A significant factor in my decision to attend St. FX was its co-op program. I wanted practical work experience to set me up for success after graduation. Organizing my co-op terms was a bit challenging because I played on the football team, which meant I couldn't go away for the fall semester to work. Early on, I decided to complete a co-op term in the summer after my second year, followed by the winter and summer of my third year. However, I still wanted to graduate in four years, so I also took some course overloads throughout my degree. I believe that the process of planning and organizing my education, along with co-op and other extracurriculars, was a huge contributor to my success after university; it forced me to be intentional with how I spent my time in order to achieve the goals I set for myself.
My co-op experiences included starting a window-washing company with two fellow MacNeil boys (2nd-year summer) and working for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (8 months). The entrepreneurial job came about because I struggled to find a co-op position for the summer after my second year. At a certain point, I realized that if I wanted to complete the program, I needed to find or create a job. So, we prepared a pitch to the co-op office for permission to pursue the entrepreneurial route. This was a great exercise in resourcefulness, and it has definitely stuck with me. These jobs exposed me to both the entrepreneurial world and government bureaucracy, and I appreciated the contrast between those styles of work. The window-washing summer cemented my desire to pursue a career in entrepreneurial ventures, and I leaned on that experience heavily during my interviews for the Venture for Canada Fellowship after graduation. Through that program, I landed a job at a start-up in Toronto, and the work experience I gained through co-op was invaluable in making that transition.
I worked in that role for eight months before COVID hit and I was laid off. That was a tough experience because, as we all know, no one was hiring. The opportunity-seeking mindset cultivated during my co-op terms came in handy, and I decided to use the few months of lockdown to study for the LSAT. Although I was hired back by the start-up a few months later, I was already on a new path, and I ended up leaving in February 2021 to go back to school. Over the past three years, I completed my JD/MBA from Western and will be moving to Toronto to work at a law firm at the end of the summer.
I believe that co-op was instrumental in bringing me to where I am now. The comfort and confidence that come from workplace experience have influenced every step of my path, and almost ten years later, it has compounded into a pretty neat career. I think the earlier you can expose yourself to the realities of working, the better, because the transition can be tough, and you need to get the reps in if you want to thrive. One final note on the impact of co-op: I put aside $200 from each of my paychecks into an account and used that money to buy my X-Ring, so in that way, co-op is always with me.
