Day in the Life of a CityLAB Student
Since the beginning of the semester, all the students clicked as a large 30 person family. Our vibe was immediately like that of elementary school kids joking around with one another. In the first few weeks, we focused on bonding with one another and with our staff and instructors. We did yoga, got to know Hamilton and toured different important cultural sites. It was a great place to start the semester and provided a smooth transition into group work because we already knew each other and had built friendships and trust. Our projects have taken on many phases, and have given us an inside look into how City Councillors and Staff, and NGOs move through the steps of a project. We all come from different academic backgrounds and have obviously worked in group projects before, but the interdisciplinary component to CityLAB truly gave us a wide range of perspectives to pull from. This was, however, the first time for many of us where a group project had real-life consequences and where our work would impact a larger community, and not just stay on paper. Through this, CityLAB has provided us with many opportunities to make connections with City staff, councilors, and different NGOs. Bringing people and processes that seem so far removed from the average citizen has given us an inside look at how projects get done by professionals. It turns out, they get done the same way the rest of us work through projects - there are many bumps in the road and you get creative in how to solve them! The academic component with our instructors has taken an approach to personal development and growth in my experience. The focus has been on how to improve how we approach people and projects; on how to see and act from a different point of view; how to have a more dynamic and flexible mind. The workload is small and mainly used as a tool to keep us thinking and being creative. On top of that, the instructors and the rest of our staff very much fostered the environment of familiarity, unity, and cohesion between them and students, making CityLAB a low-pressure but high-expectation environment. It’s a good place, filled with good people, and students get to work on meaningful, fulfilling projects. I have worked on many community sustainability projects this semester, and it is exciting and challenging to work alongside peers and City partners that have the same compassion for the environment and people of Hamilton as the rest of us at CityLAB.