It was around mid-August. The fate of my future rested in the hands of some 40-year-old examiner who’d had one too many foreign brands of coffee to stay up and rank my paper on an A-U grade scale.
The scale, dating back generations, had given students one too many heart palpitations. Basically it’s a “curve” that determines the ranking of your grade – if the curve was ‘higher’ than last year, an A grade would be relatively harder to attain this year.
It was an inevitable reality that I’d soon face. So, in the midst of my rejections and conditional offers, internationalism demanded that I exhaust the wide array of academic options available to meet my condition(s), ranging from British A-Levels testing to SAT’s, amongst other commonly unknown options.
If I survived the first stage of this academic Hunger Games, chances are I’d probably progress onwards to (drumroll please) university. Every year, millions of parents volunteer as tribute, making bittersweet sacrifices so their children have opportunities to traverse halfway across the world doused in studies and alcohol alike, for the small cost averaging a minimum of $20,000 per year.
Fast forward a month or two, I anxiously awaited the status of my condition. Refreshing my computer screen repeatedly was daunting to say the least but finally, my results appeared.
I wouldn’t say I passed with flying colours but I’d finally get to experience life outside of my comfort zone. As generic as that sounded, for the first time the airport was a place I was looking forward to.
As I headed for the airport gates, I thought of the polaroids I had jam-packed in my suitcases from a memorable night with strangers who I realized I’d never have the pleasure of meeting again.
I thought of these people who I’d met from different countries and how we’d laughed and bonded over the mix of cultures we dared to have mastered.
Our accents rolled naturally of the tongue while hummus, not to be confused for Hamas – an often brought up debate that in such an international setting, bared less than normal signs of controversy -was shared.
That night was my most cherished hangover to date and we wondered if
university would live up to similar experiences.
Though at the airport, nostalgia would have to wait as I attended to the herd of relatives accompanying me for their final goodbyes.
It’s wasn’t even a bittersweet moment, it was just awkward. My long-lost cousins who bore no significance to my life eyed the duty-free goods rather than helping with the luggage.
The goodbyes couldn’t have been longer but at least my new life awaited me.
Arriving in Toronto during the thick of the winter wasn’t ideal. I was homesick and navigating the struggles of bronchitis, apartment hunting, and gained a good 10 pounds eating at Osmow’s.
Overall, an unsettling feeling overwhelmed me every day, at least for the first few weeks. There weren’t a lot of friendly faces on campus but I suppose a lot of first-years will be finding themselves saying that.
In actuality, these problems helped me gain a sense of independence that I urgently needed. Searching for a place downtown was tedious, but it forced me to allocate my spending to cut back on take-out in order to pay for the rent rates that are sky-high.
All I can say for now is that everything is a process. Expecting everything to fall into place with a snap of a finger was unrealistic and hopeless. When I stopped dwelling on the minuscule details surrounding my university experience, everything worked itself out.
I got a job, made friends, became actively involved in university discourse and clubs, but it didn’t happen all at once. In the meantime, being patient and delving deep into my studies helped me cope.
That solution may seem daunting to some but hear me out. It’s the keeping-yourself-busy aspect that was my take-away from this idea. Hunting for jobs, places to eat (and knowing which places to avoid), meeting new people, joining clubs and truly just putting myself out there: these were my toughest as well as my best experiences to date.
Most importantly though, it’s just university, you will survive.