Matthew Heywood has learned a thing or two as a Camosun College student and instructional assistant, and now he’s eager to share his knowledge.
Heywood is a Physics instructional assistant at Camosun, and he also runs Heywood Academies, a tutoring business. Heywood studied Mechanical Engineering at Camosun and Engineering at UVic, and he completed several co-op job positions while studying at both institutions.
After starting at Camosun, Heywood, like many students, endured a hard transition, initially struggling in his courses and failing his first calculus test.
“I had that moment where I’m like, okay, I’m either going to stop doing this now, or if I’m gonna continue, I have to just give it 100 percent,” he says.
Heywood worked hard to catch up and do well academically, and achieved straight A+ grades and won several academic awards in his second year at Camosun. Heywood says that it’s incredibly important for students to plan their study hours.
“Especially for first-year students, you need to have your schedule organized and sorted out right at the beginning,” he says. “So people who are jumping into classes who haven’t had to study that much, if you don’t have a good structure to your schedule, it’s gonna be really hard to finish all of your assignments, study for your tests, and get enough sleep.”
Heywood says that co-op was an incredible tool in connecting his studies to his career. His first two co-op placements were at the same company, CryoLogistics Refrigeration. This was a startup that would make massive progress forward in their main project, a prototype where a person could put a palette full of frozen food into a box and that box would keep itself cold.
“That was really cool to see a product go from something that you’re thinking of in your head to an actual real-life thing that exists and is being used in the industry,” he says.
The next company Heywood did a co-op placement with was BC Transit, doing fleet engineering, working with maintenance on buses in Victoria and all over BC. After transitioning to UVic, Heywood also did a co-op at the UVic Faculty of Science Machine Shop, where he learned about the manufacturing process. But back when he was looking for his first co-op job, although Heywood was confident about his grades, was volunteering, and was customizing his resume and cover letter for each position, it wasn’t working out.
“I did all the steps that seemed like the right steps to getting a co-op job,” he says, “and I think I sent out 37 of those, and I didn’t hear back from a single one.”
His solution was to reach out personally—not just submit an application.
“I started talking to other people, like other students and teachers, and I found a teacher at Camosun that was working on a project and he needed some extra help with it,” says Heywood. “So he ended up bringing me on as a co-op student.”
Heywood says his mistake was “the belief that you can just throw out some resumes and that’s a for-sure way to get a co-op position, or any job,” something that he says just isn’t always the case.
“The reality is that it really is helpful to talk to people,” he says. “So don’t be afraid to go talk to your teachers, talk to other students, talk to anyone you know.”
Heywood’s period of teaching himself, finding success in his studies, and getting his first couple of career-relevant jobs became integral to the discovery of one of his passions: teaching and mentoring others. A year after graduating from UVic, Heywood started his own business tutoring students, which continues today.
“By the time I finished my degree at Camosun and my degree at UVic, it was over five years that I had gone to school, and I felt like there should be a way that I can take that knowledge and pass it on to other people who are coming up.”