Exchange Pros and Cons

Web Editor

Harrison Cruikshank (3L)

Foreign correspondent, is of course, a facetious title. The articles are jokes (in both the literal sense, and also hopefully in the hip-like-the-kids-say way, meaning funny). That said, speaking to my fellow exchange-ees and drawing on my own experience, I am in a place to provide all of you exchange-wannabees some serious advice.

Please find below a multi-factor non-exhaustive pros & cons list to decide whether going on exchange is right for you.

Pro 1: Exchange is exciting

Being out of North America for a four months is indisputably the main draw of exchange. Whether going to Europe or Asia, you will meet new people (probably other exchange students), eat exciting new foods, and generally be immersed in an entirely different culture.

This is a major pro if (A) this is an experience you crave and (B) you have not done much travelling. One of the top reasons you’ll find people choose not to go on exchange is because they did it in undergrad, or had an IHRP grant in 1L summer, and so they are not as awed by the opportunity to sleep in a foreign bed for a few months.

Con 1: Exchange can be very boring

The other side of the inherent excitement of being on exchange is that at times you may find yourself very bored. Being in a strange place can be isolating, and you may need to actively work to make plans. Going out all the time also costs money, and with the brutal Canadian dollar you may find yourself having to spur activities that drain your wallet. Depending on where you stay, at a certain point you may find you’ve explored the entirety of the free-activities of the city you’re staying in. I watched a lot of Netflix on exchange.

This is a fairly easily mitigated: go on exchange with friends, make friends at your host institution, and make lots of (affordable) plans. You could also take up a new hobby; have you ever tried boxing in French? Do you know how to write code? These are things you could do simply by virtue of having a term away from your UoT commitments. Also, be really rich if possible. Having money is a great life hack.

Pro 2: Exchange is amazingly easy

This point merits its own article, hopefully some handsome 3L wrote one One of the reasons you might get bored is because the host institutions are, spoiler alert, not UofT Law. Many of them are undergraduate programs, and even the graduate level programs are by all accounts not nearly as challenging as a term at the future home of Jackman Hall. You also probably won’t have any pesky extracurriculars to worry about. Journal work? Forget it! Clinics? NOT THIS TIME.

Easy can be pretty wonderful at this point in your career. You likely worked pretty hard over your 2L summer, and you’re about to start working the hours of a grown-up lawyer with the potential added stress of your hire-back status after articles. Now is a great time to take a break. On exchange, you can just do you.

Con 2: Exchange is painfully easy

Easy classes are a great novelty at first, but this novelty can wear off for some. Easy classes are also often paired with poor instruction relative to Toronto. You sort of take for granted being taught by a world-class faculty until you’re not being taught by one. While quality of instruction does vary from institution to institution, a lower level of intellectual stimulation is almost guaranteed. Of this year’s students, the only ones who described their experience to me as anything more than a joke were those in Geneva, and on a scale of 1-5 where 1 is “I slept through my classes and got the gold medal” and 5 is an average term at Toronto, it still only scored a 4.

Whether you care about this is up to you. If your plan for 3L is to create the easiest year of school possible while you run out the clock until job-time, then you probably could not care less about classes being too easy. If you want to learn the law and be excited about your classes more than anything else, staying in Toronto is frankly a better choice. If you want to have your cake and eat it too, try your best to pick a host institution known to be a bit more rigorous.

Pro 3: You will have great opportunities to travel

Your home during exchange is a probably a gateway to either Europe or Asia. By Canadian standards, international flights are all fairly affordable—and don’t forget about trains and buses. My own relatively light travel schedule by exchange student standards still brought me to cities across six different countries. Many students in Hong Kong traveled so frequently that they were out of their host city for more than half of their exchange.

People exaggerate when they say this is the last opportunity you’ll have for travel, but only slightly. You might at some point consciously take a break from your career to travel. Otherwise, the next time you’ll be able to spend months abroad with next to no responsibility is when you retire. If this sort of freaks you out, exchange might be the right call.

Con 3: Travelling costs a lot of money

Our currency is terrible right now, and it’s getting worse. It is not out of the realm of possibility to see a Canadian dollar worth half an American one in the not-too-distant future. If you think the cost of living in Toronto is high, look up your potential host cities—most of them are even worse, especially factoring in the exchange rate. It is reasonably foreseeable that you could go on exchange and then do nothing when you realize you can’t afford fun.

This is an inevitable consideration (unless you’re really rich, in which case you can stop reading here). Look at the costs associated with potential host cities, and work out your budget. It is true that you can rack up debt now while you have time for fun and pay it off later when all you do is work, however this only applies if you have access to the ability to go further in debt. So the question is: can you realistically enjoy your exchange without reaching the point where Unc’ Scotsh cuts you off? Or will you travel halfway across the world to live in squalor, crushing grapes with your feet for crooked wine makers just to get by? Think on that.

So weigh your factors:

  • Are you excited about living abroad?
  • Are you going to get bored for lack of funds/creativity?
  • Do you need a break from work?
  • Do you care about lowering the quality of your education for one term?
  • Do you have a travel bug?
  • Do you have the money necessary to feed that aforementioned bug?

Once you’ve figured that out, it’s time to research cities. Talk to as many people as possible, and plan ahead so you can hit the ground running. Happy travels. Or, happy stay-at-homes. Whichever you prefer.

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