There are many things that you are told before going on exchange to McGill: “Watch out for ice rain in winter,” “try poutine,” and “be prepared for endless midterms” are just a few. Yet what they don’t tell you is what an average McGill student is like.
Before I left Scotland for Montreal no one mentioned that I should “watch out for samosa sales” or how nearly every student carries a MacBook. Is there some sort of Apple 2-for-1 deal that I don’t know about? McGill students are a baffling species to those on exchange, but perhaps not to those who have spent their entire university life in one place. So, as you dribble hot samosa chutney over the keys of an Apple Mac, please note the following things that set McGill students apart from other universities.
First up, the three things you notice sitting in any class are Macs, jars, and slim people. Why choose a Mac over a PC anyway? Not only are Macs less bang for your buck compared to your non-Mac options, but you get royally screwed whenever you want any halfway-decent Mac machine. PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customize it into oblivion. In all the places I have been to, I have never seen such a large concentration of Mac-converts.
But I guess this is forgivable, and not nearly as strange as drinking hot beverages from a glass jar. What possesses students to put something that is hot in something with negative insulation? Not only is it illogical, but makes me wonder if people are trying to send an ironic message of “Hey, don’t be so wasteful with your recyclable coffee cups.” While many reading this may be thinking “Nah, Macs aren’t for me and Tim Hortons don’t give out jars,” the majority will most likely fit the slim-trim bracket of McGill student. Seriously, why does everyone here wear blanket scarves and jogging leggings?! Whilst in a city with winters colder than former prime minister Stephen Harper’s soul, a huge sheet may be practical, what is so undesirable about a normal scarf? As for the jogging leggings I can only imagine they’re worn in a readiness to get to the nearest samosa sale. As someone who studied in a Scottish city where you can genuinely go into any fast-food place with any food and they’ll stick it in the deep-fat-fryer, this is both unsettling and unnatural.
I will admit, there are less annoying things about the average McGill student. One is the out-of-season Sangria Wednesdays. I love the fact that even though it may be 20 below freezing, people still enjoy a drink invented by Spaniards because red wine didn’t cut it when you can fry an egg on the road. Or the irrational love of samosas which someone has yet to provide a reasonable explanation for. Every day I receive a new Facebook notification for a samosa sale. It is a well-known fact that when strolling around campus you are always 100 metres away from a hot, spicy Indian snack. Personally, I think this is brilliant. While discussing why samosas are such a big deal, the best theories I’ve heard are: “It’s the only thing propping up on-campus charities,” “all the proceeds are stemming the current education cuts to departments,” and easily my favourite: “The Hells Angels are diversifying before weed becomes legal.”
These are just a few of the reasons that place McGill students as unique to the global student population. And after several months here, these initial peculiarities are starting to look like the norm. I can only hope that by the end of my time on exchange here, I do not come back totally assimilated. Otherwise, I may receive strange looks if I were to walk into my local fish & chip shop in Glasgow, carrying a steaming jar of espresso and asking for my samosa to be deep-fried.
David is an exchange student hailing from Glasgow university and struggling with the never-ending workload of McGill. He also claims to have seen the Loch Ness monster.