King's College Circle at night in the winter

A Letter to My First-Year Self

Picture of University of Toronto sign
A beautiful photo by Parin Joshi as seen from the UofT Student Life Instagram Page!

In these photos, you look happy.

Keep trying everything you can and everything you want. There’s seemingly not a lot of time in the day but once you put yourself in whatever opportunities you want, you’ll start to find a balance between school, (work), friends, family, and extracurriculars. And you’ll do it, and you’ll be glad you did.

Mostly, let yourself be and you’ll grow a lot.

But no pressure, let yourself rest, that’s when the growing will start.

You’ll have great ups (like being an editor for a university publication and going to Ottawa to shadow a senator) but you’ll also have great downs (like adapting to the hundreds of pages of readings you’ll be assigned each week and struggling with deadlines).

And at the end of it all you can say you tried and were successful.

You found friends, a few you would grow exceptionally close to.

You will have created and forged boundaries and thus, discovered who and what was to be left behind.

You would have excelled (not even by parental standards) but by your own, and you would have created your own standards to make up your own person.

For 18 years your family and your friends and everything you watched and everything you did made up who you are. But now you learn how to take that mold and form your own sense of self, becoming more than the body people observe growing up.


Hello all!

First off, congratulations on your first complete week of the semester, you’ve made it!

Let me introduce myself, my name is Laura, and I am the Access Us Blogger! In my posts, I’ll be sharing my first-year experiences as well as how to navigate disability/accessibility needs on campus!

A little about me: I’m in my second-year double-majoring in English and Cinema Studies with a minor in Creative Expression and Society.

Often you can find me catching up on readings, writing poems when inspiration strikes at 2 am, and taking part on campus (like with my editing for Victoria's short fiction publication - Goose Fiction)! In my free time, I've been learning the guitar, journaling, and catching up with friends (most likely while watching or baking something).


Dogs in coats crossing the street
Here is one of the many reasons why campus is amazing: the dogs! They made walking across campus so much better.

I hope I can share with you what worked and what didn’t, what made my year great, and how to do it for yourself – all through my stories. So stay tuned!

Next week you’ll be hearing from me about social interaction during first-year: how to navigate it, form friendships, and how to connect with classmates (or at least, what worked best for me).
Let me know if there is anything you’d like to hear about! Just comment below 🙂


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