It’s June 29th, 2014. I roll over and slap down hard on the blaring alarm. It’s 5 am and I have to hurry myself to wake up. There’s a long list of items I have to pack, chores I have to complete, and confirmations needing to be double checked. But I’m due at the airport in less than two hours.

Seven hours later, or less with the time zone change, I am sitting in a van with two other girls. We are quiet and nervous as the driver speeds towards the University. When we arrive, only one of us speaks, offering to help carry the two stranger’s luggage to the door. We all take deep breaths and make our entrance into our new home for the next month, a UWaterloo campus residence. For the next four weeks, we are SHADS.

SHAD is four week long summer program for exceptional students in grades 10-12 hosted at 12 University campuses all over Canada, including the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Memorial University, Newfoundland, Laval in Quebec, and UBC in British Columbia. Each year, approximately 50 students from Canada and around the world are chosen to attend each campus. There, they will spend weeks learning about STEM topics, and will tie their new science, technology, engineering, and math knowledge together with a business project that will compete against the other teams on campus, and then the other campuses in Canada. It’s “bootcamp for your brain”, or so they say.

But SHAD is so much more than an extra month in the classroom. It’s developing your athletic skills, following your passions, and making bonds that will last forever. Have you ever went camping before? Well you’d better get ready to start. Do you like molecular biology? They have a week long seminar on that. Do you want to make friends? Sorry, you’re stuck with another family.

The experience comes with a price, $4500 for Canadian students and $8000 for International. There’s a scholarship program that automatically comes with your acceptance, and a wide range of bursary’s to cover costs. So you don’t have to come from a rich family to attend. Leadership, good grades, and creativity are valued. So you could be an average joe, like I was.

Attending SHAD was the most life changing experience I’ve ever had. It completely changed who I was as a person and how I saw the world around me. It motivated me to make the change that I had always dreamed of; SHAD creates a new generation of change makers, idea generators, and passionate creativity. They are uncommon purpose, just as their slogan states. SHAD taught me what it was like to have good friends, to be intrinsically motivated, and independent. I learned how to do my own laundry, camp in the wilderness, how to be my own person.

If you’re looking for a good introduction to Canadian universities and want to have the best time of your life, I highly recommend SHAD. The academics aren’t for the faint of heart, however it is a huge bonus of IB students and those pursuing university studies. Please, apply for next year. Take the initiative to change your life. I'm so glad that I did.