Ivy league-tier institution nor at Waterloo, just having high grades won't cut it. It's important that you start building your resume yesterday. This is a beautiful post I saw a while ago, I've had it saved even though it's not step-by-step applicable to me. Read it, understand it, and follow it. THIS is how you get a $150K USD software engineering job at Google or Microsoft or Apple:
  
  https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/7mk6z3/guide_so_you_wanna_work_for_google/
  
  
• Develop a thick skin. If you're a libtard, watch FULL videos of Ben Shapiro explaining his points. You don't need to agree with it but you should at least be able to understand where he's coming from so you understand where your opposing peers next year will be coming from. If you're a cuckservative, look for the smart people that give outrageous dumb soundbites (your media exposes you to a lot of them) and watch full talks by those people and understand where they're coming from for the same reason. Outrage culture isn't as bad in Canada as it is in the USA, but there's still a fair number of morons on both sides of the aisle here so you'll want to prepare yourself ahead of time so they're not a surprise to you.
  
  
• Work out. If you're a fat guy, do cardio, lose some weight while building muscle. If you're a skinny guy, do cardio, gain some weight while building muscle. If you're in the middle, I'm jealous of you and still do cardio and build some muscle. If you're a girl, same thing as the last sentence but replace guy with girl. No, you won't look like Jay Cutler or Chyna after one (or even multiple) summers of lifting unless you're taking supplements, probably roids, and spending hundreds of hours a year lifting and researching nutrition/bodybuilding plans. It's good to be healthy, it's good to be fit, and it's a habit that thousands of extraordinarily successful people recommend. A summer is enough time to build a habit, a habit will turn into a discipline, and that discipline will help you spawn discipline in other subjects while making you healthy and good looking at the same time.
  
  
• There's going to be lots of times where you have trouble understanding people. Maybe your technical-writing professor has a super thick Mongolian accent. Maybe you're at a party with loud bumping music and you're trying to talk to a cute guy/girl. Or, maybe you're talking to a guy with the worst case of Scarborough mandem-talk. This won't help as much for that last case, but something that helped me with situations like this is toss on really unintelligible rap-music or soca and try your hardest to follow along with the lyrics. Eventually you'll get good at it, and likewise you'll be able to easier understand people who don't talk like you.
  
  I'll come back later to update this post; got some stuff in runescape I must attend to now. If you've got any questions, ask and I'll respond. If it's case-specific or personal, you can PM me and I'll be helpful, honest, and descriptive. And if anyone has any criticism, I'm more than happy to defend any of my suggestions.
  
  EDIT: More advice!:
  
  
• If you're coming to Western with a friend as your roommate, consider planning to throw a party early into the year. I'm not saying to host Western's next Project X themed party, but it's really easy to make friends if you throw on chill party-vibes music and invite your whole floor to come over to your room/suite. Personally I wouldn't recommend doing much that could break rez rules since you haven't established a relationship with your future RA yet (so don't have a beerpong table out and if you have drinks, be discrete and especially don't share during O-Week). I'm not advocating you do this during O-Week since it is a dry week, but when I was a soph, I did let it slip that that was the best time to meet as many of your floormates as possible ;)
  
  
• This is really a big me thing, but I spent a week in the summer looking for the pencil and now I have a pencil that I've exclusively used for anything writing. Never broken down once! You're gonna do a lot of writing so you might as well find a really comfy pencil :) I recommend the Uni Kuru Toga. They're somewhat pricy, but imo it was a great investment on my part.
  
  
• If you've spent the last 12 years studying at home, schedule 3 consecutive 8-hour day this summer to read an acclaimed college prep book. You're gonna have at least one bad week where you'll have 4 midterms when everyone else is having fun. You should know how to study in a public space since you may have to do that one day.

