I have been at McGill and in Montreal for exactly three years now, give or take a few American Thanksgivings. When my parents left after driving me up to Montreal, being in a new place really hit home. What was I doing in Canada, alone? For the first few weeks of school, I felt like I was holding my breath. Now, I’ve made my home the Tribune office, and I know the nightly janitor by name.
It’s hard to know when exactly I stopped being new here and started being the person welcoming you in a column. Getting comfortable here has been a long process, one that I think I’m only gradually undergoing. Many of you first arriving at McGill are experiencing something similar; for the first time in your life, you’re on your own. Transitioning to college is hard in general—and, in addition to the typical “college stuff” that you need to get used to, there’s a steep learning curve at McGill in particular. It’s a big school, in (what most people consider to be) a big city, and is notoriously bureaucratic and disjointed. The first time I realized how much red tape surrounded McGill was when I tried to register for courses and couldn’t figure out Minerva. This feeling came again when I emailed my advisor for help and she responded, “Please email someone else.” There was no immediate sense of community that I got.
Oddly, the impersonal experience at McGill is what I have grown to love about it. Sure, it’s tough, but it’s given me the opportunity to grow up in the best way possible: on my own. I’ve learned that if I want to get something done, the best way to do it is to get it done myself.
That said, this doesn’t mean that we’re completely on our own. Within McGill, there are many institutional and student-run organizations that can help to shrink and provide context to McGill’s big world. There are resources available to give you the help or the friendliness you need—but it’s up to you to ask. In my case, it was up me to gather up the courage to knock on the Tribune’s office door unsolicited. The independence I’ve learned at McGill isn’t a go-it-alone one, but one that’s given the confidence to begin to ask for help, to distinguish between the right and the wrong questions, and to know that if I want to do something, I need to be proactive in seeking out the next steps.
The Tribune has provided a smaller, more supportive world within McGill. At the Tribune, I’ve become a stronger writer, a more confident speaker, and hopefully more organized. All of this is to say that you can find your people or your “thing” here; but at McGill it’s incumbent upon you to take that first step.
I’m not particularly fit to give advice just because of my position at the Tribune—I have just been lucky enough to get the opportunity to share my experience with you. Though I expect I would have adjusted almost anywhere with a roof, a campus, and the offer of a degree, I feel very happy that I ended up here. It’s not for everyone, but for me, McGill’s size has offered an opportunity to learn how to do things myself, and the Tribune’s inclusiveness has afforded me the support I needed to grow in other ways. That was my experience: yours is your own, and it doesn’t matter what you do with it, as long as you know that it counts.
