I. Shad Valley
In July of the summer in-between Grade 11 and Grade 12 I went to Ottawa, specifically, Carlton University. There I attended the Shad Valley program for high-achieving high students interested in math, science, and business. Shad Valley changed me. I came back a far less naïve, more bitter and cynical, and more tired person than I left. Over the years I’ve sorted my experience into the following insights.
- People are the same everywhere. I met people from Ontario and the Maritimes, many of whom were first generation immigrants from all over the world. I was startled to discover that all of these people were mirrors of people I knew at home in high school; there was the music geek, the computer geeks, the jocks, etc. The second part of this realization is that going someplace else won’t solve any problems. Inevitably, my life there would be the same as before.
- Intelligence is not a personality trait. This is in the same vain as my first statement. Having a 95% average in school has nothing to do with being shy, kind/rude, or even whether or not you’re a drug addict.
- People will cheat you. After being sold on an exciting month away and having my parents pay large sums of cash I discovered that the program mysteriously had virtually no money (not to mention terrible food). Almost every activity done there was designed to market and promote the program. In essence, a group of talented students became their free labour pool.
- In a much lighter spirit, I found out that it is possible to sleep in a lecture. In fact, there is video documentation of my doing so. I consider this experience to have been a preparation for university, although I’ve yet to find any instructor here that incredibly boring.
Incidentally, it was on the last day of my Shad Valley experience that I received the compliment that touched me unlike any other one I’ve ever been given. The words are simple: “So you’re the boy my son went to church with”. However, I’ll never forget the light in her eyes when she said it. “She” was the mother of a very nice East Indian boy. To my surprise, their family was very strongly Catholic and so the two of us went to mass together (it was just us). Until her comment this never really occurred to me to be as profound as it was.
- People are the same everywhere. I met people from Ontario and the Maritimes, many of whom were first generation immigrants from all over the world. I was startled to discover that all of these people were mirrors of people I knew at home in high school; there was the music geek, the computer geeks, the jocks, etc. The second part of this realization is that going someplace else won’t solve any problems. Inevitably, my life there would be the same as before.
- Intelligence is not a personality trait. This is in the same vain as my first statement. Having a 95% average in school has nothing to do with being shy, kind/rude, or even whether or not you’re a drug addict.
- People will cheat you. After being sold on an exciting month away and having my parents pay large sums of cash I discovered that the program mysteriously had virtually no money (not to mention terrible food). Almost every activity done there was designed to market and promote the program. In essence, a group of talented students became their free labour pool.
- In a much lighter spirit, I found out that it is possible to sleep in a lecture. In fact, there is video documentation of my doing so. I consider this experience to have been a preparation for university, although I’ve yet to find any instructor here that incredibly boring.
Incidentally, it was on the last day of my Shad Valley experience that I received the compliment that touched me unlike any other one I’ve ever been given. The words are simple: “So you’re the boy my son went to church with”. However, I’ll never forget the light in her eyes when she said it. “She” was the mother of a very nice East Indian boy. To my surprise, their family was very strongly Catholic and so the two of us went to mass together (it was just us). Until her comment this never really occurred to me to be as profound as it was.
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