University of (Not Just) Toronto

Right off the bat on my first day of study the day after my arrival I can see how diverse the students of the university are. I remember anecdotally how it felt like that there's a lot more people from East Asia and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region over the Caucasian people. There's also a sizable amount of women wearing hijab on campus, which I didn't really expect. I knew before my departure that Canada itself is very diverse and that a university as prestigious as the University of Toronto would attract a lot of international students from all over the world, but I was still surprised by the diversity regardless. If you were shown a photo of the general campus ambiance or even the typical classroom without any further context, I think you would not at all immediately guess that the campus is located in Canada.

MGT371

The anecdotal experience above became even more apparent when I stepped into class on that very first day for MGT371 (Business Technology Management). Unlike the classes for my other courses, this course's first class was mostly used for introduction. The professor was a dutchman named Peter Smit who emigrated from the Netherlands into the US, and later into Canada. He asked all of the members of the class to introduce ourselves, among which we had to mention the country that we came from. I actually got called first but the professor mispronounced my name as Faith (which is a common occurrence among foreigners who first got to know me), so I didn't answer the first time around. It was then apparent as the professor went down the list of names that this class was very diverse. There were people from all over the world. I think the people who are Canadian is not even the majority in that class.

After the list of names were exhausted and I wasn't yet called I raised my hand to let the professor know that I wasn't yet called before I introduced myself. After I mentioned to the professor that I was from Indonesia, he then told the class of the story of how back then in the Netherlands right after the decolonization of Indonesia, there were many Indonesians still in the Netherlands that decided to stay and open Indonesian restaurants. These restaurants then became the first window for the Dutch to taste Asian food, long before Chinese restaurants first opened in the country. He then mentioned how his family often makes Indonesian foods during their family gathering such as mie goreng (yes he named it as mie goreng, not fried noodle in his story).

I ended up making friends with two people: Russell from Malaysia and Abdi from Canada (he's born in Canada but his parents were immigrants from Ethiopia). We often hung out for a bit after class to grab coffee together at the (expensive) Second Cup coffee shop and accompany Abdi on his job in the Career Centre of the Mississauga campus at Davis. Usually there's also a girl from the class that joined us, Jaspree, who's from India and I believe also worked at the Career Centre.

It's redacted from the server-side,

IMI400

The diversity was also felt in my class for IMI400 (Innovation and Entrepreneurship) the day after that (Wednesday). The professor was Paul Chipperton, an Englishman who's an absolute character (this guy is so fun, more on him on the course review journal entry). What was super cool was when I actually met a fellow Indonesian there, Angie. She's also an inbound exchange student to University of Toronto who's a full-time student at Singapore Management University but she's originally from Surabaya (funnily enough, she's from the same high school as Michelle, which is the high school that my high school always go head-to-head with on the final of the province's high school basketball league). I already got to know another Indonesian student that didn't go to university in Indonesia but is also doing an exchange to University of Toronto. But I did not expect to meet another one purely by coincidence in one my class.

A few weeks into the course, we were placed into groups to work on an assignment to make a Business Model Canvas and Lean Canvas. This group will not just be the group for that assignment but also the final assignment in the latter half of the semester. I was placed with three other people: Maria, Allison, Aryan, each with different background and ethnicity. It was so fun working with them (again, more about this on the course review journal entry) and I believe diversity was legitimately our strength. I remember we considered (though we ultimately didn't move forward with it) Aryan's business idea of on-demand car refueling at your home where someone will come to your door and refuel your car so that you don't need to go to a gas station. The idea was inspired by the service that exists in his hometown in India.

IMI303

One of the first friends that I made during the whole time that I was in Canada is Aidan. I befriended him during the first class of this course (the class is on Friday). What I find so interesting is when he told me that one of his aunt is an Indonesian who emigrated several decades ago. I didn't get to meet her unfortunately but I was so surprised when he brought that up when we hung out once.

Another friend that I made in this course was Sana. She's a permanent resident in Canada but I believe she was originally from Afghanistan. I once studied for the midterm together with her and another friend from this course in which she told me that she went to NUS Enterprise Summer Programme in Entrepreneurship a few months prior in that summer. It was really surprising because I didn't expect her to have come to Southeast Asia. She was proudly showing me the video that they released for that year's program in which she could be seen as the only one carrying the Afghanistan flag. I became really interested in joining the program next year after she told me about it.

CSC324

This course (Principle of Programming Languages) takes place on Monday. But because Monday of the first week of university (which coincidentally is also my day of arrival) falls on Labor day, I only got to the first class of this course on my second week. The professor was Lisa Zhang. I didn't get to make any friends on the first class of this course but later I mainly made two friends: Hamzah and Omar. Hamzah's family I believe emigrated from the middle east while Omar is an international student from middle east along with his younger brother. I became friend with Hamzah because we decided to form a group for the course's assignments (we ended up doing all four of them together). While I befriended Omar because both of us often came to the course's office hours to ask questions and just chat with the professor.

Outside of Class

I can't describe the origins of everyone that I met, I just know that the place is really that diverse. When I got to know my roommate, my neighbors in the on-campus dorm, the equivalent of the resident assistant in Erindale Hall where I live, everyone is diverse.

Plenty of Indonesians

One particular privilege of being an IISMA awardee to this specific university is the fact that there's a lot of Indonesian students studying here. I befriended a lot of students with the BIM (Beasiswa Indonesia Maju) scholarship. On top of that, there's also a substantial amount of Indonesian students without scholarship that study in here. For computer science alone, I have met more than half a dozen students whose study are entirely self-funded.