Hi everyone!! My name is Elizabeth. I grew up in Fonthill, a small town in the Niagara region, and I am entering my first year in the Life Sciences and Biochemistry program. As the summer comes to an end, I have been vigorously crocheting away—my current projects are primarily room decor. In addition to loving to crochet, I am a classically trained flautist, I have been figure skating for the past few years, and I am a varsity-level people watcher. My favourite pastime, though, is eating! Whether it be devouring homecooked meals (which I will violently miss) or chowing down at a restaurant, there is nothing I enjoy more. Life is simply the time between meals. Despite my love for eating, I rarely eat breakfast these days. However, in my younger years I would always have a bowl of cereal before hurriedly leaving for school.
Breakfast wasn’t the only way I connected to cereal. Growing up as a person of colour in a predominantly white area left me feeling like a lone cheerio in a sea of milk. And not just superficially—my constant desire to assimilate to my surroundings was not too different from a piece of cereal losing its flavour and structural integrity to the milk that it floats in.
As I have grown older, I have strengthened my grip on my cultural identity, but I feel isolated in different aspects. It feels like most people are coming into university with a detailed spreadsheet of the next four years in their left hand, but I chose my program only a few days before the deadline, and I am still having second guesses. It feels as though everyone has gobbled up their (cereal) bowl of ambitions, ready to use it as fuel for their future endeavours, but mine is still looking at me, untouched.
I attribute much of my indecisiveness to the way I performed academically. Maybe this is one of the things that other people can say about you, but you’re not allowed to say about yourself; I was one of those students who slept through their classes but would still receive perfect—or close to—on their assessments. Although my transcript suggested I had a plethora of passions, how I really felt was the opposite. I didn’t even have a favourite class—it would just be whatever class was currently satiating my endless desire for academic validation.
Even though I struggled to spark passion for a specific subject, I always enjoyed learning. Unlike Rory Gilmore, though, I could never romanticize studying. My productivity was not something I could turn on and off voluntarily, but rather came in unexpected spurts. I was the type of student to send an email at 10 PM begging my teacher for an extension, and it was as frustrating for me as it was for them. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about my grades–I definitely did–nor was it that school wasn’t a top priority–because it definitely was. No matter how much I wanted to just sit down and focus, as soon as I sat down to study everything else seemed so much more interesting. Suddenly the room that I hadn’t cleaned in months needed a deep clean, my phone was screaming at me to go check every single one of my notifications, and my bed was begging me to have a nap. Now that I am away from home at Queen’s, I hope to utilize the newfound independence as an opportunity to strengthen my work ethic.
My recipe for a stronger work ethic contains an ingredient I have yet to acquire… a healthy sleep schedule. I am dreading my 8:30am classes (especially since I have one every day). Though I rarely eat breakfast anymore, I will have to if I want to stay awake in my early morning lectures.
So, it’s back to cereal again.