Dear first-years: Can you trust UofT?

Why pursue a university degree here?

So, ACORN just processed the entirety of your bank account. Now what? As you step into your first lecture at Con Hall with a thousand other first-year students gripping their brand-new notebooks, you realize you’ve put an immense amount of trust into UofT’s bureaucratic system and its people to give you the tools you need to graduate and enter the “real world.”   

Settling into your carefully chosen lecture seat, you give up your existentially confused and mildly hungover head for the next hour to the figure at the front of the room. Maybe it’s a tenured professor, or perhaps it’s a post-doc instructor still navigating their career. Maybe they believe they can change your mind, and that you can change the world, or maybe they’re just going through the motions to get home. No matter their state of mind or their ultimate goals, you are about to write down whatever comes out of their mouth.  

At some point, you’ll question how much your lecture notes will actually help you out in this so-called “real world.” Why are you getting a university degree? What are these “tools” that you’re supposedly about to gain? Perhaps it’s a job guarantee. UofT will take you in, assign you a ten-digit number, and churn you out, fully ready to take on the workforce. You just need the credits and the certificate, and you’re good to go. Yet at the same time, your friends are telling you that your desired degree in philosophy and comparative literature won’t get you anywhere. You can’t help but think, with all of these maybes, that maybe you shouldn’t have just poured your life savings into UofT’s hands. 

The illusion of a “teen movie university experience” shatters for everyone. In first year, I realized I wanted to change programs and most of my courses would not count toward my new degree. I made new friends, and lost some, too. In second year, I watched as professors, who I had up until that point perceived as gods, clashed over the Jordan Peterson scandal. A friend came to lecture covered in bruises from one of the protests. In third year, a friend transferred to UofT because of mental health problems, and when their equivalent courses did not transfer, they had to retake 100-level courses that would not count for their GPA or breadth requirements. I watched my highest grade fall to my lowest ever because the professor needed to make the course appear harder than it was. I watched as the proposal for UofT’s new Mandated Leave of Absence mental health policy passed, despite pushback from the majority of people around me and recurring student protests. 

So how much trust should you put into your university experience to get you where you want to go? It seems like we are supposed to pour all of our energy into our academic lives, especially as we watch our yearly budget dwindle after purchasing winter semester textbooks. But perhaps it’s not entirely about trusting your registrar, TAs, or Degree Explorer. Perhaps it’s not about using your Bachelor’s degree to get a job. Perhaps it’s not about essays and club meetings shaping who you are, but about shaping your own university experience in order to know yourself better—to get to know who you’re going to become—because there’s no guarantee that your degree will get you the life you’ve dreamed. Navigating your university experience requires learning to trust yourself, and that’s not taught to us. This trust fall has to be actively pursued. 

Learn for the sake of learning. These next years may define how you shape yourself, and can create a foundation that you will have when everything else seems to fall apart. Your decisions are up to you to make, and your assignments are up to you to complete. Make sure you become who you’ll want to stand by. Your time here is not so much a matter of trusting ACORN or the world of academia, but trusting yourself to make the right choices when the system lacks transparency. Push yourself to uncover the truth when you find inequities that permeate the system. Even with safeguards set in place, it’s ultimately up to you to be informed, look for flaws and point them out, and make the necessary changes. And remember: your professors, TAs, and college want you to succeed, despite the unfairness of university rules and structures. Choosing to treat UofT as the enemy will only bring out its worst elements. Talk one-on-one with people in the community whenever you can. Trusting UofT, from my experience, comes down to the quality of these personal connections. When you can, take courses and opportunities you believe your role models would take. Get to know yourself. Pouring your savings into ACORN is an investment in yourself, so be selfish. That’s what you’re paying for.