Canada is an interesting country. It's interesting in that everything is a little different in the english part of Canada, and significantly more different in the French part. Toronto isn't a pretty city in my mind. On monday morning, my mother and I flew into Toronto and we proceeded to visit the first university I had on my list. Glendon College at York University is this tiny little campus in the suburbs of Toronto. The whole idea of the university is that it has a bilingual education. It's one of the only schools I had found anywhere that has a program like this. My main reason for wanting to study in Canada is so that I can really learn French in a French environment. Spanish is easy to learn and practice because I live so close to other spanish-speakers, even now in the coffee shop the ladies are speaking in Spanish. I don't want to study language, I just want to speak them. I don't care much about getting ultra technical with spanish or french. I want to know enough to get by in conversation and be fluent in the same way that one becomes fluent in their native language. Glendon offered me that opportunity, but nothing else. I don't like the school. It's boring and tiny. I don't want to go to a school of 2,700 students and have a tiny list of things I can study. I don't see myself studying political science or anything like that.
After that day, my mother and I drove to Montreal in a rented car with a Massachusetts license plate which really killed the whole "don't treat me like a tourist" vibe I was trying to achieve. Montreal is a wonderful city. It's beautiful and there is still so much left for me to explore there. We arrived in Montreal on Tuesday, July 1st, which for all the culturally inept is Canada Day, which is independence day but Canadian.
***Side-note*** It is hilarious how white girls order their coffee.
Also, that same night was part of the famous Jazz Festival that Montreal hosts each year. We went to the festival, saw some guy whose name I forgot, and ate cheese for dinner. Our hotel was located right by where the universities were. McGill University and Concordia University are the two huge english schools in Montreal. Along with those, UQAM and Université de Montréal are the french schools. Together, all the universities in Montreal make the largest student per capita population in all of North America, according to the pamphlets. I could see that. College kids where everywhere, the amount of young people was both intimidating and fantastic.
The following day, we went to see Concordia University, which was the only school that had any sort of fine arts department. I feel in love with the school over the internet. It was perfect to me because it has everything that I want. It's in the middle of a mainly French environment. It has a design program. It's big. It's different. We arrived at the tour and I feel in love with the school even more. It's facilities were beautiful, and mainly new, except for the dorms. The whole school felt like a campus, but also didn't because your in a city. All the buildings are connected by underground tunnels, so that in the winter you don't have to freeze walking between classes, but it also created this sense of campus. As long as I didn't walk out the doors, I didn't need to know French, but at the same time, if I wanted to practice my French, all I'd have to do is buy a coffee outside.
McGill was different from Concordia in the regard. I love McGill. It's a beautiful school, but it's enclosed. McGill has a proper campus. There's a field surrounded by these beautiful old buildings, and the campus stretches out all over the upper part of Montreal. I wouldn't need to know French to go there. I could manage with only english for the entire four years. I don't want to be pushed into speaking French, but McGill feels like is pushing you against it. Besides that, I loved the school. I took the tour and it was fantastic. The biggest problem again was that there wasn't any program there that I'd want to study. I wouldn't know which school I'd want to apply to. If I can't study the program that I want to, like Design or New Media, than I'd want to study Urban Planning. McGill has that program, but it's in its engineering school. I cannot get into that school. My grades in math and science aren't awful, but there not engineering school quality. And then if I realized in my first year that I actually hate Urban Planning, I'd be stuck and could only choose science and math based majors in the Engineering School. If not that, then I could apply to the Arts Faculty, but then I'd be in the same position as I was at Glendon. I don't want to study political science or language, and the other degrees there don't interest me at all. I could go undecided into the Faculty, but it wouldn't be what I want because each Faculty has less options to choose from.
In the end I have added McGill and Concordia to the list of school I will apply to. I've taken out Glendon completely, and it was good that I visited. If I hadn't, I might have not ever seriously considered McGill, and I probably wouldn't have dismissed Glendon.
