Date of Entry: August 14th, 2019Within the early months of Grade 12, I said firmly to my parents that I was going to leave — to venture not only outside of home, but outside of the city, outside of the province, and perhaps even outside the country. My reasoning was not that I’d thought the University of Manitoba was a bad school or that Winnipeg was a bad city, but rather, that I wanted my life to change. To finally step off the convocation stage, leaving both high school and childhood behind, was my monumental gesture to embark on a completely new chapter of my life, filled with new people and new places.
From September to January, I had applied to a total of seven different universities across Canada and the United States. I’d written the ACT, the Common Application, scholarship essays, and supplementary applications. The process was both rigorous and draining, but I was determined.
In the first few weeks of May, amidst AP exam season, I was casually notified of my McMaster acceptance. At that moment my plan had suddenly diverted from the quaint university town of Kingston to Hamilton — the steel city that I’d apparently drove through before but never cared to remember. When I’d joked with a teacher that I was headed for “Winnipeg 2.0,” he simply chuckled and responded, “More like Winnipeg 0.2.”
In other words, I had no idea what to expect anymore. It was exciting, it was disappointing. A program I hardly imagined myself in, a city full of strangers. “I going to McMaster!” was constantly echoed in my head with, “I’m going to McMaster?”
Summer flew by, and as the days neared the end of August, I was more than ready to move. The exciting feeling had won over me. Two large cardboard boxes, jumbo vacuum bags of clothing, packs of shoes, and three suitcases sardined into the trunk of my dad’s SUV. The US border patrols looked suspiciously at our loaded vehicle before we explained our little American expedition to Hamilton. For a week we drove over 30 hours through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan, before finding ourselves amid the riotous atmosphere of Move-In Day.
And that was when my new chapter had finally begun — coming to life before my eyes in the form of Welcome Week reps, a dorm room, a cafeteria, and a football stadium.
It has been nearly a year since that moment, when I saw my family drive away into the distance and my alone self get absorbed into the university atmosphere. I felt big, I felt small. I could feel freedom beneath my feet and anxiety atop my head.
I walked in not knowing anyone. In the past I’d always told myself I was bad at remembering names or recognizing faces, but I made it clear to myself that that was going to change. And it did. By the end of the week I had made new friends, and was able to match faces to a surprising number of names. Yet I still had a long way to go.
In the year that had passed since then, I don’t think there could have been any experience that more resembled a “new chapter of my life.” So much had changed, between weeks and between months. And now, in hindsight, I think I am finally coming to terms with and making some sense out of it all.
So as a tribute to first year, and a warm welcome to second year, I have compiled a list of seven miscellaneous things I'd learned while reflecting on the past eleven months:
1 | Change, but with yourself in mind.
This is the first lesson I’d learned looking back, and for good reason. There were a handful of moments in first year where I afterwards felt a little uncomfortable, overwhelmed, or confused what to do next.
Entering university was a strange time for me, because it meant being able to experiment and do almost whatever I wanted without others holding me back. I didn’t know many people, and they didn’t know me. By being so eagerly open to everything and feeding rapidly off of every action, I soon felt like I was not having the time and energy to properly reflect, developed a few pointless habits, and every so often succumbed to negative pressure.
Who am I, really? That’s not a question worth a definitive answer. Of course my self is subject to inevitable change. My self wants to take intellectual, creative, and athletic risks, to discover what they are capable of. But that change should, nonetheless, be both gradual and careful.
To all of a sudden lose touch with my usual self midway through the year was an alert to regain focus and ponder what truly mattered to me — what made me feel aligned with my values, and what made me feel happy. So I ordered a few books off of Amazon, spent my reading week (literally) reading, and kickstarted this blog.
All my life, I had reassured myself that I was living ever-so deliberately — until first year. I didn’t realize how easy it was to get tangled in my environment, and to surrender reason to impulse. So as a note to self, take it slow. Don’t get too excited, but don’t be too afraid either.
2 | Be independent in your decisions.
FOMO is real — especially when it involves a two-option choice of being alone or not alone. As a fresh Manitoban implant, I wasn’t ready to face a type of loneliness void of family. Regardless of how boring or meaningless some gathering was, I often chose to go for the sake of being there. And on the flip side of the coin, if none of my friends wanted to go to an event I was interested in, I often ended up not going.
