I would never have been able to do something like this before joining ICS. Elani’s start to life at University of Toronto
Published: Mon 7 October 2024
This week, we caught up with Elani, who is now settling into life at the University of Toronto in Canada, having secured her place by achieving A*AAA this summer as part of our very first cohort of A level students at ICS.
Tea society and settling in
“I’ve recently joined two societies: a knitting/crochet one and the badminton club. I’ve met some really nice people at both. I also joined a physics reading group which consists of a few of us discussing some chaos theory/fluid mechanics articles once a week. There’s also a tea society here, which I find quite funny. It’s basically just a group of people who get together to drink tea and chat once or twice a week.”
A truly global campus
“There are 12 people on my floor in student halls and they’re all really nice. They’re from all over the world. A couple are from Singapore, one is from India, two are from Nigeria, two of the others are from China and one is from Colombia. The rest are from Canada. That’s five continents right there, including me!”
What’s next?
“Next semester I’ll be taking an intro to psychology class in the big dome-shaped building in the photo. There’s almost 1,500 students in the psych lectures so I think the exams for it are mostly multiple choice. I am looking forward to doing something less maths based though!”
“There are so many libraries here, and they’re all quite nice to study in. I think I’ve been in six so far… out of 40! I’m taking Physics, Organic Chemistry, Linear Algebra, Calculus and an Intro to Computer Science classes at the moment. The lab reports for Chemistry are quite similiar to how Mr Wright taught us to do them, which has been really helpful. A decent portion of the physics we are doing now builds off nicely from the end of the Physics A Level content. Also, it’s somehow already midterm season so I’ve been busy with revision recently.”
And finally…
“Oh, and… I was voted in to be the Vice President of my house a couple weeks ago. I had to do a small speech in front of 60 or so people as part of my campaign and I managed to get the majority of the votes. I honestly would never have been able to do something like that before joining ICS. As much as I said I disliked debating, it really did help grow my confidence. Thank you for encouraging me.”