Imagine if you were given an opportunity to write a letter to yourself from your first day of university, what would you say? With my third year at McGill coming to a close, I can recall a plethora of things I wish I had done differently or had a second set of eyes to help me out. Here are five pieces of advice I wish had taken more seriously:
Dip your toe in multiple ponds:
Whether it is socially or academically, trying new things can be a daunting task, but once you get over the initial reluctance, trying something new can actually be fun! Academically speaking, taking advantage of every type of course within your faculty can help you decide on the path your degree will follow. Socially speaking, university is a clean slate where you essentially get a fresh start on who you befriend and what types of people you want in your life. Think of university as though it were a dessert buffet; you can personally pick and choose the things that ultimately leave you feeling the most satisfied and fulfilled.
Utilize all accessible resources:
Something that can be easily forgotten in the chaos that is undergrad is the resources that your school provides to help you navigate your degree. Whether they be the writing centers that read and provide feedback for your essay, or guidance sessions to help you plan your degree, or even just a meeting with admin to discuss all the options at your disposal for your next 4 years – utilizing the help that is available to you is crucial to both the success of your undergrad, and your personal success.
Make time for yourself:
I remember feeling like I was on the brink of extinction because of how exhausted I was during my freshman year. Just become you refused to go out for the third time in a week and instead chose to spend the night in bed with a movie or a book does not equate to you being weak, it just makes you smarter than your other friends. University is an extremely social place, so it is important to remember to cut out pieces of time for YOU, so you don’t burn out in the process of balancing school, personal life, and your social life.
Go to the library:
For some reason during the first term of my first year, I always found myself cooped up in my residence dorm room doing work on a table that always gave me splinters. Despite the library being conveniently located, I still didn’t go because I was intimidated by the environment and the people that inhabited the environment. However, in my second term, I finally realized that my study space was not conducive to the productivity I was looking for, so I finally ventured to the library and it became a part of my everyday routine which I honestly enjoyed. Additionally, once school work starts to pick up, the library becomes a social hub and morphs into one of the only places you see your friends during the school day. Now, with the pandemic restricting campus activity, I sit here in my apartment bedroom wishing I could spend another normal day at the library, and regretting that I didn’t go as much when I had the opportunity to.
The trick about bird courses:
When I came to McGill, I was very intimidated by the “Harvard of the North” narrative, so when I was choosing my course load I simply googled ‘easiest classes at McGill’ and I enrolled in whatever caught my eye. The thing is about seemingly ‘easy’ classes i.e bird courses is that they are based on completely subjective judgements. I essentially compiled my first term with bird courses and my GPA was not as good as it could have been, because these were classes that are easy to the people who are interested in them, but not to the wide majority. The best piece of advice I would give to my first-year self is to space your ‘easy’ classes out, and take classes that genuinely interest you. Not every course deemed as a bird course will actually be easy.