Honestly, I really wish that I had taken more initiative in combating the fear of being alone when others weren’t, rather than surrender to it. There is nothing wrong with venturing into the unknown with no one to hold your hand, because, in the end, the only person who is going to benefit or lose from that experience is yourself.
3 | Share what is meaningful to you.
Especially throughout high school, I’d had a rather negative impression of social media. Being the nihilistic-sounding techno-geek I was (and, frankly, still kind of am), I’d read enough about unwarranted data collection, ultra-capitalist algorithms, and how platforms like Instagram and Facebook were taking a radical toll on people’s mental health.
Then, coming into university, I suppose I had a mini epiphany. I thought back to my love of books and photography — the ways in which they had brought life to my everyday experience. And so I began viewing social media, particularly Instagram, as sort of my technological equivalent of a journal. It became my own storybook, a means of capturing the organic moments, and embedding them into my own digital space. Only, it was a storybook void of meaning, of context. It was just bad-quality videos of nightclubs.
I wish that in first year I’d chosen to share more personally meaningful things — my favourite moments, family, books, art, food, closest friends— because I’d realized how distant my online identity had drifted from my real-life identity. I wish I’d written more thoughtful captions, written more on this blog. It was almost a feeling of betrayal knowing that whomever I came off as to the online world, the world of behind-the-screen followers and acquaintances, had become whom I was in real life to most people.
4 | Remember what you value, and live by it.
This fourth lesson I'd learned is somewhat analogous to the first, except it more focuses on actively identifying personal values, and knowing how to create a philosophy to live by.
In Grade 11, I’d done this quick exercise where we were given a stack of cards, with various personal values written on them such as “family,” “wealth,” or “freedom.” Then through several rounds of sorting and elimination, we’d narrow down on the four values that were most important to us. Mine were “open-mindedness,” “health,” “love,” and “innovation.”
First year sometimes hit me with a subconscious feeling of stress. There were so many times when I’d let down my health, my relationships, my creativity. There were nights when I slept at 2 and woke up at 7, and ate whole boxes of Oatmeal Crisp cereal in single sittings. There were weeks when I didn’t call my mom. And there were days when I sat at my laptop binge-watching brainless YouTube videos instead of working on my abandoned art piece.
Taking some time to remember and readjust according to our values is simple — they are neither definitive goals nor a matter of “shoulds” and “woulds.” They are our self-made guidelines for living with both consistency and satisfaction, because no matter how well we handle chaos, it’s always a good idea to maintain a little order.
5 | Invest in and cherish your education.
First year is called first year for a reason. For me, it was the first time leaving my family, washing my own bed sheets, and not returning home each evening to a freshly prepared meal. It was the first time having an inconsistent schedule everyday, and being physically unable to wake up earlier than 8 AM (how tragic). Between life and school, life seemed to always get in the way.
But why had I moved to Hamilton in the first place? Because I moved for an education. The tuition I had paid at the beginning of the year was in fact an investment into a yearlong journey of learning, of growing, of questioning. It was supposed to be a test of my academic rigor, a challenge for my curiosity and self-discipline, and an opportunity to exchange ideas with great minds. And yet, because I focused so much of my energy towards managing my new lifestyle and simply achieving the final grade, I’d often ended up slumped at the back of the lecture hall, half-asleep, memorizing notes from another course, and not making an effort to immerse myself in the present. I didn’t get to know most of my professors — I didn’t take in their spur-of-the-moment jokes, their thoughtful commentary. To take advantage of or cherish one’s education is something that is not indicative on a transcript, but I felt it weighing me down towards the end of the year.
This lingers in my mind as my worst failure, but without it, I wouldn’t have had this subtle revelation. I wouldn’t be writing this piece.
6 | Hugs over drugs.
For anyone who follows Instagram party accounts or visits campuses on Homecoming Day, you know how rowdy college students can get — chugging full mickeys of vodka, hotboxing friends' cars, and receiving indulgent treatments for bad cases of the munchies. For a first year, that stuff seemed outrageous, but also dangerously tempting. The university party life had romanticized the apparent thrill factor.
