Alumni Voices | Julia Li, Class of 2022

At Wellington, our mission is to equip our pupils with the knowledge and skills to be well-rounded, globally-minded citizens. So our key metric of success is ultimately the success of our pupils. In our Alumni Voices series, we showcase such successes by catching up with Old Wellingtonians to learn about experiences and insights gained in life after Wellington. 

Today, 2022 graduate Julia Li, shares some valuable life lessons learned from her first year at Queens University in Canada, where she studies life sciences.   

I just finished my first year, and I feel that doing IB really helped a lot. Many of my classes last year overlapped with what I had already learned in Senior School. It gave me an edge. I already had a strong foundation in the concepts, so I had a lot more bandwidth to explore the subjects in greater depth.

I used to sing in the choir, and I took part in the musicals. And although I am pursuing a completely unrelated degree, it has been good to have a hobby like that that I can always go back to. I think it is really easy to forget to do things that are fun and not related to school when you start university, and having something like music in my life feels comfortable and familiar.  

I don't know if surprise would be the right word, but it has been great to meet people who come from such diverse backgrounds. I have come to learn a lot more about my own privilege and just how lucky I was to get the education and opportunities I enjoyed at Wellington. For instance, I did not realise how fortunate I was to have my parents pay for my university education. I don't have to stress out so much about keeping my grades up for fear of losing a scholarship. A lot of my classmates cannot say the same thing. It has been a valuable lesson for me this past year.

On a lighter note, I was surprised by how much school spirit people have. I don't know if this is just a North American thing but at the beginning of the year, I was on campus for orientation, and all of the engineering students had painted themselves purple. That was a surprise. A lot of people are really into college sports and show up for school teams and everything. I live in a college town where there are several universities, so it is everywhere you go. At Wellington, I was used to seeing this kind of thing on campus, but I had never seen that level of school spirit beyond the school gates, and I had certainly never seen purple engineers before either!

I would say like just keep an open mind. Things are going to be different in ways that you will never expect. You will likely encounter people from entirely different cultures and socio-economic backgrounds. So, be interested. You have a lot to learn from them.

Also, you have to learn how to advocate for yourself. If you miss an exam you have to be proactive in asking your professor for a reset if they are even nice enough to grant you one. This is especially true in your first year when some of your lectures have close to 400 students in them. Your professor may not even know who you are much less notice when you are absent from class. So, if you miss anything, it is up to you to get caught up. You quickly realise that you have to take care of yourself!

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