Looking back the past few months I spent at McGill University, I have to say that I had gone through a completely different experience compared to that in CUHK. I took active participation in the “Orientation Camp” of McGill, and the feeling of being a freshman again was overwhelming and exciting. Various activities provided me with abundant helpful information about campus facilities and academic culture. Thanks to these kind supports, I accommodated the new university life very quickly.
But I also have to admit that studying at McGill is much more stressful than I expected. I took a total of five courses varying from political science to natural language processing. The workload of each course was unexpectedly heavy because we are expected to do a lot of readings before each lecture and interact with the professor in the class. Moreover, assignments for coding and programming were not easy since they required a lot of innovative ideas and deep research. I was challenged, but at the same time, I learned and grew a lot thanks to the high standard. In the final project of COMP 550, I even accomplished an academic paper on the topic of data debiasing together with my groupmates!
During my study in both finance and computer science fields, I gradually discovered where my interest lay. When a challenging coding assignment was out, I was eager to do it, finish it, even though I may spend more than 10 hours sitting in the library. Therefore, I chose my path to be a computer scientist with confidence. In addition, I set an achievable goal for me: to be skillful in at least 5 programming language. With such a clear goal ahead, I am sure I would be better and better on the way I chose for myself.
Looking back, I realized that this exchange experience had changed me a lot. Thanks to the challenging courses, I learned that one should always stay hungry for knowledge. Before exchanging out, I was a little bit arrogant due to my excellent academic performance and a series of awards. But in McGill, I saw plenty of talents around me, humble and eager. In class, they were enthusiastic in asking inspiring questions; after class, they showed their amazing programming skills. I then realized that one should never be arrogant of what he knows because there is always more to discovered and I should be unafraid to face my ignorance.
Caption 1: Beer & Music Festival. Frosh activity for making more friends at the very beginning of the new semester. 
Caption 2: Happiest Smile at first glance of McGill in summer.
Caption 3: Graduation Season. My new friend was about to graduate and left a photo with me for a sweet memory (I am the right one).
