There is something particularly dangerous about watching too many college movies before starting university.
Suddenly, you are not just enrolling in classes.
You are arriving on a gorgeous campus where you immediately find your people, professors are intellectually fascinated by you, every seminar turns into a life-changing debate and there is always some conveniently timed social event happening after class.
Isha is fully aware of this.
She is also choosing to believe in it anyway.
“I hope to have a very memorable Hallmark movie college experience,” she tells The Row.
Honestly, aim high.
This fall, Isha is moving from Pune, India to Toronto to begin life sciences at U of T’s St. George campus. She will be living at University College, with a current placement in Morrison Hall, and stepping into a university experience that looks almost nothing like the school environment she is leaving behind.
She is excited for the academics.
She is excited for Toronto.
She is extremely excited for the shopping.
And somewhere between Trinity One, Pilates classes, café runs and her first Canadian winter, Isha is hoping first year gives her something even bigger: the chance to decide who she wants to be when nobody already knows her.
First things first: she will wake up at 3 a.m. for a café
There are a few essential facts to establish about Isha before anything else.
She loves café hopping.
Not in the casual “I enjoy an iced latte sometimes” sense.
“I will fuck someone up for, like, a café run,” she says. “You can wake me up for it at 3 a.m. and I will go somewhere with you.”
Fortunately, she has selected a city where finding caffeine should not be particularly difficult.
Isha currently lives in Pune but spends a significant amount of time in Mumbai. U of T, surprisingly, was not originally part of her university plan.
During a family trip to Toronto the summer before her senior year, family friends kept encouraging her to consider it.
So she did.
“Then I researched the university a little, and I got to know the program, and I got to know about the clubs and just, you know, in general what a great campus St. George is,” she says.
That was enough.
Now, Toronto is about to become home.
Right now, moving countries still feels suspiciously like a vacation
There are suitcases waiting to be packed.
Her parents are coming with her to Toronto.
There will be IKEA trips.
For the moment, Isha says the reality of actually moving across the world has not fully landed.
“I feel like I still think it’s like a vacation,” she says. “It’s like a fun little, ‘Oh, we’re going shopping to IKEA,’ but I’m moving.”
That distinction will probably become clearer once her parents leave.
For now, she is focusing on the practical things.
Like what absolutely needs to survive the flight.
Her hair and skincare products are non-negotiable.
“I’m very particular about my hair and my skin because they’re very sensitive,” she says.
Then there are the sneakers.
Isha describes herself as a “one-sneaker girl,” which means one pair gets worn until there is essentially nothing left to save.
“I’ve worn mine to, like, threads. There’s a hole in the bottom and everything.”
A replacement pair is ready for Toronto.
Winter clothing, however, is not.
Isha has experienced snow before, but nothing resembling the version Toronto tends to offer in February.
Everyone she has spoken to has apparently given her the same advice: do not bother trying to bring an Indian winter jacket and pretending it will be fine.
The Canadian parka will be purchased upon arrival.
Along with a few other things.
“And Hollister and Aritzia,” she adds. “I cannot wait. I swear I’m moving to study just so I can shop.”
Priorities remain intact.
Fifteen years at the same school will make anyone crave a rebrand
There is a difference between wanting to reinvent yourself because high school was embarrassing and wanting to reinvent yourself because practically everyone around you has known you since childhood.
Isha falls into the second category.
She attended a K-12 school and, aside from some time spent abroad, has spent around 15 years in essentially the same environment.
The same teachers.
A significant portion of the same classmates.
The same people carrying versions of you in their heads from years ago.
“I’ve never really had a new year where I’ve been able to speak to someone without them having a preconceived notion of me, good or bad,” she says.
That is one of the things she is most excited to leave behind.
At U of T, someone can meet her without knowing who she was in Grade 7, what happened three years ago or which friend group she once belonged to.
“I’ve never been able to introduce myself to someone and be like, ‘Hey, I’m Isha,’ and then be like, ‘Hi, nice to meet you. I don’t know who you are.’”
For Isha, that anonymity feels less lonely than liberating.
