While having friends on campus contributes to a great university experience, there are a multitude of benefits to maintaining long distance friendships across universities
The pandemic greatly impacted how students make friendships during their university careers. According to Reddit user u/Bbso1229, “COVID took that friendship building experience away from me and everyone else in my first year.” They further elaborated that although extroverted, they have difficulty creating friendships due to pre-established friend groups formed during the pandemic.
Some McMaster students have noticed the similar struggles that are faced by commuter students and have created the McMaster Society for Off-Campus Students. This society aims to cater to the needs of commuter students and helps them feel included within the McMaster community. McMaster SOCS aims to help commuter students form friendships with those who can relate to their experiences.
Unfortunately, for commuter students or individuals who choose to live off-campus during their first year, the experience of u/Bbso1229 is much more commonly shared than you may think. It is difficult for individuals to make friends during a time of limited social interaction. It proves even more complicated when most of the individuals they interact with on campus have their own established friend groups.
As a former commuter student myself, it has been difficult to make friends with peers during undergrad. This especially rings true if you are attending a different university than your high school peers. On a positive note, the difficulty of making new friendships during the pandemic has lead to some creating stronger bonds within pre-existing friendships. Many individuals, including myself, have turned to childhood friendships for support.
As a former commuter student myself, it has been difficult for students such as myself to make friends with peers during undergrad.
Though distance may make it seem difficult to maintain old friendships, one of the largest benefits of possessing a friendship with a student who attends another university is the professional opportunities, such as research opportunities or jobs, that it could expose you. While McMaster is a research-intensive institute, it could sometimes be difficult for students to secure a position due to the popularity of student-sought research opportunities.
Fortunately, expanding your friend group can also expand your network; your friends could introduce you to their network, thus giving you access to more connections.
Fortunately, expanding your friend group can also expand your network; your friends could introduce you to their network, thus giving you access to more connections.
With an expanded network, students have many more opportunities to connect with individuals who are researching or working in the student’s subject of interest. Although this may sound difficult to accomplish since you do not attend that university, your friend’s own network is now shared with you, allowing you to also explore the potential connections within their network.
Additionally, inter-university friendships do not necessarily result in the same degree of competition between friends and instead spark encouragement due to the lack of similarity in work. Since courses are not structured identically across universities, the variance in coursework downregulates a competitive nature in students. It can be difficult to compare yourself to your friend when you are following a different course breakdown.
It can be difficult to compare yourself to your friend when you are following a different course breakdown.
Although having a friend group at your university can better integrate you into the community and make you feel at home where you study, it certainly does not hurt to expand your network to different universities. With the numerous benefits of having friends living far from you, it may be best to rekindle the childhood friendships that may have fell apart since beginning university.
Though testing in Canadian Martyrs Catholic Elementary School seems like a suitable option to make up for the lack of examination space at McMaster, in practice, it isn’t.
On Dec. 15 of last year, McMaster Daily News announced that some students would begin writing exams in Canadian Martyrs.
As soon as this new examination space was opened, I was fortunate enough to have a total of three exams take place in this location.
Based on my personal experience with doing an exam in Canadian Martyrs, it is not the best place to compensate for the lack of exam space on campus.
Given that exams are so heavily weighted and our GPAs are so dependent on how well we perform in them, standards for better examining accommodations should be met.
In my first exam experience at Canadian Martyrs, I was very disappointed with the accommodation that I thought would be a temporary one.
First, I had no idea where what the school was located and that sparked a sense of anxiety on its own.
Once I found the location, I was waiting amongst over 100 other students in a staircase, while other students were stuck outside in winter weather at 7 p.m. on a Friday night. And that’s just the beginning.
Once we all finally filed into the exam room on the second floor of the building, our exam began and I found myself unable to focus and distracted by the sound of children screaming in what sounded like a gym on the other side of the makeshift wall.
The sound of children was so loud, that the professor instructed the invigilators to go find ear plugs for us in to wear for the remaining hour and a half of our exam.
After remaining patient and optimistic to the solution that was presented, I was disappointed once again when the invigilators did not have enough ear plugs to distribute to all the students and had only managed to cover one quarter of the class.
In my first examining experience at Canadian Martyrs, I was very disappointed with the accommodation that I thought would be a temporary one.
Of course, I was one of the unlucky students who did not have earplugs to block out the sound of screaming children.
In an English history of literature class where the exam was composed of passage responses and an essay, focus was essential.
Needless to say, I left the exam very upset, and as a commuter with an hour and a half commute to endure after an exam on a Friday night, I was not impressed. In addition, my grade definitely suffered from my exam grade.
The idea of partnering with a facility near campus may have seemed like an efficient idea to make up for the lack of space for examination, but in practice, has not played out as well as one would hope.
Not only was I already stress out about my exam and upset with the time that my exam was being held, but my grade evidently suffered from the experience so my stress did not end with that expereince.
