At the very beginning, I would like to thank Shantou University Business School and Li Ka Shing Foundation for the precious opportunity to study at McGill University as a visiting student. Frankly speaking, that STU has all these exchange programs is one of the reasons that I applied for it after the college entrance examinations. All the efforts that I made in the past finally paid off, knowing that I could achieve one of my biggest goals in STU.
I arrived in Montreal on January 10th. Honestly, fueled by the excitement and endless imaginations to the life in the future four months, I didn’t feel even a bit of the coldness though it was snowing. Montreal is quite an important city for Canada. Nevertheless, I didn’t see a lot of citizens on different public transportations or on the streets. Perhaps the freezing wind and the flying snow did make a significant contribution to this.
The apartment that I stayed in locates just at the downtown area, costing me only ten-ish minutes to walk to the McGIll campus. Basically, the residents are students from the three universities in Montreal, and quite a part of them are visiting students like me. For example, two of my roommates, Wilson from the USA and Rasmus from Finland are both visiting students at Concordia University. Mike, my Canadian roommate, is a student of McGill University. School started on January 7th, so I was actually the last one to check in. Anyway, they made me feel warm by welcoming me. I did like them as roommates.
On the next day, I went to the downtown campus of McGill immediately. Most of the buildings are of classic and traditional styles. Some of them have a really long history. I heard that, in order to preserve one of the teaching building, staffs and students would have to take off their own shoes and take on the slippers at the front gate. In fact, other buildings around McGill’s campus are also quite classic, which helps buildings in McGIll to fit in the environment of the downtown area.
I registered for four courses in McGill, and they are Management Accounting, The Development of Accounting Thoughts, Principle of Auditing, and Management in Global Context. All of them are courses of Desautels Faculty of Management, so they are taught in the Bronfman Building. Therefore, I didn’t have to run around the campus even if I had to switch from one course to the other in ten minutes.
For the spring semester, there are thirteen weeks for lecturing and two weeks for final exams. There will also be one week called “Spring Break” after the mid-term. Compared with STU, it seems that they have shorter time for lecturing, however, the content for one course is even more than that of STU, resulting that students have to take in more knowledge in one week. In addition to this, there are a plenty of reading materials after classes, so if one wants to catch up with the professors, one would have to spend a great deal of time reading all of them. I didn’t feel that I could shirk because I am not a native speaker of English, thinking that it was normal for me not to be able to finish all the materials. Several friends of me in McGill are international students. English is not their mother tongue either. Nevertheless, they can finish all the reading assignments. Thus, I asked myself to finish these assignments on time. Honestly, reading all those materials did benefit me a lot in classes. Since there are a large amount of professors from all over the world, it would be challenging to understand what they are saying without reading the materials before classes.
In-class participation is also a significant part of McGill’s teaching and learning experience and it will reflect on students’ transcripts in the form of grades for participation. Theses grades are made up with both attendance and bonus for in-class discussions. To me, this arrangement shows that McGill wants its students to not only show up in classes but also get involved in classes. With the help of limited time for one class, students would have to “fight” for the chance to answer the question occasionally. To be honest, this was the part that I suffered the most. I needed longer time to understand the question, come up with my own answers and then I would have to translate them into English. I’ve never tried classes like this, so it cost me several weeks to get used to this “McGill style”.
Three of the four selected courses required me to finish at least one group assignments. Five group assignments were required for Management in Global Context. McGill is one of the top universities in the world, but this doesn’t mean that there are no bad students in it. One of my team members did show the sign of social loafing. All in all, group assignments did teach me a lot. It did not only give me the opportunity to experience case analyses and report writing in “McGill Style” but also enriched my ability to cooperate with people with different cultural background.
Thanks to the excellent business and English training that I received in STU, I, as an accounting student, am so grateful especially to all professors of accounting major who helped me establish a strong base of knowledge of accounting and corporate finance. It enabled me to stand up and take the financial part for the final project confidently. I still remember that at the last class for Management in Global context, our group finished the presentation. That was a export plan for Manuka honey from Australia to China. Professor William said a bunch of “good” when he commented on our project, as well as when he commented on the financial part that I was in charge of. In fact, that was my last class in McGill, I felt that all my efforts were worthy after getting such comments.
I could say, with such a heavy load of studying mission, people would need to visit the library pretty often. For me, I would stay in the McLennan Library normally, just because it’s quite close to the Bronfman Building. McLennan has several different zones separated for different purposes. For example, if you want to discuss with your team members, the discussion zone would be the place that you want to go to. There are plenty of seats, but it is always fairly crowded. I heard that McGill has in total seven libraries. I don’t know if they are as “popular” as McLennan.
Except for living in Montreal, I also spent some time traveling to Toronto, the biggest city in Canada. Besides, I also went to Manhattan, New York, where the Wall Street and New York Stock Exchange locate. I just felt the attractiveness of diversity when I was standing right on the Time Square. Perhaps, this is one of the benefit of going outside China and see and feel the exotic culture. I mean, after seeing a bigger world, people would normally know the importance of being earnest and down-to-earth.
By the time I write down this report for the exchange program, I have already come back to STU for over a month. Looking back to the life in the past five months, I could still feel the excitement of being in another country, and I could also feel the pressure of all kinds of assignments, not to mention the happiness of meeting new friends from all over the world. Thanks again to Business School and Li Ka Shing Foundation for offering me such a tremendous chance. I also hope that more and more students can get involved into all these exchange programs that we have and truly achieve the level of “enterprising achievement, global mindset”.
13 Acct., Mingfeng ZHUO
June 21, 2016
