“The Best Four Years of Your Life”, Part 1: The Journey to McGill
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Darien, a 21-year-old aspiring professional blogger. Just kidding —I’m actually just a university student who is trying to explore the idea of narrating aspects of their life and sharing their opinions, with hopes of helping out people who may find themselves in similar situations.
As I enter my last semester of undergrad, I thought it would be helpful to some people, and to myself, to take a look back at my last four years at McGill and share my university experience. Spoiler alert: it was not the best four years of my life, contrary to the popular college cliché, hence the quotes. Nevertheless, I think it’s an experience worth writing about. In Part 1, I want to start by sharing my journey to McGill; how did I get here? Why did I choose McGill? How did I feel about moving to a brand new city?
If you’re interested in learning more about the rest of my journey, follow along in this four-part series, where I try my best to give my two-cents about specific topics and share my personal experience at the “Harvard of Canada” (totally disagree with this statement, by the way).
Post-secondary Uncertainty
In my last year of high school, I was very confused about what I wanted to do in the future. All I knew at the time was what I didn’t want to do — anything relating to the sciences, and anything relating to business. This pretty much eliminates 90% of the options, so it was hard for me to find programs and schools that appealed to my interests. Growing up, I was always interested in psychology, especially seeing my cousin studying and being so passionate about it. I thought this was a safe bet because who doesn’t love learning about why humans do things?
I mostly applied to social science and humanities programs at Ontario Universities, including McMaster, Wilfried Laurier, and University of Toronto. I thought it would be fun to also apply to an out-of-province university, so I applied to the Arts faculty at McGill University, with no intention of being accepted or attending. Since I knew that a lot of friends planned on going to McMaster, I was pretty dead-set on spending my next four years there. What threw me off this path was the fact that my soon-to-be roommate decided she no longer wanted to go there anymore, and I didn’t have as much incentive to be there either, roommate-less and sad.
I knew a good friend of mine at the time had already decided that she was going to McGill, and since I had been accepted but never really looked into it, I started talking to people I knew who went there and asked them about their experience and what they thought. The general consensus was that I wouldn’t regret going there; McGill is a reputable school, in a beautiful city that I had never been to, and I would get to continue practicing my French (or so I thought). Somehow from this very minimal research, I found myself deciding that McGill was the school for me, even after I had already put the deposit down for a dorm room at McMaster. The rest is history.
Moving to a New City: Toronto to Montreal
Travelling is exciting. I love planning vacations and being able to visit places that I’ve never been to, learning about their culture and lifestyle. Moving to a brand new city for potentially four years, never having set foot there before, is a bit more scary than exciting.
I am definitely a creature of habit and sometimes have a tough time adjusting to change. Even though I knew this about myself, I made the conscious decision to accept my offer for McGill, which I knew was in Montreal, a bit over 5 hours away from my hometown, Toronto, where pretty much everyone I knew was staying. After confirming that McGill was where I wanted to go, I started looking into the residences for first years and decided that a single room at New Residence would probably best suit me, being a loner and all. In an unexpected turn of events, my ex-soon-to-be roommate from McMaster decided she wanted to go to McGill as well, and she went from my ex-soon-to-be roommate to my official roommate, for the next four years of my life (crazy, right?!). Since she decided on this change pretty late into the game, the deadline to apply for first-year residences had already passed, and we found ourselves looking for off-campus apartments or student residences.
Here’s my piece of advice: If you can, try to visit the city you’ll be moving to sometime before actually moving there, and ideally, find time to visit the school that you’ll be attending for the next few years. The first time I ever came to McGill was the week that I started my freshman year, and let me just say: overwhelming to the max. My parents and I came a few days before my lease at my new place started, so we stayed at a hotel and had a few days just to visit the area around the school and get familiar with the neighbourhood. Luckily, McGill is smack in the middle of downtown Montreal, close to pretty much any kind of food or entertainment you would need during your time here. My roommate and I ended up finding a student residence off-campus that was less than a 10 minute walk away from the main campus, but I’ll talk more about my Montreal living experience in Part 3.
Overall, moving to Montreal, essentially by myself (if we exclude the roomie), was an exciting and scary experience in itself. I’m fortunate enough to have parents who supported my decision and encouraged me to step outside of my comfort zone, even if it meant they wouldn’t be able to see their only child as often as they would like. Despite the fact that I was one of those kids who always wanted to escape their hometown, I had a really tough time adjusting to my new life away from home for pretty much the entirety of my first semester here. One thing I can say is this: it gets easier, and instead of feeling homesick, you start to have a stronger appreciation for the home and the people you no longer get to see as often, and every visit becomes more valuable.
That’s about everything I have to say regarding how I got here, but I’m excited to elaborate on my actual experience as an undergraduate student and the what behind my journey here. Read about my McGill Persona in Part 2. 🌟