On campuses, alcohol is a universal traded commodity — sitting in cheap red solo cups, and making crowds go berserk. Alcohol is essentially the broke college student’s most accessible and versatile drug. It is a direct gateway to being a more friendly, outspoken, and risk-taking version of yourself — a version of yourself that somehow overcomes anxiety and instead exuberates confidence. (It is also the drug that tastes like it came out of a chemistry back-shelf, and the one that gives nasty headaches the next morning.)
I obviously can't deny I drank during first year. I'd encouraged the onset of effects. I marvelled at the way my consciousness shifted. I'd braced myself each time and reluctantly allowed the terrible taste linger at the back of my throat. But I did it anyways. And from these experiences, I over time found that a major flaw in the relationship between university students and alcohol is that it has sort of become this obligatory socializing substance that is always better overdone.
If there is anything I’d now do differently regarding alcohol, it would be to enforce moderation, and to only welcome alcohol in situations where everyone involved felt both safe and with people they trusted. The ecstatic laughter and affection that stems from a few too many drinks isn’t real amongst acquaintances; when the effects fade away, often strangers reemerge. The friendly relationships cease to be remembered, let alone exist.
There is a gross misconception in first year that alcohol is necessary to have fun. Surely, it can help a lot with the dance moves (even so, mine were pretty terrible). But what matters a billion times more are the people you are having it with, your overall health and energy, and your self-control.
7 | Take care of yourself.
The dreaded Freshman 15. I never dreamt that it would’ve hit me, but it did.
Although I’d doggedly managed to reverse the damage this summer, the lesson yet remained: take care of yourself. Break a sweat. Get in those sleep hours. You really are what you eat.
Throughout high school, I had joined seven sports teams and went to the fitness center nearly every weekday. Having woken up at 6:30 AM everyday, I had plenty of time to prepare myself a breakfast as sophisticated as oatmeal with fruit, yogurt, and nuts. My school cafeteria had made an effort to serve healthy meals, always containing a protein, starch, and serving of vegetables. And my dinners were almost always home-cooked.
When I entered university, kitchenless and armed with only a mini-fridge and meal card, I was oblivious to the downward spiral of my eating habits. Regardless of how much I continued to work out, the extra shawarma plates and 5-hour nights took a toll on me. Pizzas gradually became a staple. I frequented Shopper’s Drug Mart for snacks to unintentionally devour in a sitting, and sometimes caught myself red-handed eating granola bars at 1 AM — when I should’ve been snoozing.
There are two main reasons for what had happened:
First, I did not treat my eating and sleeping habits seriously — as if they were an integral part of my daily routine and well-being. With so much freedom to do whatever I wanted, go wherever I wanted, and have an entire afternoon off of classes, I many times returned to my room only to find the entire bag of chips empty. I acted as if I had no circadian rhythm — that I could just wake up at 11 the next morning because classes weren’t till 2:30. Looking back, the lesson is clear: to more or less be mindful of when I am eating or sleeping, to understand why I feel the urge to stay up late or binge, and to listen to my body.
Secondly, I was reenacting the typical nocturnal stress-eater — the person who felt immediate solace digging into cafeteria fries before closing. The lesson here is to recognize when my cravings are stress-induced, to brush my teeth and turn off the lights when it’s late, or to immediately search for alternative coping mechanisms.
When we talk about what we wished we had done in the past, I'd noticed that there’s not enough talk about how we could’ve recovered better from burnouts, eaten more whole foods, treated our stress acne, and so forth. We talk about better study strategies, we talk about doing more extracurriculars. But could we have accomplished all such things to the best of our ability, if we were not tending to our physical and mental health?
First year went by both smoothly and roughly. It went by slow, it went by fast. It was both the experience I craved, and the experience I dreaded. But regardless of the ups and downs and how they may level out, my first year experience had become an integral part of me. It made me realize countless new things about myself, challenged me to be independent, and forced me to learn from my mistakes the tough way. If anything, a turbulent nine months of experience had weathered me into a distinctly more mature version of myself.
And for that, I'm glad. Thankful, even.
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