Although I am an upper year and am not strictly an invitee to Imagine Day festivities, for all the (two) years I have been not a first year, I have volunteered to be an Orientations Leader for new-to-UBC students.

This is the first year that I have felt displaced from Arts One: there is a full year between me and that first year experience. However, as I told my first year students, it was the best decision I made for my first year. I am glad that they made the choice to do Arts One, and I know that it is an experience they will treasure for the rest of their university career.

This year’s theme for Imagine UBC felt a lot like the drive to build community, and I think that’s always been one of my biggest themes. As a commuter and Arts One student, the transition to university from high school meant building almost an entirely new community for myself from scratch. In such a big university, that might seem kind of paradoxical.

I find, however, that it’s not so difficult. I chose Arts One and the English Honours programs because they were small (among other reasons, obviously). I lost none of the advantages of learning at a big research university while still learning in small classrooms and forming close relationships with professors, not TA’s (wonderful though they are).

Even outside those programs, I find myself seeing people I’ve met through friends of friends, the odd social event I attended a few months ago, and even through the orientations I participated in when I was a first year.

And even beyond that, one of the coolest feelings–one that I missed out on during my own Imagine Day–is to be sitting in the pep rally with your first year class, having this almost absurd sense of belonging in connection with everyone in Thunderbird Arena: all 7,000 of them. To be yelling in unison, with the entire arena, that “we are UBC” has a magical effect on feeling like you belong.

I love my school. I’m so privileged and happy and excited to be studying in one of the best educational institutions–and one of the best communities–in the world. Officially more than halfway through my degree, it is a bittersweet thing to write that I can’t wait for third year to begin.