Exceptional and Unconventional? What You Aren’t Told When You Start At Lakehead
Post-secondary education, a truly frightful phrase for one such as me. For as long as I can remember I’ve heard tales of debt, strife, and degrees that are only good for kindling. But, even with this in mind, societal pressure and good old-fashioned opportunities find us all in the end, and eventually, I found myself at the shiny, wooden gates of Lakehead University.
My first experience with the university was the wonderful online portal. When one logs on to the Lakehead website they are faced with two choices, Myinfo and Mycourselink respectively. Is it strange they are completely separate entities? Yes, it is bizarre. But once you get used to the incessant flicking between tabs to check information about grades on Myinfo and assignments on Mycourselink, you only have to worry about the site being down every now and then, usually when you have something due that day.
The first time I actually made a visit to the hallowed Agora building I was a bit worried. Stories of leaky tunnels, dubious chicken, and seventeenth century ghosts reeled through my head as I walked through the threshold. Only to find a Starbucks, and some people quietly milling about. My first stop was student services, I was having some trouble with my application for those ever so wonderful Ontario student loans and was told they could rescue me. After waiting a while I was greeted by a wonderful woman who sorted everything out for me and sent me on my merry way, with my loan application and hope for the future in my hand. Overall, student services were dependable and informative. All solid Thunderwolf experiences so far, putting the worries I had more at ease.
This leads us to now, the fall semester. I’m a fully insured, gym membership holding member of the student body. I still don’t know what LUSU does but I’d suppose I work for them writing this article; so they're great. Moral of the story, starting to go to university can be scary, especially if you are an international student (or play women's basketball). But, my experience being someone who thought they were done paying for education, is that as long as you can log onto D2L and are willing to ask questions, you can do it. Generally, the staff are nice (if a bit grumpy sometimes) and there are lots of people that can help you on your journey.
