Friendship at the heart of GCU student’s exchange opportunity

A student has made the most of third year by swapping Glasgow Caledonian University for Canada’s University of Guelph.

Pharmacology student Callan Wilson travelled to Ontario in August last year before spending four months immersing himself in Canadian culture.

GCU offer course-specific exchange opportunities at 20 European Universities with further partnerships in the likes of Australia, Chile and Vietnam. However, it was Canada that caught Callan’s attention.

We sat down with him to reflect on his experience and hear why he would encourage other GCU students to get involved in exchange:

Canada calling

“My mum went to America when she was younger and I’ve always loved travelling, so I think those two factors played a big part in me wanting to know about exchange as soon as I started University.

“I just didn’t think there would be a better chance to do something like this. Because I do Pharmacology, it was quite hard to find related courses abroad. I’d emailed about ten universities that offered something similar and I eventually ended up picking University of Guelph, which is about an hour outside of Toronto.

“I didn’t really have any nerves for going away. I’ve done quite a lot of travelling and I’m very extroverted, so I knew I was going to make friends regardless.

“During one of the meetings before we went off on exchange, I ended up talking to a guy called Harry who also studies at GCU. I stayed at his before the flight and we were together all the time in Canada - it was amazing to make a best mate through something like this. Harry also had a friend who lived about an hour away from Guelph so it was nice heading over there knowing people.”

University of Guelph

“The University was absolutely huge – it was probably about five times the size of GCU. You could get a teppanyaki grill on campus and there were lots of different food halls – it was incredible. There was a brilliant gym, and it was really interesting to see that basically every single student keeps themselves physically fit by playing a winter sport and a summer sport.

“In terms of the academic side, I basically had to do five classes. I went in basing everything off the courses that were most similar to mine, but they explained I could do different things that weren’t necessarily related to my coursework. I actually did a class which focused on marketing because I was quite interested in that side of things, and then the others were more directly related to Pharmacology.

“In all honesty, I felt the coursework was a lot easier than what we have to do at GCU, probably because the tests tended to be multiple choice. In saying that, we were getting tested basically every week so you had to study throughout the whole year.

“The class sizes were also a lot bigger as well. We had 150 people rather than 30, so there was a noticeable difference.”

Friendship and travel

“By the time Induction Week came around Harry and I had already met a lot of people through staying in Halls and basically living on campus. Every time we met someone we would then be introduced to another person. There was a massive bar on campus and they held a pub quiz every Wednesday and then they had a $1 beer night every Thursday, so that also helped with the social side of things.

“I stayed in Halls and both the guys I lived with were actually Canadian. My neighbor was another Scottish guy and an Australian guy. We were always cooking BBQs because it was consistently like 25 degrees, so it was absolutely perfect. We also took advantage of the weather by just grabbing a ball playing as much football as we could.

“All the locals were so hospitable as well. We got on the bus one day and these girls were asking where we were from. We ended up spending a lot of time with them and they ended up driving us to Montreal for the weekend.

“I’ve got so many good memories from it. The exchange students hired cars one weekend and we drove to a cabin in a place called Tiny in Ontario. We had a hot-tub and a big fireplace - it was just brilliant.

“I even got the chance to go to New York and Washington with two Australian guys I met. It was great to tick off some of the major sights – I really feel like I made the most of any spare time I had.

“September was a particularly special time in Guelph. There was basically a street party for the first American Football Game of the season with 40,000 people all involved. The whole place was just red, yellow and black tops as far as the eye could see. It was crazy!”

Returning home and keeping in touch

“I was definitely sad to come home because I just had such a good time. I’ve still been keeping in touch with everyone I’ve met while I was out there.

“We were really good friends with a Spanish girl called Noa. Myself and one of the Australian boys went and cooked her dinner every Tuesday, and she was just the most wholesome human I’ve ever met. She was crying when we were all leaving and actually wrote me a big letter as well.

“I was telling my friends from Edinburgh about her when I came back and we decided to just go out to Madrid and see her. I’ve also met up with a few of our group in Copenhagen since being back – the friendships I’ve made feel like they are friendships for life.”

Message to other students

“I would tell every single person to consider going to Guelph. There’s a guy from Strathclyde who took my room in halls and I put him in touch with a lot of our friends out there and he’s having the time of his life – it really is such a special place.

“There were absolutely no negatives of doing this. Everybody says Canada is expensive but I didn’t find that at all. It’s 55p to $1 and the pricing is pretty much the same as here so I was basically getting double my money.

“I honestly couldn’t recommend it enough – I had the time of my life.”

Find out more about exchange opportunities at GCU here

By Ross Clark      
Got an SHLS or GSBS story? Email me at Ross.Clark@gcu.ac.uk or message me on Twitter