Many of you will be either returning to post-secondary
education, or starting in it this September.
Not only is education after high school very different from high school,
but the social scene is different, especially if you will not be living at
home. For international students (anyone
changing country to study, even if the change is ‘only’ Canada-USA), the change
is even more important: a new culture, new weather, often a new language, new
foods, new social cues, and new legal, financial and red tape structure. Queen’s University, in Kingston Ontario, has
a special program called Atlas which helps international students welcome these
changes. I’ve stolen their diagram of
what constitute all the health issues you must monitor when making the changes
to post-secondary education. If you
change the middle bubble to ‘success in post-secondary education’ or even
‘success in life’ , you’ll get a good idea of what I mean.
To be successful in university, you can’t just count
on academic success; obviously this blog is about doing it cheaply, but you
also need to come out unharmed, healthy, and happy. This is why I promote cutting down the fancy
coffees, but not your meds; why I recommend jogging over club hopping, and why
choosing a university close to home has lots of advantages.
When studying more independently than in high school,
you may end up meeting lots of different people. You will be exposed to many different
opinions, takes on life, philosophies, ethics, morals and religions. It can sometimes feel a little overwhelming,
especially if you are not sure what your beliefs are. Luckily, university is a great place to do a
few ‘taste-tests’ to solidify your beliefs or to find a philosophy that meshes
with you.
Where I wanted to draw your attention is to a couple
of the bubbles:
The Emotional and Mental Health bubble: this is an
extremely important one that many people ignore. If you are treated for a mental illness or
emotional problem or both, and that your team is a good one, consider not
moving away for post-secondary education.
Two benefits will come from this: 1. you will keep your team of
professionals assisting you. In
emotional and mental health, having a team that we are comfortable with is more
important than in physical health because so much of mental and emotional
health is talking about problems that are very difficult to talk about and
because measurement methods involve divulging personal information. The second benefit of not moving is that the
cost will be less, so the stress of being able to pay for your years of studies
will be less. For anyone, with or
without mental health problems, this stress can be enormous. If you are dealing with mental health
problems, this stress is by definition something you want to avoid.
The other bubbles I want to draw your attention to are
the Social and Interpersonal Health bubble and the Socio-Cultural and Spiritual
Health bubble. Both of these rely
heavily on finding peers you can relate to and develop meaningful
friendship. If your culture and
religious background are very important to you, finding a city and a university
where these are strongly represented should be a priority when choosing a
school to attend; you may feel lost without them, and you may feel that you
have no one to relate to if you are the lone person of your ethnicity or
religion. So make sure you can feel at ease where your
study; it will be your home for a few years, so choose it well.
Remember: choosing an establishment of education
should not be an academic decision alone; it should be a mental health and
cultural decision as well.
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