Get to know your neighbours

My number one suggestion when it comes to the time spent studying at Bishop’s and/or Champlain is to get involved with the clubs and activities that will take you out of the campus bubble and into the community.

Some of my best extracurricular experiences during university were through my work with the Lennoxville Day Camp

and my time as an usher and later house manager at Centennial Theatre. Neither of those jobs exists in the same way they did nine years ago because of changes to the organizations, but they are both still around in slightly different forms. The day camp put me in daily contact with parents in the town and taught me a lot about the realities of life in Lennoxville. The theatre is where I saw all the best shows I had never heard of and had my first contact with a number of the cultural groups I still write about on a regular basis in the paper.

Although my major was in Secondary Education and English, my time at Bishop’s University was defined by proximity to the drama department. My brother was in his last year in the program when I started my studies, so a lot of the friends I made early on were involved in the theatre in one way or another.

Although most of the major productions are linked to classes, the festivals of short plays that the department runs at the start of each semester hold open auditions and automatically put you in a position where you interact with the community, as many people in town come out to see the shows.

Outside of organized activities; stay for a spring semester and/or get a job that keeps you in the area for the summer. It will help you develop a deeper appreciation of and connection to the community that surrounds you.