<p>This girl in my (IB HL) history class was asking our history teacher whether Bush was the president of Canada. (it’s in America right?)</p>
<p>this is random, but you said history class, so i couldnt resist. last year in ap us we learned about emmett till and how he was lynched. the next day a girl asked if he was still alive. no joke.</p>
<p>damn, can’t say I can beat any of these stories, just the basics “Harvard of Canada” or blanks stares.</p>
<p>And you said AP, so I couldn’t resist.
During AP Exams:</p>
<p>“You will have 90 minutes to complete this exam.”
“I thought you said we had an hour and a half?”</p>
<p>Being from Vermont, I’m so close to Canada (like, an hour away) that EVERYONE here knows McGill… so sadly I have no entertaining stories. Just lots of jealous friends looking to crash on my floor next year because they realized just how cool Montreal is :D</p>
<p>I found this forum because half my graduating class is going to McGill (not me…), and couldn’t resist this thread.</p>
<p>Another OT comment about stupid things people say in class…</p>
<p>There was a girl in English last semester who had some golden ones. </p>
<p>Studying the Great Gatsby: </p>
<p>“Did Dr. Eckleberg go to Gatsby’s funeral?” </p>
<p>I also had the most inane conversation with her:</p>
<p>Her: “What’s XVI?”
Me: "It doesn’t matter. Just go to the page that has “XVI on the top.”
Her: “Yeah but I need to know what XVI is”
Me: “Why?”
Her: “To find out the number of the chapter.”
Me: “But the chapters aren’t marked in numbers, they’re in Roman numerals, so it won’t help you to—”
Her: “Yeah but I can’t find the chapter without–”
Me: “YES YOU CAN. It says XVI. Find the one with XVI.”</p>
<p>I found when I was auditioning for schools in the US, most people were reasonably well informed, though I often had to explain that Ottawa was “the capital–kind of near Montreal.” I also learned a bunch of Canadianisms-- you say DRAH-MA, we say DrAma (like “Ham-a”). We say “washroom”. Stuff like that.</p>
<p>Roman numeral jokes are hilarious, Charles EX when studying French Revolution was hilarious… this girl kept saying it and nobody minded it (didn’t want to embarass her) until one day someone said Charles the Tenth and she flipped like: “Oh damn! I have to learn another important person”</p>
<p>i have another mcgill reaction…
i was wearing my mcgill sweatshirt and some guy asked me if it was vince mcgill…im not lying…although this guy was pretty sketchy.</p>
<p>Reminds me of this girl who’s doing some of the summer courses that I’m in here, who is infamous for her comentary. </p>
<p>One day in theory class, before the midterm, She asked if the teacher could tell her the lesson plan of the following day, (review day), as she 'wasn’t planing on coming to class, because she wanted to sleep in".
It’s one thing to do that, fair enough… but to annouce it to the teacher infront of the entire class? Incidently, its a 10:30 class, too. We (including her) had a midterm in another class the same day at half eight, but she was rather oblivious of that and showed up twenty minutes late to it. </p>
<p>The same girl has been known to walk into class, and after five minutes, simply leave. </p>
<p>On the midterm that she was late to, (musicianship), the teacher was reading the directions … and then suddenly, without any warning, the girl asks rather loudly, “what are figures…”. (the numerals that determine chord qualities, simply put)… which was something that had been drilled into us in every single lecture since the begining of class. The teacher didn’t quite know how to answer the question, as her jaw dropped in disbelif that it had been asked.</p>
<p>Another fun story courtesy of my friend at Queen’s: </p>
<p>It’s film class, and the students were discussing the last textbook reading with the TA. A girl that, similarly, is known for funny commentary raised her hand, and said, “I have a question about a theory.”</p>
<p>“Which one?” asked the TA. </p>
<p>“The ladder theory…”</p>
<p>The TA is confused, but in an attempt to understand, tries to help. “I don’t remember a ladder theory. Do you remember anything about it? What unit was it in?”</p>
<p>“It’s in like every chapter. The ladder theory,” replied the girl. </p>
<p>After a bit more confusion, the TA asked the girl to find a part in the textbook that mentions the ‘ladder theory’. Much to his surprise, she finds one almost immediately. </p>
<p>“See? Right here… ‘as you can see, the former and the latter theory…’”</p>
<p>True story. I swear.</p>
<p>my best friend says the funniest things both in and out of class. Today I was telling her that if she wanted to eat at the restaurant I’m bartending at (buffet) that she could come with me while I wasn’t working so that we could get a 10% discount. She then replies, “you mean we (her and another friend) can come and get whatever we wanted in 15 minutes?” in reference to my break. We just stared at her and so she says, “But you just said…OH!..” Then we passed by this sign for a park and it reads “Welcome to Toronto’s first urban park. Bienvenue au premier parc urbain de Toronto (or something to that effect). Parc Danforth Park”. So she reads the whole thing out loud and then goes, “why did they put park twice?”, forgetting that we lived in a bilingual country. Another time she was walking past this really high class, probably Italian restaurant that had a big sign on the second floor reading PRIVATE DECK. But she walks by and reads out loud “preevatay” with a funky italian accent thinking that it was Italian and completely oblivious that it read PRIVATE in ENGLISH.</p>
<p><em>walks into bookstore wearing McGill sweatshirt</em>
“Is that your last name on your sweatshirt?? THAT’S AWESOME!”</p>
<p>but this is a rare occurance.
