I’m a numbers person. My favorite classes for as long as I can remember have been math and science. I love counting, organizing, and manipulating everyday numbers. 3, 6, 8. Those are, respectively, the number of countries I’ve lived in, the number of towns I’ve lived in, and the total number of times I have moved between towns. Despite an entire lifetime of moving, I never thought that I would end up going to university in a different country. And I did…
To be entirely honest, UBC was strictly my back-up-plan. Despite being Canadian, I always considered America my true home. But UBC and I had a lot of history – When I was a small child, my dad went to UBC for grad school. I still have vague, but fond, memories of swimming in the UBC aquatic center, living on campus in a small UBC apartment, and going to University Hill, the elementary school just on the outskirts of campus. While my parents assured me that UBC was a great school and that I would love going there, back then the idea of attending university in CANADA made me cringe; I ultimately applied just because I did have those faint memories of Vancouver and UBC, and let’s be honest, I had to appease my parents.
So why am I talking about how much I didn’t want to go to UBC? Sounds pretty bleak. But the truth is, I couldn’t be happier with where I am right now. Last April, I had two schools to choose from: one was a mere 3 hours away from my house in Illinois, and the other, UBC, was 3500 kilometers away. So why did I end up picking UBC? To me, UBC had this almost mystical appeal. I started reading more about the school, what kind of classes it offered, and all the fun ways to get involved on campus. I read about the wonderful city of Vancouver, and all it had to offer, from skiing in snow-capped mountains to exploring all the ethnic restaurants. And that’s when I started getting excited. In science classes, we always deal with uncertainty, like when we make measurements and perform experiments. Well UBC was like this giant cloud of uncertainty. Unlike the university in my home state where over 100 people from my graduating class are going to this year, I would know absolutely no one at UBC; it was almost like a clean slate, a chance for me to completely break free and discover my abilities and passions. So I took a leap of faith…
And so far, I’m absolutely loving UBC. I’ve met so many diverse, intelligent, passionate people; there’s not a single person I’ve met that hasn’t made an impact on me. And the best thing is, it’s only been a few weeks! I absolutely cannot wait for whatever lies ahead.
I guess that if there’s one point I’m trying to make, it’s that you can never plan out what’s going to happen in your life. For all the current students here, whether or not UBC was always number one on your list or not, do NOT regret your decision to come here. Obviously, you are here for a reason and you’re destined for great things here. For students considering applying, DO IT, because you’ll never know what may happen in the end. Although UBC may not have been where I wanted to go in the very beginning, I have no doubt in my mind and in my heart that I am where I need to be right now and for the next four years of my life.