Hopefully this arrangement will be one that is not definite but temporary. For students who have their exams in Canadian Martyrs this winter, I hope your experience will not be as unfortunate as mine.
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Miranda Babbitt
McMaster’s School of Nursing has helped to set the path towards significant developmental aid for Hamilton youth, but this initiative is at risk of losing funding by the New Year.
The program, called Primary Care for At-Risk Youth, has been providing nursing services in the local high schools of Hamilton. Once a week, a nurse practitioner along with several third-year Nursing students, offer their services for half a day at Sir John A. MacDonald and Cathedral Secondary School.
The results of such a program have been clear, with as many as 15 students seeking attention every hour. Larissa Glover, a third-year McMaster Nursing student involved with this initiative, has noted that the numbers are set to increase, “with more and more students learning about the centre.”
At Sir John A. MacDonald, one third of the student population is without family doctors, and 50 per cent of the students do not speak English as their first language.
Dyanne Semogas, an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing and a project leader, stated, “ESL significantly influences access to healthcare, and the Hamilton Center for Newcomer Health, [a joint initiator of the program], is one of those places that sprung up with a grass roots approach to addressing gaps to health services for newcomers.”
The Primary Care for At-Risk Youth initiative attempts to forge bridges between immigrant students and healthcare resources within their own community. Semogas explained that in many families stricken by poverty, some students are still unable to fully benefit from their services if the link between their help and overall community resources remains vulnerable.
Because nutritious food is often unavailable in low-income communities, if students are prescribed antibiotics that need to be taken with food, they may take it with unhealthy food. As a result, the program can also provide supplementary nutritional resources that will benefit the students beyond their immediate concern.
The need for readily available access to healthcare within inner-city high schools is pressing, and this is precisely what drove McMaster’s School of Nursing and local Hamilton school boards to begin the talking about how to build a program that addresses youth health.
Semogas previously stated that, “Studies have shown that youth having access to health care in schools are more likely to stay in school.”
The benefits of the initiative extend beyond the scope of the high school students to the very students behind the desk – McMaster nursing students are able to gain valuable experience towards their future practice. “Any place where you can interact with the population is really beneficial,” says Glover.
First-year Nursing student Emma Carscadden re-iterated the program’s importance.
“In the past there were nurses in most schools, and it’s a shame that nurses have been taken out of these important roles. I hope that this initiative will be successful, as nurses have a vital role in promoting healthy lifestyles and choices to children who need it.”
Despite the program’s progress and its considerable role in providing youth health services, funding is set to end in December. Semogas and Glover remained hopeful about the potential fundraising opportunity offered through the Aviva Community Fund, which contributes $1 million to Canadian projects that enable positive change.
With several qualifying rounds, the Primary Care for At-Risk Youth initiative has made it to the semi-finals. However, the future still remains tentative. “Some programs have crazy numbers of votes, up in the thousands, and they may outbid us,” said Glover, “but I am really, really hopeful for it.”
At the age of 13 I left my cookie-cutter suburb west of the GTA in hopes of finding a high school that would support my passion for the performing arts. I ended up at the Etobicoke School of the Arts in Toronto.
I’d like to say that I left the suburbs to pursue my passion for the performing arts, but that’s only half of the truth. It sucks to grow up in a place where you’re expected to pick up a pair of skates and put down your ballet shoes. It also sucks to pretend to like playing spin the bottle with a circle that isn’t all boys.
Going to a performing arts school in a distant land called Toronto was a way for me to say, “Screw you, narrow-minded kids of the playground. I’m going to make something out of myself and you’re all going to work at Harvey’s down the street.”
When I got accepted to the school as a drama major, I was in Glee. No, I don’t mean I was “gleeful” or happy; I figuratively entered the high school of the television show Glee. Walking down the hall, I’d pass people carrying tubas, dance majors all fitted in Lululemon and art majors reeking of pot. I was in homo heaven. I went from pretending to be something I’m not to being hit on by 12th-graders. I was pleased, to say the least. But this newfound diversity went beyond the hallways – I was also surrounded by a diverse group of teachers.
Once you accept that you’re gay, the next step is figuring out the rest of your life. Sounds easy, eh? Well, for me, the biggest question was to decide whether I should follow the example of my straight peers and start coupling up. I initially rejected this monogamistic ideal, identifying it as a symbol of heterosexual repression. But after thinking about it, I realized that hey, maybe having a long-term relationship would be nice for me too.
This is where my artsy-fartsy high school comes in. I feel that having several openly gay high school teachers helped me figure out where I fit into this topsy-turvy world. People in the media and pop culture always allude to the idea that having a role model can magically give you something concrete to work towards. I used to think that the concept of having a gay role model was hogwash. Now, I’m not so sure. By having my gay high school teachers refer to their partners, their kids, their families, I was able to create this tangible concept of a monogamous relationship.
If you’re different, in any way shape or form, it’s not silly to look to a role model for guidance. There is power in seeing others live the life that you want to live, and I think that everyone should draw on that.
By: Kieran Healey
