Cameron

Hey I'm Cameron. I'm in my fourth year and I'm from Ottawa, Ontario. So I think for me coming to Guelph, I had a lot of hope that I was going to do amazing here, and I have been doing amazing here, but definitely that transition into first year was difficult for that reason. First off, I wanted to be a physician, so high grades was the biggest thing for me. You needed to maintain that 4.0 above 90 average, so that was a huge goal for me, but I also wanted to get involved in extracurriculars, student politics, sports- I wanted to get involved in everything, the exact same as high school, but when I got here in first year, the work load kind of started to pick up, so I was like okay, I'm not going to take on as much. I'm just going to focus on school. Well what I found is that I didn't do as well as I know I possibly could have. I was so focused on school. That was the only thing I was focusing on. I wasn't doing things that I really enjoyed outside of my academics, so I didn't get involved really in any extracurriculars. I wasn't going to the gym, I wasn't working on exercising like I normally do. I was just focused on school, so I actually felt my grades slip a little bit. Second year, I got heavily involved in extracurriculars, I started going to the gym again, I started working out, and my grades actually increased by a significant amount. I work best when I'm busy because what I find is even if I'm not too busy and I'm still doing the things I enjoy, I'm doing better. And then I felt like my mental health drastically improve. My confidence, everything, drastically improved when I started working out and going to the gym. I had a lot more energy, so I carried that forward into second year. Why I'm super happy that I developed all these coping strategies myself and not just fully leaning on other people is because I know that as much as they want to, those people can't be there for me all the time. That's why for me, the gym and personal fitness for me is something that I take super seriously because that's my time during the day where it's like my self care time. For me, it's a priority. I make working out and my personal fitness my priority because it does help with my mental health, and for me, like that takes priority over anything. So if I could go back., the first thing I would say is just don't be so hard on yourself, but also remember to take care of yourself first. You can't help other people if you're not doing well yourself.