Flying out of my comfort zone

I never imagined myself living a whole ocean away from Toronto; away from U of T, my parents and my comfort zone. In my final summer at U of T, I took a leap of faith and applied for the summer abroad program. This just happened to be the first year that they offered a psychology course and it was a topic that I was extremely interested in. Not to mention, they were offering 1.0 credit in just a month, which also made it easier for me to convince my parents to let me go to England by myself!  
Worcester College Quad!
Worcester College Quad!

9-5 Wars: My Journey from full-time student to full-time employee

I lived near campus when I was a full-time student and I still had to rush to just barely make my 10 am classes but lately, I’ve been out of bed by 6:00 am and out the door by 7:00 am. I recently started working full-time while being in school part-time two days a week. I didn't quite feel done with my undergraduate experience when I first got the notification of having completed my credits so I decided to step into the workplace and get the experience but still stay in touch with academia. Before this new position, I had never worked 9-5 every day; I have had summer jobs but all with odd shift hours or 4-6 hours per shift which made sense for me at the time. Now that I have joined the workforce, I am in complete shock of how much more my body is capable of in a full day.
Tim Hortons cup in Sargam's hand
coffee and I, what a wonderful love story

The time I slept through all the fun holidays

My entire blog post can be summed up into this:

*makes elaborate plans for Halloween*

*realizes Diwali falls on the same weekend*

*has to finish all assignments before that weekend*

*is overwhelmed with stress and feels guilty for cancelling plans with friends*

*cancels everything anyway and sleeps through Halloween*

In Which Sargam Seeks Help!

For Self-Care week, I want to share an experience that literally changed the course of my entire university career and perhaps, changed how I will live my life from now on. Okay, yeah, I’m overly dramatic usually but I’m not exaggerating here, promise. Brace yourselves.
a box of assorted cookies
PS. A lot of my self-care tips include food, in one way or another.

My Dates with Myself

I'm think I am an introvert, I probably always have been. I try not to shy away from it anymore because I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Also, I think a lot of people misunderstand what introversion means. It can mean "a shy person" but I like to think that the psychological definition of introversion is much more relevant: 

"a person characterized by concern primarily with his or her own thoughts and feelings"

This makes a lot more sense to me; I'm not a quite person because I have nothing to say or I'm scared to say it but more so because I'm taking everyone's inputs in and assessing my own thoughts first. I'm the kind of person who doesn't need to have other people around in order to feel happy, energized or active. I'm perfectly content spending a weekend with myself, just going about daily life and reading a book or two (or 10). I like listening to my music and staring into space (or simply staring into space). 

View of Huron Street from Sid Smith Lounge
Chilling in the Sid Smith Lounge and "people-watching" (a fancy term for staring into space)

The world doesn’t revolve around me?

One of the things about being a university student is that you start to say, "OH SO I'm NOT the only one who...". When I was in high school, I felt like I was the only one around who cared about the environment or that I was the only one who enjoyed classical music. With a group only 800 students in the whole school and around 200 in my grade, it really was difficult to see diversity. Not to mention, everyone in my grade came from the same neighbourhood and likely grew up there their whole lives so we tended to focus on the similarities between us and our peers while ignoring the parts of us that make us different. 

huron and harbord intersection

When I started at U of T, one of the largest and most renowned schools in Canada, and lived in the city, I truly saw the world from a diverse lens for the first time. Concepts like accessibility, citizenship status, equity and intersectionality were either not in my vocabulary radar or I hadn't thought about them on a larger scale whatsoever; I had a pretty narrow view of the world which was shaped by what was immediately around me. I also didn't use the Internet in order to keep up my grades for university. After coming to university, I started realizing my own privilege and found the ways that I could make a difference in the community using that privilege but most importantly, I found communities that eliminated any misconception I had had about being "the only one who...".

Self-Care Queen at U of T

It's only a month into school and midterms are hitting us already. In my agenda, there is this backlog of assignments and all the due dates happen to fall within the same week. It happens every year and I'm always looking for more tips on how to stay positive during this time.
this is me at 2 years old and ice-cream is still the only thing that makes me completely stress-free!
this is me at 2 years old and ice-cream is still the only thing that makes me completely stress-free!

(Barely) Imparting Senior Student Wisdom

Hello new semester! Don’t you just love the buzz around campus this time of year? You know, its that time in the semester where midterms haven’t taken over life yet, the weather is still amazing and you have a whole new batch of stationary to play with. Okay, that last one only applies to me and a handful of very cool people. It’s also that time of year where I usually make tons of new goals and try extra hard to get this whole studying thing right.  

7 Days of Summer

September brings out all sorts of feels in the student body. If you’re like me, just the anticipation of the first week of September takes out way more energy than when I’m actually living it. The only thing that can take my mind off of the anxiety/excitement is trying to enjoy my last week of freedom. Ah, August. You’re the Sunday night of summer; I hate that you’re here but at least I can use you to do the fun, summer things I promised myself I would do this time around. Let’s take a look at how I spent my last full week of August, shall we?