What Happens Next: Ethan B’s Story
By Ethan Biswurm
High school was certainly a formative period for me. Having gone through a school suspension, bad acne, and the first real heartbreak of my life, I certainly wouldn’t say it was dull. True to form, high school didn’t end with a somber or anti-climactic goodbye, but rather a rude awakening of the unforgiving consequences of my own actions.
I’m a Canadian citizen but up until this point I’d never lived in Canada. I’d always wanted to attend university in the “Great North” to make up for that lost time. While UofT certainly had international recognition, it seemed too boring to me and my brother was already there; I had already had enough of chasing after his shadow.
Having grown up predominantly in Asia, UBC provided a comfortable middle ground of plenty of Asian influence thanks to the immigrant population in Vancouver, while still having respectable international accreditation.
Having applied to UBC, Waterloo, Western, and others, I was excited to have received conditional acceptance to both UBC and Western. Setting my sights on UBC, I dodged accepting my offer to Western in order to have a safety option in case things went awry.
Still following in the shadow of my older brother, I had spread my time thin. Between my own various interests, as well as the commitments I felt obligated to by my brother’s reputation, I started to fall behind in school. In late June, I found out my final grades fell through the floor. With my overall score having dropped by about 20%, it was clear that I did not fulfill my conditional offer to UBC. Not only that, but it also turns out I was one point short of fulfilling my conditional offer to Western, my “safety school”.
As it so happens, my parents had planned a summer trip to Osaka, Japan, and this news came just before we were about to leave. Here’s how that conversation went:
Parents: *yelling & screaming*
Me: *excuse*
Parents: “Well! I guess you’re taking a gap year!”
Me: *silence*
Parents: *more yelling & screaming*
Me: *potential solution*
Parents: “Go get your suitcase.”
What followed was the most awkward silence of my life on our ride to the airport.
My potential solution for acceptance to Western was to appeal my grades, and pray for a 1-point bump. With no internet on the flight over to Osaka, I was trapped in a faraday cage of uncertainty as to what my next year would look like. The only thing I could do to pass the time was to incessantly review my cold rejection email from Western, with the line “We wish you the best of luck in other places” stuck on a loop in my head. Soon after landing, I quickly looked for free airport Wi-Fi and found that, miraculously, I had been granted the 1-point bump! I was greeted with a warm welcome email from Western, and the humour of this reversal is not lost on me.
Then, with my life clearly steering in the direction of Western, I began to make plans for London, Ontario. Eventually learning that I could not stay in student residences due to my later “re-acceptance”, I had to find Off-Campus housing despite living on the literal opposite side of the planet.
After arriving at Western, I often found myself wondering What Happens Next? I carried a lot of guilt with me by having ended up at Western not by choice, but by my own shortcomings. I think I still do carry some of that guilt, but I eventually took this as cause to try harder: to become as involved within the student community as I could, to pave the opportunities for myself that had been promised elsewhere, and to elevate Western to the prestige my parents thought it lacked.
At my Sophs’ recommendation, I pursued a first year representative position on the Science Students’ Council, got involved with theatre productions, and applied to be a Soph myself. Being so involved, I started to notice many of the gaps in how our campus serves students and wanted to be a part of the solution. This led me to become a USC Science Councillor, and where I am now as the USC’s VP Governance & Finance.
I often rationalize my predicament by reminding myself that at UBC I may have been able to walk, but at Western, I can run. I learned to not get hung up on my surroundings, and to look at what they could uniquely offer. I hope that everyone can learn to recognize that we are not defined by our mistakes, but rather by how we choose to act when faced with them.
