I wish I could say that my journey to choosing a university in Canada was a well-planned decision, but I’ve got to be honest with you. I had never set foot on the campus before move-in day. Only checking where Lennoxville was on a map when looking at the flight-tracker on the plane over. My journey to Bishop’s was riddled with mishaps and last-minute changes. And you know what? I couldn’t be happier about it. Let me take you through my Bob Ross-like series of happy accidents and why I chose Bishops University.
Overwhelming options
Picking a university was overwhelming at first. I come from a military family and was used to moving provinces every couple of years. I was living in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories during my senior year. The nearest university was a two-day drive away, and my parents were set to move to the U.S in the summer. Whichever university I picked, I wouldn’t end up close to home.
I also had no idea what I wanted to study: my dad suggested the military, my mom suggested medicine. I was overwhelmed with options, and I procrastinated researching throughout the fall. All I knew was that I was tired of big new cities and wanted a close-knit community.
The search for a small University
In the winter, when university application deadlines started to become tighter. I looked up “Ten smallest universities in Canada”, picked a couple, and without doing any more research, applied to three different programs at three different universities. If things had gone differently, I’d be studying physics in B.C instead of English at Bishop’s, and I’d probably be a college dropout by now.
Bishop’s did pop up on the “Best small universities in Canada list,” but I didn’t apply at the time. My older sister had just started studying there, and being stubborn, I didn’t want to follow in her footsteps. I still don’t always tell people my sister goes here – I don’t want people to know there’s a cooler version of me running around on campus. Bad for business.
The B.U application
About a week before full-time undergrad applications closed, I started to regret my anti-B.U. stubbornness. My guidance counselor had grown up in Sherbrooke, and when he found out that my sister was attending Bishop’s, he talked my ear off about the community and the Eastern Townships scenery. One of my mom’s friend came over for dinner that week and talked about her experience in the music program. My sister sent me photos of the sunsets from her dorm room. It was like an underground Bishop’s spy network, if all the spies were super talkative and friendly. In any case, there was a Bishop’s bug in my ear, pulling me towards the school.
The day applications were due, I still hadn’t decided if I should apply, and I was on a plane to a Canadian air-force base in Ontario to test for military piloting. The man I sat next to on the flight mentioned his granddaughter was graduating from Bishop’s in the spring. So, I decided to take it as a sign to apply. When the plane landed, I started my application in a little motel room on the military base and sent it in just before midnight. The next day at lunch, I had an acceptance letter in my inbox. (On a side note, I completely bombed the piloting testing, so it’s good that I had my sights set elsewhere.)
The moment I chose B.U.
A few days before I had to make a decision, I got a call from the principal himself with good news on the scholarship front. What really cemented my decision to attend Bishop’s, though, was that he chatted with me for about twenty minutes. He knew my sister by name, and asked how she was doing, he talked to me about how I could incorporate math and science courses into an English degree, and we had a short conversation about Indigenous literature. I had been considering an offer from the Royal Military College — not for piloting, that ship had sailed – but something about Bishop’s just felt right. I accepted the offer that night.
Since coming to Bishop’s, my parents have moved twice across the country, so I’m definitely not close to home. But everyone who recommended B.U. was totally right: the university really has become a second home to me, and that welcoming feeling I got from the phone call with the principal hasn’t gone away. So truthfully, I can’t offer you “Top Ten Tricks and Tips for Researching the Perfect University”. I’ve got friends who put real time and effort into researching programs at Bishop’s before they made their decision, but between you and me, I think that it’s the small-town coincidences and happy accidents that makes this place so cool.
On the other hand, one of my professors often says that “no one ends up at Bishop’s by accident”. I think she might be right – there’s a magnetic pull towards the B.U. bubble that landed me here. Sometimes, you’ve got to let perfect planning step aside and just go with the decision that feels right. For me, that why I chose Bishops University.
