Tales of a Freshman (And TAF Academy Alum!)

My name is Cameron Sharpe and I graduated from TAF Academy last year. I was one of the original students that attended TAFA when the school began five years ago. I now attend University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. I just finished my first year at college.  I learned so much this past year and I would like to share what I learned with all of you.

University of British Columbia is really amazing school, which I absolutely love. The people, the environment, and the culture are giving me once-in-a lifetime experiences.  I can say I had a truly good first-year experience.

In August, I was in an international program called JumpStart that introduced international students to the culture of Vancouver and life at UBC. This program helped me transition from high school to college. One of the main points JumpStart program tried to express to us was that you have to adapt and change your methods of learning in college.  It was a challenge to adapt at the beginning, but I did and you can too. Trust me, I know.

One thing that helped me adapt was that TAF Academy taught me to communicate my ideas and to ask for help when I needed it.  TAF Academy, as you may know, is a tiny school which has 25 students in a class.  UBC is HUGE and has 44,000 undergraduate students.  I went from being one student out of 25 to one student out of 298!

Your voice may seem small and you may seem like you are nobody in such a big lecture. I certainly felt that way at first. But, I still went to office hours and talked to my teachers and TAs about the problems and questions I had. I raised my hand during the class and sat in the front of the lecture class. Don’t get me wrong, I sometimes wanted to sit in the back of the class and sometimes didn’t want to participate.  But, I made sure that whenever I was learning something difficult I was seated in the front and asked as much questions as I could.  My thought is that teachers are there to help no matter what stage of education you are at so you have to advantage of this and ask as many questions as you can. No question is stupid.

Overall, I learned so much from first year experience at UBC.  I’m headed back soon for summer school where I will take my first courses in Kinesiology.