When people ask me what I did this summer I honestly tell them that I lived with my dentist. That sounds super awkward, right? Well, it was. But I should probably mention that my dentist also happens to be my uncle. I will probably try and blame him for any really horrible grades I receive this year since he did personally remove most, if not all of the wisdom right out of me. But, nonetheless it was a great summer.

The thing about living with a dentist is that you kind of end up going to their office a lot. I got to poke around a few times. Not in anyone’s mouth with a dental scalar, but help out with some administrative tasks. One day I was looking at one of those forms you fill out with your name, medical history, insurance info and one specific line caught my attention. It read “Occupation: ____”. Typically, young people our age write one word that starts with an ‘s’ and rhymes with ‘tudent’. It’s the safe answer. Some people think it is the polite way to say “I am unemployed”, “I am finding myself” or “I have no idea what I’m doing with my life”. But I think being a student is so much more.

Did you know that 99% of the world’s population does not have a university or college education? How lucky are we? If you think about it for the most part, all we are asked to do as students is to learn. Just learn. Learn about stuff. Take a minute and let that idea soak in. The act of learning is quite magnificent really.

Of course there are marks that count and are recorded but let us not hone in on that right now. I dare you to think about what you want out of university. Why you made the decision to come here. I have heard multiple times that it was “the thing to do after high school”. But I am not too sure how long that really lasts as motivation. I am pretty hopeful that every single person came to UBC with some kind of intention to learn. (Whether that’s learning your alcohol tolerance level is another story…) So often I hear students embarrassed that they do not know what to major in yet. Why try and restrict yourself to one area of study so soon. I challenge you to take a course in as many different faculties as you can. Because now is the time. If not now, then when? Information is so easily available at our fingertips. We have all these resources available for us to use. This may be the only time in your life where you can completely devote yourself to acquiring knowledge.

So no matter what you are interested in studying, go forth and expand your horizons. Learn outside of the box. And when I say box I mean the boxes on your class timetable. Get involved!

I encourage you to be the type of person that knows stuff about stuff, I want to be the type of person who goes to a dinner party and is able to make conversation with anyone, whether they are a cowboy, an alien or President Obama. Fill your head with knowledge. Keep questioning, keep being curious, keep learning my friends. Undergrad is going to go by fast, but for now if you’re going to focus on one thing, focus on being a student.

“Knowledge is one. Its division into subjects is a concession to human weakness.” – Sir Halford John Mackinder

[Editor’s note: Originally published in The Totem Times]