Kristine in Canada: Just put yourself out there!

I really like to travel, and that is probably my main reason. I also did an exchange year during high school and I really loved it, so by the time I went home from that, I knew that I wanted to study abroad again. Also, I think I just wanted a different experience than what everyone else gets. My initial plan was just to take an exchange year from my university in Norway, but then suddenly all my friends went abroad too, so I was like, why can’t I do that?

To be honest, my first priority was to go to Australia, but I found out that it was more expensive, so then I ended up here. I also knew that I wanted to study renewable energy engineering, and there are only certain universities where you can do that. So, my options were limited to only 2 universities that KILROY offered, so I went with Carleton University.

No this is my first time actually, and I don’t really know about my thoughts. I didn’t think I was going to Canada to study in the first place, so to be honest I didn’t do any research at all before I arrived. But now that I have been here, I feel it’s quite similar to Norway in terms of climate for instance. Canada is also known for being a country with great hospitality and nice people, and it definitely is. People are SO nice here.

Yes, I don’t know anyone here from home, and I haven’t met any other Scandinavians actually. So that has also been a little bit weird but interesting on the same hand.

The thing about going without much preparation was scary, because you never know what’s going to happen and everything with the visa process was complicated. I was also wondering if I was ever going to get any friends, am I going to have a good time, how is my studies going to go – all sorts of different questions popped up. So I was a bit mixed between being excited and scared in the beginning.

Yes, I live on campus since I thought that was the smartest. Especially since I am a first year and it feels like everyone lives on campus, so that would also make it easier for me to get to know people now that I didn’t know anyone here. I found the place before arrival, so that was almost the only thing I had sorted out.

The way I approached it, was just to put myself out there. Even when you get a bit nervous, you just need to overcome that. You really just got to make yourself a little bit uncomfortable and start talking to people. But I will also say, that the first few days were quite intense because the first week, which is called Frosh Week, is where everybody get together and get paired into groups and there were activities every day the entire day, even during the night. Everything was organized by Carleton.

So the first person I met was of course my roommate. I just went into the room and was like “hi”. Pretty straight forward I would say, and we immediately bonded and started talking. But where we live we also share bathroom with our neighbor apartments so I just went in and met whoever was there. I live with 3 Canadians in the apartment, and we share a room two persons, so not much private space, but that’s okay.

I did build up some expectations, it’s impossible not to. And I would say that some of them have already been met though I have only been here for a few months. I already met a lot of cool people and that was really important before I arrived. On the other hand, I will say that university is much more work than anticipated. Especially the engineering degree I am doing can be quite a lot sometimes. I have never done so much schoolwork before, and I feel I have something to do all the time but that’s just a part of it.

In example, I go to school every day and I have long days. I try to make time in the weekends to do some stuff in my free time so I can at least experience something here. But next semester I will have classes from 8.30 in the morning till 8 in the evening, so that’s pretty heavy.

I wake up before classes, and if I have a lot to do, I will have to do some schoolwork before classes in the morning. We have a meal plan, so there’s breakfast in the cafeteria here and we can pick and choose pretty much whatever we want to. Then I go to classes, and after that I try to make sure I have all my assignments done before just chilling with my friends. In general, we chill a lot in the evenings because most people have quite a lot of schoolwork, so it’s nice just to relax in the evenings. Sometimes we also just take a stroll around the city to get a bit away from the university sphere to get our minds on something else.

In the weekends we try to avoid schoolwork so we can hang out in the city and then enjoy the evenings in bars with the other students. So yeah, that’s basically my life here so far.

I went to Niagara Falls during Thanksgiving and then we went home to my roommate’s family for a couple of days. That was pretty cool, and then I am planning to visit Toronto soon as well. I also went to Quebec for a day trip. But I really want to explore some of the nearby places, and Montreal is on my list as well just like Vancouver is. It would be such a shame to go to Canada and not explore some of the cool things in the country while I am here.

So, I am actually a few years older than most of my co-students, because in Canada they start a bit younger, so we often go to Quebec for nightclubs for instance. And I would say that they are intense and compared to Norway it’s much wilder here. There are more people and if you combine that with generally more outgoing people then it gets wilder than what I am used to. For me that’s great though, because I consider myself a social person, and I’d like to interact with everyone but the first time we went out it was a bit of shocker for me to see the difference. I am used to when you go out that you stay with the people, you’re with, but here everybody is just mingling with everybody.     

Yeah, definitely. First of all, it’s really weird to talk English all the time. I haven’t met any Scandinavian friends so far, so I speak English the whole day. Another thing is living without my parents which I need to get used to since I now need to fix everything by myself. But everything is still relatively new to me, so that’s the biggest change right now. It’s been easy to adapt, since everything is so structured with school, so I don’t have that much time to think about all the other stuff yet. But the first two weeks were pretty intense because it was Frosh Week and you walk around constantly nervous not knowing what to do, not having that many people to talk to since you still in the process of getting new friends. I have been on exchange before, so I had the advantage that I knew that those first two weeks would be hard.

Meeting new people has been the highlight so far. Luckily, everyone is pretty open here and Canadians are really nice people. Compared to Scandinavians they are very extrovert and easy to be around. And then of course it also makes it easier when everyone who’s new here are all in the same situation where they are looking for new friends and are keen on social interaction.

First, I think putting yourself out there is super important - especially in the beginning. Then I would probably also recommend that you do some research before and set some expectations before going, and I feel it’s something I should have done more. As I said, I didn’t do much research. I googled Carleton once before I went, and I would recommend to do even more research. That will make it easier especially in the beginning.

And then I would recommend that if you do sports, and you’re university have that sport, that you sign up for team. It’s a very easy entrance to meet new friends as well.

I feel that you hear so much about that university gives you more freedom, but since I am living in a dorm practically on the school, it’s not that different from high school really where I also lived on campus. But next year, we need to move out of the apartment, so I hope that it will give me more experience of actually living by myself. We’re moving to another apartment that’s not on campus, but still in the neighborhood. The winter here can get pretty bad, so we don’t want to commute that far when we’re going to school.

I feel that the talk of the town is that engineering is a really tough program. So whenever I tell people that I study engineering, they’re like “oh, good luck”. But for me I think it’s also hard because of the language. Everything is obviously in English, and you need to be prepared for that and for instance speaking Math or Physics in English is difficult for me, so I need to learn a lot of new words as well as the material at the same time, and I can assure you that it’s not the easiest terms to learn by heart.

Noooo, not at all. I have known for a long time that this is what I want to study. That is very motivating for me and I feel that it gives me an advantage. I also heard that the first year is the worst, because you need to know the basics of everything before the “real” bachelor starts in year 2 where you can specialize more. So, I am hanging in there, and as I said I have already met a lot of cool people, so I am enjoying it here.

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