One of the only Cambridge University traditions I think on fondly is not really a “tradition” so much as a “thing people at my college did once at a commemorative dinner.” The dinner in question was Halfway Hall, a free (at least within my college) formal meal for second-year undergraduates at the midpoint of their degree. After a toast, the whole room broke out into a rousing and atonal rendition of Bon Jovi’s “Living On a Prayer”—specifically the chorus, whose lyrics are simple:
Oh, we’re halfway there
Oh, living on a prayer
Take my hand, we’ll make it, I swear
Oh, living on a prayer
Living on a prayer
Get it? Because we were halfway there? As we used to say in the academic admin office where I worked before leaving the UK, brightest minds.
I came to Canada on a two-year visa. At this stage, the odds of my staying for the full two years look slim. I’m going to go back to the UK for my visa interview, which (if USCIS continues working at current rates)1 will probably happen either later this year or very early in 2024.
But in principle, today—May 11—is roughly the halfway mark. I landed in Halifax a year ago today.
When I arrived, I was whisked to my erstwhile apartment by my dear friend VP, who writes at
. I picked up the keys and spent a night at VP’s mother’s place, before returning the next morning to await the delivery of a bed and an internet connection. Just a few days ago, I moved out of that apartment. Seeing it empty and clean before I left, I remembered what it felt like on that weird and dislocated second day. Unfamiliar sunlight poured in through the windows, pooled around my ankles where I sat on the floor. I had a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee and I read A Desolation Called Peace. It was spring in Halifax. A lot of things were beginning all at once.I am in the thick of every one of those things right now. I fell in love; I’m preparing for my wedding; I’m running, somehow, a very small business. I got covid at last; somewhat unexpectedly, I moved house. Do not even ask me about publishing. It’s been an exceptionally difficult year, and a highly rewarding one. Frankly, I’ve already told you about most of it; I am loath to recap the whole thing again for the sake of a fresh newsletter.
But you get the idea. It’s been a lot. Lately I feel like that’s all I know how to say about anything: it’s been a lot, as an apology or a profoundly inadequate excuse.
The thing is: when you’re exhausted, and everything is overwhelming, and you have no idea what the future looks like, Living On a Prayer is a battle cry.
Until I came to Canada, my undergraduate degree was the hardest and most stressful undertaking of my life. By the midpoint of my second year I knew I wasn’t well, and I wasn’t sure how I would make it through another year and a half. (It turned out I was right to worry; my third year managed the impressive feat of being worse than my second.) Halfway Hall wasn’t a celebration, exactly. It was a weird, euphoric release of all that tension and fear and dread. It was a promise to ourselves that we could make it the rest of the way.
I didn’t realise that at the time. I thought I was alone. It wasn’t until I proposed that the student government (the JCR, in Oxbridge terminology) should push the college for better mental health support that I realised how much everyone around me was struggling. JCR colleagues—people I’d assumed were happy and thriving—told me about self-esteem crises and unkind supervisors and nights spent drinking alone in their rooms. Having been trained not to talk about it, to be grateful for the opportunity to study at such a special, elite institution, we were all surprised to learn that it wasn’t just us.
That’s what I remember, when I think of that halfway point. Take my hand—that’s what we said. We’ll make it, I swear. Not the singing along, but the work of stepping up for one another; the work I spent the rest of my academic career trying to accomplish, until my time on the JCR committee ended.
Three years after my graduation, a former JCR president reached out to me on Facebook. It had taken multiple committees to do it, but they’d successfully campaigned for a college counsellor to provide mental health support. Take my hand. I don’t know. I felt like I had made a mark, when she told me that.
My new place is… fine. It’s fine! It’s quiet, except for the ambient noise of roommates (which I’d forgotten how to live with since I first moved into an apartment of my own). It’s functional, except for some residual water damage to my window. It feels no less temporary, really, than the last place did. But that’s okay. All of this is temporary, I suppose.
I’ll be spending June off work and in San Francisco. When I get back to Halifax after that, we’ll hopefully be in the home strait of initial immigration waiting. After that, it’s a big confused blur of forms and logistics and international travel. But I’ll make it. Other people do it all the time.
And in the meantime, I will enjoy the second not-quite-half of my time in Canada. As I write this, my parents are in the air on their way to Nova Scotia. I get to show them around, introduce them to friends, do the fun things I don’t normally have enough time to do. I’ve promised them at least one go on a boat. A fun time for the whole family, one hopes!
Thank you for being with me this year. As I said, it’s been a strange and stressful one—but a magical one, too. I hope you will stick around for whatever happens next.
Please, USCIS, continue working at current rates.