'You do you'
A difference that I’ve definitely observed is in the use of sarcasm – I feel it’s used a lot more back home. When people ask “so why were you in Canada?” I’ll be tempted to make a sarcastic remark such as “looking for moose” or “just fancied an extended summer holiday”. Making that kind of comment here would require me to explain that I am being sarcastic a lot more often than it would in Scotland.
Back in February I can remember entering ‘what is a social enterprise’ into Google. Honestly I did that after reading the programme description which said “You will gain real-world experience in a social enterprise overseas in Canada”. Fast forward to the end of August and I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp of what they are and why the social entrepreneurship movement is growing.
In truth it’s difficult to sum up the past couple of months. I’ve been interning at an organisation that looks to get more people involved in entrepreneurship and educate the wider community as to what social entrepreneurship is, which doesn’t really have much in common with what I’m studying. But that’s been the beauty of it for me in terms of the experience gained form working here as I’ve proved to myself that I can be very adaptable.
Wanderlust. It’s defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a strong desire to travel”. I feel like a large section of my generation have this desire, myself included. It's almost becoming a cliche to say that you want to travel the world. The Students for Social Impact programme has allowed me not simply to travel, but to actually live in a different continent. For me to now be able to say “yeah I lived in Canada for a couple of months” is pretty surreal. I’ve been able to meet a whole bunch of Canadians and get a grasp on some of the cultural differences between Scotland and here. Living in Canada has been thoroughly enjoyable, I only have good things to say about the people here in New Brunswick. Sure there have been minor gripes, such as not including VAT in prices, not having mixers in the liquor stores and the extremely large crisp packets.
There’s a phrase I’ve picked up from various people in my time living here: ‘You do you’. Essentially I take it to represent the far less judgemental culture that there is here compared to back home. Take Saturday nights out for example. Back home if I went out in Aberdeen dressed in shorts, a t-shirt and wearing a baseball cap people would be looking me up and down. What’s more is I probably wouldn’t be allowed in to certain bars. Here everyone’s a lot more laid back, the entire nightlife scene is more casual and must admit I prefer it that way. Obviously that’s a pretty subjective observation and I can’t claim it to be true for all of Canada, but at the same time it’s something I’ve picked up one more than once. I’d be pretty confident in saying that people are generally more open minded here, and ‘You do you’ sums it up for me. I aim to call upon that phrase many times from now on.
Overall it’s been a great summer and I’m grateful for this programme being introduced this year and for the British Council taking me on as one of the 19 interns from nearly 600 that applied.
Next stop, the SSIM Wrap-Up session and a conference in York..