“I think there’s definitely a lot of scope for me to really get to choose how I make my impressions on people and the kind of friend that I want to be this year.”
That reinvention is not just about becoming more outgoing or dressing differently.
She is thinking about it more seriously than that.
Isha is open about not always loving how she handled situations in high school and wanting university to be an opportunity to grow out of some of those patterns.
“I really want to actively try to be a better person than I was in high school,” she says.
She does not frame that growth as something that will automatically happen just because she changed countries.
That is also what makes her nervous.
“I want to take accountability and I want to grow from it. I’m just scared that I will not be able to properly grow from it.”
It might be one of the more honest first-year goals there is.
Not becoming an entirely different person.
Just becoming a version of yourself you like a little more.
The wardrobe rebrand is still under construction
The personality transformation may be intentional.
The fashion transformation is currently a work in progress.
Isha spent years attending a school with a uniform, which means one very important part of the university experience is about to become unexpectedly complicated:
Choosing an outfit every single morning.
Her current style sits somewhere between downtown grunge, Western Y2K and what she describes as an Indian version of the same aesthetic.
“Y2K Indian is, like, kind of a separate thing from Y2K Western, which I feel like I’m a mix of.”
Think bangles worked into everyday outfits, kurtas, styled hair and the influences she sees from girls in cities like Delhi and Mumbai, mixed with the more familiar downtown-Y2K uniform.
At least, that is the September plan.
“I’m gonna have fun with that until I get bored, and then you’ll catch me in the same sweatset for a whole two weeks straight.”
A remarkably accurate prediction of what tends to happen somewhere around midterm season.
Somehow, the college-movie fantasy is mostly academic
Isha’s dream version of university is not entirely parties and spontaneous adventures.
A surprisingly large portion of it involves sitting in a classroom.
Specifically, Trinity One.
She has already secured a place in the program and talks about it with the kind of enthusiasm most people reserve for concert tickets.
“You know all of these college movies, they have all these scenes where the main character is in this concentrated class with a professor or a teacher, and they have these wonderful discussions, and there’s a debate and a project?”
That.
That is what she wants.
“Getting into Trinity One for me is, like, my pathway to have that kind of movie-like experience.”
Her ideal scenario apparently includes research projects, presentations, intense discussions and the slight possibility that a professor looks across the room one day and immediately realizes they are witnessing greatness.
“I hope I have these really insane discussions and debates and, like, a professor just looks at me in the crowd and she’s like, ‘Her. We’re hiring her right now. She just looks so smart.’”
Manifest it.
She is also genuinely excited to study in a library.
As someone who has never really had the library-study experience before, Robarts and Gerstein currently possess a level of novelty that will probably be very funny to revisit around finals.
“I have, like, a pretty academic vision, honestly.”
There is, however, one academic reality she is already prepared for.
U of T may humble her.
“I know I’m gonna get knocked down a few pegs,” she says. “I just really want to know how many pegs.”
Coming from a smaller, familiar academic environment, she is curious to see where she stands once she is surrounded by a completely new group of students.
That first returned assignment may be character development.
She wants people, just not 30 of them in one group chat
Academics aside, one of Isha’s biggest hopes is the same one that keeps resurfacing throughout these First-Year Diaries interviews.
Finding her people.
Not acquaintances.
Not the 25-person Frosh Week group that forms because everyone is terrified of being alone and then disintegrates before reading week.
Actual friends.
“I think a good small group of people,” she says. “At most six or seven people that are just my people.”
Isha has already heard the stories from older students.
You meet everyone during orientation.
Everyone introduces everyone to everyone else.
Suddenly, your group chat has enough people to qualify as a small seminar.
Then someone does not like someone.
Someone hooks up with someone.
Someone tells someone something.
And the group slowly explodes.
Isha’s requested alternative is beautifully simple.
“We’re a nice, functioning group of human beings that understand each other’s boundaries.”
The bar is on the floor, but somehow university friendship groups continue tripping over it.
Her current strategy for finding these people is straightforward.
Talk to everyone.
Compliment people.
