By Hailey Kuang 

The idea of participating in an Exchange had been floating around in my mind since high school. However, when I started my first year at SFU, the pandemic was ongoing and travel was not feasible at the time, so I shelved the idea and kind of forgot about doing an Exchange. 

Fast forward to my third year as a Linguistics major, during a semester off when I visited my family in Shenzhen, China. We always transited through Hong Kong to reach Shenzhen when visiting family and during the trip I realized that I never got to visit or explore Hong Kong properly. Hong Kong is also quite an expensive city, especially when it comes to accommodation. But from my research, on-campus housing was quite affordable, which was a huge plus.

So, out of a desire to explore a city I had passed through so many times, I applied for Exchange. When deciding on which host university to apply to, I mainly considered what courses a school offered and the location of the university. That's how I settled upon Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). 

PolyU didn't have a linguistics department, so I looked into the courses they offered and decided on applying to their English and Communication department, which offered linguistics-related courses. I was very happy with the location of the PolyU campus and student residence. Both were located in Hung Hom, a neighbourhood located very close to touristy districts like Tsim Sha Tsui, Central, and Mong Kok.

Another thing that I considered was the distance between the student halls and main campus. The walk from my dorm (Hung Hom Halls) to the main campus is only 10 mins via a pedestrian footbridge and underground tunnel. Whereas another university required students to take a 45-minute MTR (subway) ride from their dorm to the main campus. Exchange students staying for only one semester are not eligible for the student Octopus card (transit card), so that would have meant having to pay regular adult fare prices just to get to class every day. 

At PolyU, I'm currently taking three courses, two of which are linguistics courses. The first one is an in-depth look at Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), where we explore different methods of CDA and apply them to various texts. Next is a course in which we examine different perspectives in Task-based language teaching (TBLT). Every student in this course learned English as an additional language (EAL), so the insights provided by them in discussions has been eye opening and has proven to be extremely valuable when completing assignments, such as preparing a teaching demonstration and creating a TBLT lesson plan. 

As a fourth-year student who is wanting to pursue either elementary school teaching or EAL teaching as a career, the Exchange Program has provided me an opportunity to experience living in a place that I've considered moving to after undergraduate studies. Exchange has also given me an opportunity to make close friends outside of my social circle in Metro Vancouver.

I am a commuter student with high school friends at SFU, so making close friends outside of my existing friend group has been hard. On Exchange, I knew no one else and, in that situation, I was more motivated to pursue friendships and put effort into maintaining those friendships. I can happily say that I have made multiple close friends with whom I intend to keep in close contact. 

One of the biggest surprises during my Exchange has been the lack of anxiety while beginning a new life in a new city. I typically get very anxious when entering new situations (for example, starting university or starting a new job), and I expected to feel the same way when going on Exchange. However, I have not felt particularly anxious. I've experienced some moments of nervousness, but I was lucky to have support in the form of phone calls with my family and talking it through with new and old friends. 

This realization has made me reflect on how much I’ve grown since I was a scared and anxious first-year student embarking on my SFU journey. Of course, this realization was also one of the catalysts for putting myself out there to meet people and put effort into maintaining those relationships. I didn’t expect to forge so many new close friendships and it’s definitely been one of the main highlights for me so far!