Given my experience in the dorms, you might be wondering why I said that my time in Canada was “the best [...] part of my degree” all those days ago. To be honest I’m not sure, except that I know it to be true. The latter half of my second year, which I spent in Britain, was a little boring but generally fine. One of my new housemates was really into baking and would leave cake in the kitchen for us all to share, that was pretty great.
My third year was again not incredibly exciting. By that time I’d already decided I was going to change discipline after graduating, so it was a matter of keeping my head down and my grades up in the face of a fairly large amount of disinterest on my part. But not being exciting can sometimes be a good thing. In fact, since in the latter half of that year all my lectures were online, I spent a pretty large chunk of it at home with my parents. It was a pretty OK year.
Canada, though, was scary. It wasn’t massively frightening after the first couple of weeks, but still, I would go to bed just a little bit afraid, and wake just a tiny bit terrified. I had never been outside of Europe before. The simple fact of being four thousand miles away from my home with only a fairly large student loan, two universities, my parents and a nearby British embassy as a safety net made the whole thing feel like a proper, exciting, dangerous adventure.
If someone were to ask me why they should go on student exchange, I’d tell them that it’s so the entire experience of education doesn’t become rote. I found a lot of university boring after going to Canada because it had become routine. I’d already done most of it at one time or another. Lectures were still interesting, pubs were still a good place to get drunk, exams were still ridiculously stressful, but none of it was new, and new experiences are the entire reason you attend university.
It’s quite possible that I “did” university wrong. I’ve heard that the nightlife around my university was very good, but frankly I went to a nightclub once and decided never to go again (my motto in life is to be willing to try anything once, but only once). I bet I could have taken part in more student societies, but I dropped out of debating society in my first year because it was run by tosspots (one of whom was already the supervisor for my block of houses, so I didn’t want to see him more than I had to). I didn’t really feel like joining a new society halfway through my second year, and by my third year I was just trying to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible so I could go back to making video games.
In Canada it felt like every day was a new challenge. Exploring bits of the island with my Australian friend, manning the “Come Study in Britain” stall at the international fayre, stopping a guy jumping out of my third floor window because he’d lost his keys (it’s a long story), designing a gender politics presentation around the panel show Would I Lie to You? When I got back to Britain my first emotion was wanting to be in Canada again, perhaps simply because it was an experience worth writing about, which is more than I can say about the rest of my degree. Go on exchange, it’s awesome.
