A New Campus: Has UTSC changed for better or for worse?
A review of what life at UTSC was like two years ago, how it is now, and what I hope will never change.
BY: MARINA MEIRELES
Being a first-year student at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) can be quite overwhelming. You keep wondering: will I make any friends? Will I fail school? Am I good enough to be here? Thinking about these things all summer long before your first drive to campus, as you’re walking to your first lecture, and then, somehow, all of that fades away when you arrive here.
Just like the trees change in the fall, campus is alive again, in a new way. Photo By: Marina Meireles // THE UNDERGROUND
After the pandemic and everything that came with it, did anything really change? Although I do believe that a lot has transformed in the past two years, I also wonder if there are things that should never change as they are just too good to lose. It got me thinking about the community I am an active member of now.
Why? Because if there’s one thing about being here, it's that no matter what, you still have a community. I was shocked to see that this was real and not just something people tell you so you apply here. I remember walking on the first day of frosh —one of the many events that happened on campus in August after almost 2 years of isolation—and questioning if I had made the right decision to come to UTSC, and if I would ever make friends. Then, I walked into a room full of people screaming chants who were competing with each other on who can shout louder. At that moment, when I was laughing with the new friends I made—note, out of nowhere—I knew that I was at the right place.
However, there was one thing that didn’t sit right with me. I unfortunately had “lost” my last two years of high school experiences due to the pandemic. I never got to experience some of my school traditions, have my family at my graduation, or have a normal graduation party. The experiences I always dreamed of living. Though that is very sad, after I arrived on campus and met so many amazing people, I realized how lucky I was to be able to attend university in a post-pandemic world. I kept wondering what it must’ve been like for people who started their university lives in 2019, 2020, and 2021. These students who barely had six months of a “normal” university experience, having to move and adjust to online classes and all the issues that came with it. I also couldn’t stop thinking about all the unrealistic expectations we put on the media-influenced “college/university experience” and how it must’ve felt like “losing” out for a large part of the “best years of their lives.” With all these questions but a lack of relative experiences, I reached out to a senior student that had to live through these changes themselves.
Days of loneliness, where our campus was unrecognizable. Photo By: Marina Meireles // THE UNDERGROUND
Esha Sharma is a fourth-year student at UTSC majoring in Public Policy Co-op, with a double minor in Economics and French. As a fourth-year student, Esha had to spend more than two years taking classes online which includes the second semester of her first year.
We talked about all things life and transformation during the past few years. A point that we touched on and one that was really interesting, was how people adapted to three stages of learning and social systems.
First, anyone and everyone who attends a university has to deal with the transition from high school to university. This transition is not only academic, but also social. The truth is that everything you thought you knew transforms: the way you study, the way you make friends, and the way you live life and how it changes right in front of you. That's hard to deal with. Esha told me that because she only lived pre-COVID in-person learning for six months, she initially didn’t make many friends, and her social life was way different from what it is now. However, Esha admitted “I miss being in my first-year.”
Esha then gave me some important advice she wished she had known when she started her “normal” university experience.
“Making friends is hard!”, Esha said, “Not impossible, but different from what we experienced during our whole lives.”
“Things won’t go your way.” A hard but truthful lesson we all had to learn for once and for all. And the best way to accept this is to, as Esha said: “You just have to deal with it.”
“Don’t compare yourself to others and work hard.” University is not for amateurs, it’s hard to fit in and find your people, but you’re here for a reason. “Don’t compare yourself to anyone because everyone has their own journey.”
After adapting to this new normal life, students like Esha had to adapt to online school. Online school was a time period for students that, despite having some positive points, was for the most part excruciating.
As we talked about the time during COVID-19, Esha told me that she really thought she was going to graduate online, showing how not knowing what could happen made many students wonder what their lives would be like in the future.
Similarly, many students had to reconsider their life choices. For example, international students had to stay back home and start this academic journey, where they would be in a different culture and country, from the home that feels like a different world. As an international student myself, I don’t know what I would’ve felt in that situation. Studying abroad goes beyond just taking a course. It is living and growing in another place. During COVID, this experience wasn’t possible.
Switching programs became a more normal practice than it was in the past. Esha explained that something she had always wanted to do was to go to Law School. But with everything going on around her, it made her reconsider that it probably wasn’t what she wanted anymore. With an overwhelming amount of uncertainty caused by COVID-19, most people had some kind of transformation in their lives. Maybe you switched your program, your job, or even started a new family. The truth is, we would have never known the current version of ourselves without COVID-19. And for some reason, this thought still haunts me at night. Not being able to know the answer to the “what ifs” in my mind makes me wonder what would’ve happened if life was still “normal.” Maybe I wouldn’t even be at UTSC today and ended up somewhere else. Who knows what could’ve happened. The thought of having a completely different life will always trigger the endless “what ifs” that make me reconsider the endless uncertainties of life.
A new, yet same, UTSC. Photo By: Marina Meireles // THE UNDERGROUND
Finally, they also had to adapt to this new transformed life on the campus we have today—everything is in-person for the first time in two years. Coming back to campus as a fourth-year student, Esha told me about some transformations she observed.
“People now seem to be more open to making friends, and campus is more alive than it ever was even compared to pre-pandemic times.” It feels like we want to live as much as we possibly can with no regrets.
For example, campus events are happening all the time. In the past month, we had clubs fair, graduate school fair, internal club events, residence events, welcome week, and everything in between. In fact, while you’re reading this article, there’s probably more than one event taking place on campus right now. This spike in events makes it possible for students to engage more on campus, and actually feel like a part of the UTSC community. Campus is finally revived for us again, and we need to take full advantage of it. We need to live again, experience new things, and make meaningful connections. Isn’t that what we wished to do for the past two years?
When I asked Esha if she wished she was starting university right now to have a complete college experience, Esha explained that she had “come to terms” that what she had experienced was good, even if it wasn’t what she expected at first. But, she wished she could erase COVID from history.”
I couldn’t agree more. As I said before, the pandemic haunts my mind with thoughts of uncertainty regarding the outcomes of who I would be without COVID existing. But, I also realized that we wouldn’t be who we are today without going through it.
“I’m still the same, but the way I think and approach life was transformed,” Esha explained after reflecting on how COVID helped her become who she is today.
FROSH revival opening ceremony, one of the many events that was in-person for the first time in two years! Photo By: Marina Meireles // THE UNDERGROUND
However, some things never change. For one, our community at UTSC. There’s no place like it anywhere else in the world, and yet we all belong here. We are all in constant transformation. Although things still need to change to reach pre-pandemic normality, UTSC still manages to feel like a home away from home. I’m sure that there are very few places in the world where we can find so many meaningful connections in the blink of an eye while also starting a new part of our lives in such a special way.
May the next years reflect new transformed ideas of what university should be like, and may we never lose what makes us special: our community.
As said in Frosh, “One team, one dream.”
