ORIGIN OF UNDARFLOW

Undar began his Engineering studies in HKU in 2021, being known of his excellence in academics back in secondary school, he was quickly approached by Mandy and they later first met on 21st September when Mandy felt questioned about the Programming course.

Mandy thus became Undar's first ever Engineering student.

With Mandy's eager to learn, Undar started to teach her regularly. Eventually, Undar started to self-learn courses that Mandy took but hadn't taken himself in order to further help her surpass her academic difficulties.

Seeing Mandy's academic improvement, Undar started to become more passionate and committed in teaching.

Entering Undar's second year, he applied to become an official student tutor in HKU, teaching Computer Programming I. On 22 August, he asked his friend to find his official students through telegram and invite them to his WhatsApp group.

To his surprise, 44 students joined the WhatsApp group within 2 days. Yet, instead of being afraid of the large amount of newcomers he encountered unexpectedly, Undar saw this as an opportunity to start something big and started to brainstorm on what he could possibly achieve.

At first, Undar was clueless of what his students wanted. He prepared several Google forms to collect responses but the amount of responses were mostly unsatisfactory. He was also worried that he would accidentally embarrass himself when speaking up within his large group.

Constantly being unsure of what his students wanted, and how his image was in the eyes of them, Undar was on the edge of giving up, until he prepared a Google form asking if his students needed any support regarding their academic assignments. To his surprise, 60 students filled in the form the very day. It was when Undar realized the need of his students and decided to host more assignment support sessions in the future.

To commemorate 1 year after meeting Mandy, Undar also rebranded this platform as "Stack Undarflow" on 21st September with the hope to pass on his piece of love and care to students of the next year. Epsitha was also later known as the "Joma" of Stack Undarflow.

When Undar hosted his 2nd assignment support session, even more users filled in the form, reaching up to 40 users joining his zoom all at once at peak times. Undar then decided to breakthrough his comfort zone and hosted several interest groups during the reading week for his students. He hoped to provide a way for his students to find more friends of the same major, as well as to enhance his friendship with his students in non-academic areas, breaking the seriousness within a student-tutor relation.

At last, Undar successfully held 5 board-game sessions, 2 cycling sessions and one of the largest badminton sessions with over 25 students joining, possibly larger than some sessions held by the HKU badminton club.

By the end of the semester, the group accumulated to around 200 users, Undar continued his breakthrough and held a Python Programming study scheme, giving out a self-made mock paper for his student's practice.

He also held several large scale exam support sessions on different courses, explaining the different types of exam questions in the past papers that aren't commonly found in assignments.

After the semester ended, Undar started to think about the sustainability of the platform. He wanted to pass on the resources he made to the next few years as to help even more students, but he was quite clueless on how to achieve so.

At the start of the second semester, Undar wanted to hold similar assignment support sessions, yet he realized most of the questions were already covered in videos he made in the first semester. Therefore, he only continued to brainstorm on how to make his materials more sustainable. 

He was also busy on being the Internal Vice Chairperson of the Computer Science Association, and also finding interns for his own future, making him put less time into Stack Undarflow. Despite so, he still recorded several assignment support videos and held a calculus support session for a midterm. He also moved most of his support to Instagram as he believed it would make his resources more sustainable.

However, when Undar was preparing for an event held by the Computer Science Association on 2nd May, he accidentally trapped himself in another universe using and breaking Ulfred's machine in the CSA lab of InnoWing. He was also later kicked from CSA due to his absence in the event. Ulfred, the alternative of Undar in another Universe, was desperate knowing that his machine was broken, but after having some information on Stack Undarflow, he decided to act the role of Undar and continue Stack Undarflow as its founder, hoping to form a CSA cabinet, reallowing him access to the CSA lab and continuing on his work to return to his original universe. Ulfred also claimed his first girlfriend, Epsitha, as the new Joma of Stack Undarflow.

