You know that feeling you get when you’re about to embark on a new journey and you’re super nervous? That voice in the back of your head is telling you that something will go wrong? When it came to my first day of orientation at the University of Waterloo, I decided to stop listening to it.
Hi, my name is Agraj and I’m a first-year Accounting and Financial Management student at the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF).
A few days before orientation, I moved into my dorm room on campus. Having a newfound sense of independence, I enjoyed my first moments alone. However, as the days passed, that optimistic attitude fled when I realized I had no one to talk to. A barrage of questions flooded my brain: ‘What if I don’t make friends in SAF?’, ‘When will I see my family again?’, ‘How do I get the Wi-Fi to work?’ and so on. Having not met many SAF students in those first few days, I was worried that building a group of friends would be harder than expected.
While I figured out how to access the Wi-Fi by day two, there was one question I still couldn’t answer, “What if I don’t make friends?”.
When I reached the Faculty of Arts orientation, I decided to stop listening to that nagging voice in my head. I realized that the group of students I was joining within SAF were like-minded individuals —people who were also searching for a community.
Ultimately, the moral of this story (that I hope other first-year students can relate to), is to stop listening to your negative internal dialogue. You will find your community, just like I have.