Bright eyed, bushy tailed, and more excited than ever, I entered into my first semester at SFU last fall. “You’ll just be a number to them,” I was told about transitioning to university. But that seemed fair because, to me, “they” represented an elusive and faceless entity.
I was eager to begin my post-secondary career, and I couldn’t have imagined that my health had the potential to derail my entire semester. I found myself trying to navigate a system with which I was wholly unfamiliar, desperately trying, between fevered T-3 naps, to be excused from my midterms and assignments.
My illness started as a cold that just hung on. A month or so into being sick, I decided that it might be something to check out with my doctor. When I did, “Infectious mononucleosis” wasn’t something I was expecting to hear. All I knew of “mono” was that it could put people out of commission for months on end and that it was heavily stigmatized as the “kissing disease.”
I braced myself for the jokes and the sneers. The reactions I got from people didn’t disappoint: a knowing look and then something like “I can guess how that happened.” The reality of the situation is that I could have gotten mono by drinking out of the wrong cup, but that’s never the first assumption.
I couldn’t have imagined that my health had the potential to derail my entire semester.
Instead of the months of illness I feared, I was only intensely sick for about three weeks. Those three weeks just happened to coincide with most of my midterms and assignments. The day it hit me the worst, in fact, was the day of my first exam at SFU. I emailed my prof and then, with no response, I decided to go to student services to figure out what the correct procedure was for absence due to illness.
I found it difficult to get the information I needed and I had no idea what resources were available to me. I didn’t know that there was an official certificate of illness, or that you could withdraw from courses under extenuating circumstances with no academic penalty. I felt beaten by the system and nearly ready to give up, preparing myself to accept failing grades across the board.
At my worst, my family encouraged me to drop out so I could just focus on getting better. While that option would have alleviated any immediate pressures, I found myself in panic over the thought of wasting all of the time, effort and money I had put into school so far. Dropping out of my first semester would have felt like a false start. Though the situation was beyond my control, I would have felt like I had failed.
It was the incredible understanding and support that my professors showed me that convinced me I could salvage my semester. I received personalized emails and was offered generous accommodations that inspired me to dive right back into my schooling. I had the chance to submit assignments later and take exams later or with different weighting. As I recovered, I managed to make up everything that I had missed.
After the experience, I felt SFU might not be the large unfeeling institution I had previously thought it to be. The caring individuals that I encountered during that time and ever since have shifted my perspective entirely.