Ulfred continued Stack Undarflow's exam support sections in May, continued a spreadsheet database of suggested past paper answers started by Undar, and started working on this website. He also started creating non-copyright learning materials that covers the course content comprehensively, recorded videos about them and posted them to Stack Undarflow's YouTube channel. Non-academic-wise, Ulfred also planned some functions for the next semester with some of his former students. He hoped to make his platform more diverse as to attract more newcomers!

At that time, Ulfred was very dedicated and treated this platform like one of his interns. He believed that with enough hard work, what he did could still be successfully passed on to the next years of students. He also attempted to extend his scope to help new coming HKUST engineering students as well.

After 2 months of preparation, Ulfred started making posts for his platform on Instagram, making his page more presentable to the upcoming Engineering newcomers. He also started to promote his work on both Instagram and Telegram. At first, he received little success and started to doubt his plans of success, but one of his posts blew up later on and gained him 100 followers within 2 days! Being surprised with the result, Ulfred was excited with the thought that his ambitious dreams might possibly come true one day!

On 18th August, he released this website as to mark the start of a new phase in Stack Undarflow...

This semester, Ulfred made many new breakthroughs in Stack Undarflow. Throughout the semester, he hosted many assignment support sessions on Zoom, as well as many non-academic events.

In September, Ulfred first hosted several open-semester dinners in September, hoping to increase bondage among Year 1 students and Year 2 students. The event had big success with around 30 Year 1 and 10 Year 2 participants.

In October, Ulfred hosted multiple Calculus support groups to support HKU MATH1011 and MATH1851 students for their upcoming tests. He also hosted 2 group studying sessions during reading week.

In November, Ulfred hosted an Ultrapass event to celebrate the end of the semester and to wish everyone the best in their upcoming exams.

By the end of the semester, Ulfred accumulated 200 members in his Whatsapp groups. He had also formed a cabinet for the upcoming CSA session and was very happy for such acomplishments.

In December, Ulfred planned to hold several exam support sessions. On 9th December, Ulfred went to commemorate Joma's death at the Wan Chai Promade. However, one of his student stalked him that day and decided jumped into the Victoria Harbor, ending his life. Afterwards, the police also detained Ulfred for a week to investigate his student's suicide.

While Ulfred was released and he continued his exam support sessions with only minor time disruptions, the accident severely affected Stack Undarflow's reputation and his cabinet eventually parted ways with Ulfred, making him find alternative ways to re-enter the CSA lab in InnoWing.

In January, Ulfred used Undar's exchange opportunity and arrived UWaterloo, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada to research on quantum energy reversal which aids him to fix his machine in the CSA lab in InnoWing. However, he was informed that his cabinet unintentionally removed his core energy source from the CSA lab in InnoWing, leaving no other ways to fully power his machine. Knowing this, Ulfred was discouraged and decided to end Phase 1.0 of Stack Undarflow.

To have a better ending however, Ulfred still hosted several online Zoom support sessions in Canada until he formally announced the end of Phase 1.0 of Stack Undarflow on 14th February.

In April, one of Ulfred's student told him about the benefits of Stack Undarflow to students, persuading him to continue his help in Stack Undarflow. After some thought, Ulfred agreed, thinking of it as a way to pass on the love he received from Epsitha when he was taught by her.

Soon, Ulfred continued Stack Undarflow as Phase 1.5 and temporally served members. In phase 1.5, he held 2 Exam Q&A sections in May and a CS course review session. He also formed a team and decided to start Phase 2.0 of Stack Undarflow on 20th August with his team. His team also urged him to reveal the truth of Stack Undarflow to the public, in which Ulfred agreed and planned to host a detective game on 3rd August.

On 3rd August, Ulfred successfully held his Detective Game while revealing the truth of Undarflow to the public. After so, Ulfred also stopped using Undar's identity and used his own name and identity to face the world.

Soon after, Ulfred started preparing for the upcoming Engineering newcomers with his team. He also reduced his scope to only HKU students to better focus on related activities. As planned, he also announced the start of Stack Undarflow Phase 2.0 on 20th August.