From January to April, 2018, I was honored to go to Economic department, Art and Science School, Queen’s University in Canada as an exchange student and knew more about study and living style in the North America.
When I reached Kingston, it was negative 20 degrees, which had a huge difference from that in Shantou. The winter in 2018 in Canada was longer than that in last few years, which took me a longer time to get used to.
In this semester, I chose four courses, Microeconomics Ⅱ，the Diffusion of Microeconomic Growth, Development Economics and Marketing Strategy. Three courses in economics department were talking about economy from the past, current and method’s aspects. And in Marketing Strategy, we could study strategies from brand, customer relationship, big data and product, but also tell some similar concepts. In these courses, teachers used quizzes, written research report, essay, etc to evaluate our performance. Their weight was relatively average, which required students to study hard from the beginning of the semester.
In economic classes, professors talked for the most of time, but students would ask questions or share their new ideas in time. No matter what the question was, professors did not deny their new ideas randomly, but discussed together and sought reasonable solutions, which encouraged students ’creative thinking and critical thinking. It was convenient to communicate with professors with email as they would reply soon and explain in details. There were three teaching assistants for every courses and they helped students a lot.
I met some challenges when having classes there. Although I had some English courses in STU, I still felt that I was weak in English there. At the beginning, it was hard to follow the professor as I felt that he spoke so fast but it was normal for him. There were many reading material and quizzes. Take Marketing Strategy as an example. In the first half of the semester, I needed to read three to four essays from Harvard Business Review or MIT Sloan Management and we would have quizzes to evaluate whether we read and thought or not. For the diffusion of microeconomic growth, there were three or four essays for each topic, but these essays were longer and harder to understand, which required me to combine with notes in class and conclude the causation and correlation. I also had other quizzes every two weeks. So every day when I was free, I would go to the library and prepare. As there was little entertainment in Kingston, many students there would go to the library from the second week and it was hard to look for seats later. Students in this university concentrated on their study and took notes very carefully, but this did not mean that they only studied. They would meet their friends every weekend and relax themselves or go to the gym to take exercises, looking for a balance between study and life.
This university also pays attention to students’ physical and mental health and learning skills. There is a center called SASS in this university. They would hold some workshops to share study skills and management skills. Besides, they shared them in documents on their websites and students could read or download them freely.
Among all the activities I took part in, a workshop called how to manage your pressure left me a deep impression. At first, the teacher asked us to take a quiz to know our pressure situation. Then she introduced how to manage pressure physically, mentally, spiritually and organizationally. I think it is very important for us to know how to face it. If we face the pressure in a right way and believe that we could get over it, finally we may win. This is also called the law of attraction. In some degree, the pressure could be transferred to the motivation, but if we do not deal with it well, it could be negative for us. In all, we need to treat it well.
Apart from study, life in Canada was also new for me. I lived with my classmate in a house with two French girls and one Canadian girl. They were kind to introduce some rules of living together and we cleaned the house in turn. As for eating in Canada, most of them ate hamburgers and sandwiches, which were different from eating in China, so I learnt how to cook. These helped me grow up.
There is an old saying that reading a million books and travelling thousands of miles. In the holiday, I had fun in Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec and Toronto. At the top of Parliament house in Ottawa, I could take a view of the whole city and feel the political atmosphere. I climbed the royal mountain in Montreal. I went to Niagara Fall and felt that it was really splendid.
Time flies. In these four months, I experienced studying atmosphere in Canada and acquired knowledge. I became more contained with international culture and life. These all opened my mind. I also notice my weakness in English and I need to study harder, pursuing critical thinking in the future. Many thanks for Shantou University that gives me this precious opportunity. Many thanks for the support from my parents and teachers. Many thanks that I could have super experience in winter in Canada.
