Reflections on a run through the system
One student’s tale of an education through communication
Andy McGillivray
Illustration by Jessica Koroscil
Now a fifth-year arts student at the University of Manitoba nearing the end of my final term, I have begun reflecting on my time in the university environment so far and wondering what I have learned.
It is not only the access to information, the interaction with other students, professors and university staff or the university population, but also the conversation with stimulation, the freedom for the mind to develop the ability to think independently, that is special about places like universities.
There are so many people in this place who are here for a common reason: the pursuit of knowledge and the options, opportunities, freedoms, lessons, friendships and experiences that accompany this place.
During my degree here and abroad, I have studied literature and history and have learned a lot from the books I have read. I have also had many stimulating conversations, every day in fact, about these topics and those that stem from them. My impression of the learning process at this university was that to complete assignments, all I had to do was read, reflect and write — interaction is not built into the course work. While interaction is an option, such as group studying or speaking with professors, it is not inherent. This became even more evident after my exchange to Denmark.
Early studies
My first year of studies passed by without too much thought put towards my actual courses — I was more concerned with exploring the new place that I found myself in and beginning the life of an adult. In other words, in my first year of university I was somewhat indifferent to the specific dynamics at play in institutions such as this one, specifically with regards to what I would learn and how I would learn it. Courses fell into the mix somewhere, without a doubt, but I did not pursue them beyond what was required, and even then, i accomplishedjust what was required.
As I spent more time at school, in my second and third years, I approached my courses with more effort and more focus, and learned how to write and complete assignments efficiently and effectively.
One aspect of the learning process that did excite me initially — and would grow to become the most important aspect of my education— was the interaction beyond that which was strictly academic. Activities such as playing hacky-sack with friends and just hanging out, and talking with people were much more enjoyable for me than actually “hitting the books,” but I did indeed learn to actually study. Ironically, I truly believed, and still do in some regards, that speaking with people, for me, is much more of an educational experience than studying all of the time. Any day of the week I can learn much more through a conversation with someone than by reading a book — Conversations develop and they are unique, while a book, although it may be new, will always end with the same conclusions, no matter how many times it is read.
Finding a new way to get excited
After three years of studying at the same institution, I had become familiar with the resources that were here and needed something more, something to excite my mind in a new way. I decided to enroll in an exchange that would take me to Denmark for a semester. At the time I had no idea how influential that choice would be in terms of how I viewed the learning process and university in general. Communication as an educational focus would prove to be much more flexible and accessible during my term of study abroad.
Starting my fourth year of university in Denmark was, literally and figuratively, a “trip-and-a-half.” Everything was different.
I met many of the other international students, who were doing the same thing I was, before the term began, and none of us had any idea what was going on with school. All we had been told was that we would find out everything on our first day of classes. This is completely reverse to the system I was used to back in Canada, which involves signing up for courses over a month in advance and, usually, collecting some of the required readings before the beginning of classes. But we had no idea what kind of education we would be participating in.
On the first day of class all of the students from Aalborg University met in Gammel Torv, which means “old square,” the oldest area of the city of Aalborg, Denmark. All 10,000 of us were treated to a pancake breakfast. The roughly 300 international students were then taken to our new campus by bus. We were from all over the world, but the international students were predominately made up of Europeans — I met only one other Canadian student there.
Focus on communication
While in Denmark, I studied in the faculty of humanities, specifically in a program set up for international students: International Communication Studies (ICS). We all studied a wide range of disciplines, from philosophy to literature, psychology to politics, with a common purpose: communication across borders.
The building in which I studied, the Humanities building, is made up of two levels, and on each level there are four circular corridors that join into a central common area filled with natural light and tables where all of the people from the faculty meet to discuss. The four circles that join in the middle are symbolic of the methodology of the faculty itself: to combine information, learning and expertise from all humanistic disciplines in order to reach common understandings of problems the world faces today, and, to increase the possibilities of solving those problems.
The population of the building is roughly 50 to 100 international students, a few hundred Danish students, and faculty and staff. Faculty and students work on one level. The research and writing that students work on is guided by an adviser, but for the most part it is independent, with only eight lectures per course, held once a week for eight weeks. Conversely, the work of professors is influenced by the ideas of their students — very open and very free.
While studying in Denmark, I was free to travel and explore the city itself. My only required assignments were three papers, one of them a major project, the other two just lengthy essays. There was also a final exam, which was a one-hour discussion with another student, our adviser and a neutral censor. The format for the exam began with questions from our adviser that focused on the specific area of study that had engaged my partner and I for the past four months. As the exam progressed, our adviser and the censor expanded the questions outwards, trying to determine where our knowledge stopped in relation to our area of study. In this way, what we studied was not of the most importance; it was the information that we encountered while studying the specific topic that was tested. Our exam was worth 100 per cent of the course, meaning that our grade was based on a chat, so to speak.
In those four months, my mind expanded at a greater rate than it ever had before. I wsa not only internalizing the information I had read in books and writing it out for an assignment, but I was also talking things over with other students and professors and, in turn, listening to their interpretations of the subject or theory.
To study for our exam, my partner and I would go and have a beer and a coffee and talk about using the theory we were studying as well as other theories that we had been exposed to. One of our primary theories of study was the “theory of the artistic field” of Pierre Bourdieu, a 20th century French sociologist. We studied the artistic field but could apply the theories to anything from the economic field or our made-up, yet relevant, sexual field. Using the theory to analyse multiple aspects of the world reflects the relevance of our studies. Instead of analysing a poem in order to find the meaning, which is something I had become familiar with in Canada used literary theories to look at the real world.
Upon returning to the University of Manitoba for the second semester of my fourth year, I had experienced an alternative approach to academia and began to explore deeper into the university environment for the options that were available. All of the familiar aspects of campus life remained, yet I was discovering more not-strictly academic opportunities that are part of the campus environment. One of my most significant discoveries of the university world is that it is truly international, not restricted by borders. Both of the campuses on which I have studied have had representatives from many nations and cultures, who have a wealth of experiences and desires to share.
The view from here
All in all, I am now finishing my time at this university, for now anyways. It has been a blast, it has been a drag, but most importantly I have learned something here: that knowledge and understanding can help to decrease ignorance and promote peacefulness and understanding. I also discovered that learning can take you places, be it a new city or a new country, or even a new continent, or perhaps to a new concept or idea, a new story, or even to a new person.
My new view on education is that it is what you make of it. For example, I can draw from all of the experiences that I have had so far in both North American and European university environments and take the most helpful pieces from both. All of the aspects of learning that I enjoyed in Aalborg can still be accessed here by anyone because at the foundations of their style or methodology of education is communication — interaction, discussion, expression, internalization — among people. There are benefits to both systems. I chose to take those benefits and combine them into the package that I am filling — my educational tools for life.
It is the communication, the interaction, the thinking that come with collections of people that I have truly been enriched with here.
