Commentary, Opinion

Those who decry McGill’s work-hard-play-hard culture have it wrong

Four days of activities, DJs, and early rises is a serious undertaking at the end of your summer holidays. Some outsiders raise eyebrows when told that’s how McGill readies students for university life—and yet it sets the tone perfectly for our degree. What better way to work out how many nights you can handle on the trot and still function the next day? Who better to introduce you to student life than upper-year students who’ve been in your shoes? Of course, Frosh wasn’t perfect for everyone, but those who declare that it inculcates a toxic culture of peer pressure and alcohol couldn’t be more wrong. 

Frosh has changed with the times and does a great job of ensuring that the almost 5000 students who partake in the orientation week can move at their own pace. As a first-year, I did Frosh sober (loved it), and became a Frosh leader this year. About half of my froshies hardly touched a drink all week, enjoying the opportunities to dip their toes in Montreal nightlife, make friends over a game of beach volleyball, and explore the city. 

This contrasts with a crew of Québecois first-years I bumped into at the Mont-Royal viewpoint on a morning run back in October. They told me they were doing “scunts”—a portmanteau of “scavenger hunts”—to earn points for their team in one of McGill’s activity weeks. These students had read ahead in their classes so they could spend their day running up mountains, taking shots, and all sorts of other chaos. They told me that so far, it had been the best fun they’d ever had. 

One might wonder how it can possibly be in the interest of those students to miss two lectures to spend a day doing silly drunken challenges. However silly as they might seem, these activities play an important role in establishing community, making friends, and having a good time. A McGill degree isn’t easy, but that doesn’t mean students should chain themselves to the library year-round. 

Beyond the classic “you’re only young once” argument—though it is true that you’re not going to be able to squeeze out a 2000-word essay the day after getting home at 3 a.m. forever—life doesn’t get any less busy. Being able to balance academic deadlines with whatever else you enjoy is a vital skill, whether that means getting involved in Intramurals, acting in a play, or running a club—whatever piques your interest. What’s important is making time to do anything other than your essays—if not for the sake of your mental health, then at least for the sake of having something to talk about besides that professor.

A student bar like Bar des Arts (BDA) might not immediately appeal to everyone, but the excitement on the faces in its line reveals that it’s doing a hell of a good job providing respite for stressed McGill students. Frosh and scunts may look like academic self-sabotage, but the 4.0 GPA of the sorority girl who goes out every night (as per the transcript posted on her Instagram for 150 scunt points) evidences the patently obvious truth that McGill students are capable of scheduling their work and their play. 

Some will take it too far and drop a few marks, as has been the case since the dawn of time, but that’s a lesson we all must learn. University is more than simply ensuring you nail your calculus test or can perfectly outline the realist perspective on nuclear proliferation. It’s about learning self-discipline, giving yourself the broad base of experiences you need to tackle an evolving world, and working out who you are. At the end of the day, university is where you make the most of your newfound freedom. Which will you regret more at 30: Dropping down to an A- on POLI 244 because you failed to squeeze in those last couple of readings between a soccer game and a power hour, or having never made the memories at all?

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