A man named Endel Tulving once said that memory is like mental time travel. Every time you remember, you’re re-experiencing something that happened in the past as if it were happening in the present. Tulving was a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, where he laid the foundations for our understanding of memory today.
We all come to university with a lifetime’s worth of memories. And with our memory of the past comes our expectation for the future — whether it’s the expectation of the people you’ll meet, the courses you’ll take, or the person you’ll be by the end of four or more years.
But the beauty of starting something entirely new is that your expectations often won’t match the eventual outcome. Understandably, that can be kind of scary. We hope that this Handbook will help ease some of that stress by giving you the tips to surviving university life we all wish we’d known in first year. We’ve put our love, sweat, and stress into this thing — but it was well worth it to welcome you to the next few years of your university life.
After all, this is a place where you’ll make memories. I hope you make some good ones.
Erene Stergiopoulos
Features Editor, The Varsity, 2011-2012
