Of Citrus and Reflections

Hi there, UofT! I have a question for you. Do you know how much a polar bear weighs? …… Enough to break the ice. it’s a good thing you can’t see my face right now. It’s so much easier to crack lame jokes from behind a screen. Well, now that’s over and done with, like those cringey icebreaker games they’ll make you play during frosh week which you’ll remember for years to come, let me tell you a bit about myself: My name is Emaan and I’m going to be one of your Life @ UofT bloggers this year!

I’m going into my second year studying International Relations. I love tacos and tea, Bollywood movies and fat novels and I often tell Starbucks baristas my name is Emma just so I don’t have to deal with the name-butchering on my cup. Like 17% of U of T’s undergraduate student population, I, too, was brought up outside of Canada. I grew up in Karachi, which is the largest and most populous city of Pakistan, a sprawling metropolis that, much like Toronto, is chaotic, bustling and vibrant… but HOT. Temperatures can sometimes go up to 40 degrees Celsius ( 113 degrees Fahrenheit) like they did this summer and when I tell people from Toronto this, I usually get the same reaction as when I tell people from back home that I survived temperatures of -40 degrees Celsius this winter. (‘Oh my God, how do you LIVE?!) Luckily Toronto’s summer so far has been just right for me- not blisteringly hot but not biting cold either. For me, the warm days are the perfect time to sit back with a cool glass of mint lemonade and reflect on the time gone by.

This summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about my first year that I just finished at UofT. Coming to Toronto for the first time and leaving behind everything familiar I’d ever known was one of the scariest decisions I’ve made so far and in the first few months completely on my own, I wondered several times if I’d made the wrong choice. During those early days, I remember mistakenly attempting to pay for an iced tea with a loonie and a TTC token, thinking Tim Horton’s was some kind of fancy store that everyone kept talking about and losing my TCard several times. I kept thinking on numerous occasions that perhaps I should have played it safe and chosen somewhere closer to home. But as time went by and I started getting to know the campus and the city, making friends and enjoying my classes, I realized that I’d made the right decision after all. What I love about Toronto and U of T is that there is so much that you can do with your experience here. The giant size of our campus isn’t an obstacle- it’s a gift. With over sixty-thousand of us here at UofT, there’s the possibility of making a new friend every day, learning from all sorts of different perspectives, and with all the events happening on around campus, you’re spoiled for choice. There are luckily also countless resources at U of T to help international students adjust to life in Canada- the CIE, the Student Life Programs,the Writing Centre, the Career Centre, and even your college registrar is bound to check in from time to time to see how you’re doing! Overall, I feel like the U of T experience has made me a lot more confident, sure of myself and independent. From time to time you might still find me gazing up in doe-eyed wonder at the buildings around me but for the most part, I think I’ve adjusted quite well and at the end of the day, I can say that I’ve truly had a great first year. So that’s about as much reflection as I can get out of one glass of mint lemonade!

While I go refill, why don’t you tell me about your summer, U of T? What are you reflecting on?