I live in New York, so anyone remotely intelligent knows and loves McGill. This one girl in my chem class got made fun of for not knowing McGill when I said I was going there. I laughed my arse off.</p>
<p>“Have fun at Miguel!”
-An actual entry from my yearbook signing</p>
<p>In my supposedly college business administration class a cheerleader was led to believe there are 48 states.</p>
<p>when you go to mcgill, they tell you this crap that mcgill has an international reputation and blah blah blah.</p>
<p>horse****.</p>
<p>i don’t know who made it up, but i came from an international school in hong kong and i swear to god that only one person knew where/what the school was and how good it was, and that was because she’d graduated from mcgill and was teaching at my school.</p>
<p>similar reactions to peers at other schools did not make me very confident. but finally some canadians knew it and congratulated me. thank god.</p>
<p>what school did you go to in hong kong?..</p>
<p>i was in hong kong for 5 years and a lot of people from both (international) schools i attended went to McGill…i heard about Mcgill in 7th grade or something because it was such a popular school…and i am sure almost everyone knew it was in montreal and it was an excellent school…</p>
<p>even if you don’t find a lot of people who know about McGill, it’s a lot better than some of the other universities, at least in Canada. I knew someone who though Cornell was in Montreal, mistaking it for Concordia. You’re always going to find people, sometimes lots of people who aren’t very informed, let’s just say.</p>
<p>it’s just not the household name that a lot of mcgill people claim it to be.</p>
<p>yes true but…then again how many universities are household names…</p>
<p>harvard, yale, princeton, MIT, stanford, Oxford, cambridge,…anymore?..maybe berkley too…</p>
<p>^ This is true. There are plenty of top-tier schools in the US that are virtually unkown to Americans who did not apply there or know people who applied there. And certainly abroad the anonymity of terrific institutions is much, much higher.</p>
<p>When I tell people that I’m going to McGill, I get one of three reactions. Number one is a blank stare, followed by my informing them where it is and a polite, “Oh, that’s cool.” Number two is a blank stare, followed by my informing them where it is, which provokes an outraged, “Why the hell are you going to Canada?” Then I launch into my reasons–internationalism, Montreal, money–and when I get to money they generally relax their face, having decided that I am going there because I am poor. Number three–which is probably close to 50% of reactions–is, “Oh, really! My (brother/son/niece/friend) goes/went there and love(s/d) it!”</p>
<p>I haven’t gotten anything really ridiculous. It took me a little bit to get used to going to a school that really doesn’t command much respect academically where I am, especially considering I turned down Brown, Northwestern and the University of Chicago to go there. But I’m convinced that when I come back with my Indian girlfriend and regale everyone with stories of Montreal, they will be sufficiently jealous to satiate the childish corner of myself.</p>
<p>wow…you really turned down a lot of good schools for McGill…</p>
<p>The only ivy I turned down was cornell (but that was like a no brainer)…i also turned town imperial and warick (but those are in the U.K) </p>
<p>When i say i am going to McGill…most people say “wow” or “cool” or something positive…since McGill is like a household name at my school (6-7 people went there last year)</p>
<p>yeah…but why did u guys choose mcgill over them? It can’t all be because of mcgill’s reputation in your school, cos those colleges r pretty big and have a bigger reputation globally</p>