See who moves past the inevitable “What program are you in?” stage of conversation.
“I’ve found compliments have made me some of the best friends in my life.”
Honestly, write that one down before orientation.
First party ever: loading
One part of university life will be completely new for Isha.
Parties.
She already has a ticket to a Frosh event, which she expects to become her first proper party experience.
That comes with excitement, but also some uncertainty.
Isha grew up around friends who generally did not drink or smoke, and she says those things carried more social stigma in her environment than she expects them to in Toronto.
She is curious about how she will navigate being around it more often.
“I just want to see how I do with that kind of peer pressure around me.”
The actual goal is not suddenly becoming a party girl.
It is figuring out how to participate in campus social life without feeling like she has to change parts of herself that she does not want to change.
When The Row checks back in during Frosh Week, she already knows what we should ask.
“Ask me how my experience with my first party ever was.”
Noted.
Pirates of the Caribbean has apparently been watched 13 times
Outside of school, Isha contains multitudes.
She dances, although she insists she is not formally trained.
COVID gave her enough time to practise on her own that she eventually developed the confidence to actually enjoy it, and she is hoping to find a dance club at U of T.
Cheerleading may be slightly less likely.
“If I got thrown in the air, I think I’d cry,” she says.
Fair.
She briefly considered the possibility of becoming a mascot instead.
Musically, she is “unashamedly a mainstream pop girly,” although R&B, folk, classic rock and indie rock have increasingly entered the rotation.
Her favourite band is Bleachers, and Toronto’s concert scene is already high on the list of things she wants to explore.
Then there is Pirates of the Caribbean.
“It is my hyperfixation.”
She has watched the series exactly 13 times.
The thirteenth viewing happened two days before the interview.
“It’s such a turn-your-brain-off-and-watch-it kind of movie.”
Marvel rewatches also make the list, along with Modern Family.
But some of her favourite shows are tied to home.
Isha and her dad share a love of mystery and crime series, including NCIS and The Blacklist.
One of her favourite memories is from Grade 3, when the two of them were watching NCIS at midnight on a school night.
Her mom walked in while a character was being beaten up and understandably asked what exactly her father was showing an eight-year-old.
His solution?
Pull the blanket over Isha.
“‘No, she’s asleep. What do you mean?’”
Dad logic remains undefeated.
Leaving home is the exciting part and the hard part
For all the freedom that comes with leaving, Isha knows there are people she will miss intensely.
Her family.
Her friends.
Her boyfriend.
The people who have been woven into her daily life for years will suddenly be a plane ride and several time zones away.
But there is a strange duality to that distance.
She is sad they will not be there.
She is also glad they will not be there.
“As much as I love my friends and my boyfriend and everybody, I’m also equally glad that they are not going to be in college with me.”
Because this change gets to belong to her.
“I get to show them how I’ve changed, and I do not have to have them there influencing how I change.”
Then, after months apart, there is the reward.
Four months of updates.
A new city.
New friends.
New stories.
Potentially a completely new version of Isha arriving home for the holidays.
So what does the Hallmark version of U of T actually look like?
Apparently:
Trinity One discussions.
Library study sessions.
A small group of friends who inexplicably all get along.
Dance.
Pilates.
Concerts.
A lot of café hopping.
Possibly a dive bar once she is old enough.
A wardrobe sitting somewhere between grungy downtown Toronto and Indian Y2K.
And at least one successful first party.
Mostly, though, Isha wants the opportunity to arrive somewhere nobody knows her yet and see what happens next.
Right now, Toronto still feels theoretical.
Her room is a residence assignment on a screen.
Robarts is a library she has heard about.
Frosh is a ticket she bought.
The people who might eventually become her closest friends are still strangers.
“The way I feel about it now is like it’s a concept,” she says. “But maybe once I’m there, it’s like it’s a real thing to me.”
Soon enough, it will be.
The suitcases will be packed.
The new sneakers will be unboxed.
The parka will eventually be acquired.
And somewhere between move-in and her first Trinity One discussion, Isha’s Hallmark movie officially starts.