Korutoga by Uni. Metal body, 0.5mm lead, and probably one of the best functioning mechanical pencils around. Sharpens the lead as you write.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004OHNR0A/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1427023630&sr=8-1&keywords=koru+toga

From left to right

Kurutoga Roulette, Kurutoga Advance, Kurutoga pipe slide, Tombow Mono Graph Shaker, Zebra DelGuard, TUL 0.5mm, rOtring 500 0.5mm, rOtring 500 0.3mm

Lead and erasers

Tombow MONO-WX 3B, Pencil Neox 4B, Sakura Color Foam Eraser, Pentel Hi-polymer Block Eraser

This beautiful Uni Mechanical pencil with the "Kurutoga engine." This rotates your lead a few degrees each time you lift the pencil off the paper, which results in an awesome consistent line weight and eliminates the "broad-siding" of the lead. Paired with these fantastic leads and I haven't accidentally broken a lead while writing since September.

Non-mobile: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OHNR0A/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1427023630&sr=8-1&keywords=koru+toga

^That's ^why ^I'm ^here, ^I ^don't ^judge ^you. ^PM ^/u/xl0 ^if ^I'm ^causing ^any ^trouble. ^WUT?

Just picked this up. The body is plastic but the grip and tip are aluminium, and it seems to write well in the few days that I've used it so far. Tiny little eraser, but I normally carry a mars plastic eraser around.

I'm a Kuru Toga man myself, but yeah. I take my notes in OneNote, do plebe writing with a Uniball Vision, but take tests in pencil

I'd highly recommend getting one of the roulette Kuru Toga pencils. You can see them here
I personally recommend getting the black one over silver but it's up to you if you decide to go with these pencils.

How do you like the uni kuru toga high grade?
It's even cheaper, mostly metal and has good usability.
The lead rotation is not really that useful but doesn't get in the way either.

Amazon or Jetpens or cheaper from j-subculture.com if you don't mind waiting a few weeks

I used those Bic mechanical pencils for probably 18 years of school, and I still use Pilot G2s. But I recently got myself a nice mechanical pencil -- Uni Kuru Toga, and dang is it nice. Keeps a super consistent point, feels great to hold. Didn't save me from bombing my last midterm, but I felt way better doing it!

The only reason I ever found out about Rotring Freeway is because I was looking for a heavy metal pen with a nice color to it.

If you're looking for a really nice mech pencil, I highly recommend a [Uniball Kuru Toga] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004OHNR0A?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage)

I used this all through mechanical engineering school and I absolutely fell in love with it! It still writes today (4+yrs old) and has been abused most of its life.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004OHNR0A/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Never mind found one more screen accurate than my other reply

it's even Japanese design

My suggestion:

http://www.amazon.ca/Uni-Roulette-Rotation-Mechanical-Pencil/dp/B004OHNR0A/

This pencil will keep your lead sharp.

These are just so cute!

Write on!

I love writing letters!

This is a very fun idea.

I remember playing with fountain pens as a kid - my mom getting some old ink out that hadn't quite dried up yet, and dipping the nib in and messing about. That was decades ago.

About a month ago I bought my son a Uni Kuru Toga Roulette, for a gift as he is in Industrial Design. In order to get free shipping, I needed something more, and I noticed a Platinum Plaisir fountain pen, and my curiosity about fountain pens was re-triggered.

I've been using it at work for the last couple of weeks, to the curiosity or puzzlement of a few. While wanting to learn more about fountain pens, I found this subreddit, which has been very helpful. Just yesterday I ordered a Lamy Safari, a converter and Diamine blue/black ink after doing some starter pen research. An early birthday gift to myself.

Last weekend, I was at my parents, and I asked my mom about the fountain pens that I had played with years ago. She pulled out three old Yardley Soap boxes that contained many pens and bits of pens. They are a mix of hers, her father's and some from a neighbour that was a school teacher from the 30's to the 60's. I thought that, over time, I would photograph each of them and post them to this subreddit to both share and learn. I doubt any of them are particularly valuable, but they may be interesting to the group. There weren't any ink bottles, and all of the pens look like they need a good cleaning or some care. Before doing anything, I'll post pics and ask for suggestions on what to do with them.

My choice would be the Waterman Phileas - Medium pen and the Caran d'Ache Chromatics Vibrant Green ink. I know less about inks, so any green or orange would be fascinating.

I am hooked. This type of thing fits my personality, and the hobby isn't necessarily an expensive one, but it could be ;)

Best.