Maybe I Should Have Gone On Exchange

Written By: Chloe Leong

While I personally did not have the chance to go on exchange, I felt like I have lived vicariously through my friends’ Instagram stories and anecdotes over the time they spent there. One friend in particular stood out, as I never saw her be this sociable and constantly out and about until her time in exchange. Enter Melissa Ng, a then incoming Year 3 Computer Science student who went to Canada last semester.

Melissa at Emerald Lake 

Having known her for a while, I knew she was the adventurous type, but I saw it take a whole other form while she was in Canada. When I caught up with her, her stories on her experience there made my heart feel warm that she was able to get a new perspective on life and academics.

She chose to go to Queen’s University in Kingston, which is about a three-hour drive from Toronto. Upon doing more research on the school, she realised that it would be a great change of scenery (granted, its climate is much colder than Singapore’s) and Canada, for all its merits, would be a safe bet to explore too.

Melissa recounted that one of the “best decisions [she has] ever made” was to stay with three other Canadian students in a shared apartment. As a result, she was exposed to her flat mates' circle of local friends.

Melissa is not one to stay in her comfort zone and fully utilised her campus’s Queen’s University International Centre (QUIC) to make new connections with other exchange students.

The front desk of QUIC 

Her efforts paid off and her circle of friends whom she went on trips with grew to a whopping 15 people. They formalised the clique when they went to Quebec City together and affectionately called themselves the “Quebec Kakis”, thanks to Melissa’s urge to introduce some Singaporean flavour to the group. “This trip has a special place in my heart. We took 3 cars and drove 6 hours to Quebec. There were so many memories made and bonds that formed,” Melissa recounted fondly.

As with any exchange student, you likely will go on mini trips in between schooling days to maximise your time in a foreign country. Melissa was no exception – making her mark in Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec City and Nova Scotia, just to name a few.

This meant that she took trips every fortnight to cover as much ground, which stumped me.

But she was always one to be on top of her classes, so I knew she was just making the most out of her time.

A highlight of her time in Canada she shared with me was her very first trip, which was to Banff during the university’s reading week in winter. They rented two cars and drove through the perilous conditions and the sight was unbelievable. She gushed that “there were 9 of us who had gone up, and the sight was unbelievable.”

She described mountains, frozen lakes (that were thick enough for cars to drive on) and hikes through negative 30-degree Celsius weather.

Melissa and her friends at Banff

While in Banff, she remembered the group trying to spot the northern lights. At midnight, they drove around aimlessly trying to catch a glimpse to no avail and decided to end their search. However, just as they were about to head back, they realised that above their heads was an array of stars lighting up the night sky!

Sometimes the most unexpected things make the best memories, I reckon.

“It was a beautiful sight, and it was an extremely wholesome moment to have shared with my bunch of friends,” she adds.

But of course, not everything is as shiny as Melissa makes it out to be. Melissa’s biggest culture shock was the state of homelessness, even in a small city of Kingston where she lived in. Not to mention, she was there in the middle of winter, so one could only imagine how those living on the streets had to go through with no shelter and warmth.

“Uncomfortable sights like this are mostly shielded from us in Singapore, where we don’t realise the seriousness of it,” she pointed out.

On a lighter note, she understood why her peers described their exchange experience as “freeing”. Despite the obvious geographical relocation, Western countries in particular tend to take life less seriously, and according to Melissa, “enjoy and bask in the experience as compared to the maximum efficiency in Singapore”. She described how she would go down to the pier with her friends just to read a book or enjoy the cooling weather, a far cry from Singapore’s humidity and hustle culture inundated into us.

Academic-wise, I was surprised when Melissa flat-out told me that she was humbled. Most students go on exchange expecting to breeze through their modules. After all, we are arguably one of the best universities in the world.

While Melissa felt that the content was more difficult than she had expected, she also countered that she could understand the professors better and could feel the passion that they had for the subject. “They encourage students to visit them during consultation hours, and surprisingly, there were many who showed up!” she said.

Along the same vein, she could also tell that the locals took more initiative to pursue their own learning and were not afraid of speaking up when they had doubts. To my surprise, Melissa said, “there were even times where students corrected the professors, and they laughed it off, cultivating a very wholesome teaching experience.”

As an avid solo traveler even before her exchange experience, Melissa felt that her travels by herself are some of the most satisfying things that she has ever done and encouraged everyone to give it a shot.

Knowing how Melissa spent her time there warmed my heart. If given the opportunity, maybe I