My name is Hridi and I graduated from the ArtSci program in 2016. Initially, I wanted to major in English (Creative Writing) and minor in Biology, but after my first year, I decided to major in Psychology instead. My favourite thing about the program was the small cohort of people who were in a unique program. It was nice to have some classes where it was just the few of us since a lot of the undergrad classes have so many people. During my time at Uwindsor, I was a research assistant for the ECRG group and a teaching assistant for a Healthcare Ethics course. I was also very involved in the Canadian Blood Drive club as that was something that I carried over from high school. The club that I was the most heavily involved in was AIESEC Windsor – I met some great people through that club, got experience in management and hiring, and made friends whom I still stay in contact with to this day.
My undergrad research was to explore “Sociocultural Barriers that Prevent Men from Intervening in Situations of Sexual Violence” which was supervised by Dr. Dusty Johnstone. After graduation, I took a year to discover what I wanted to do post-grad - at one point, I had 4 jobs at the same time. I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to do with my degree outside of familial and cultural pressures. At one point, I was poised to take the LSAT but that never came to fruition. An auntie mentioned Masters of Library Science as she thought it could be a good option for me as I really wanted to do research without exhaustive higher education. Heeding her advice, I applied to the MLIS program at Western, got in, and graduated in 2020 right as the pandemic started. My experience in the ArtSci program definitely helped my application stand out. Six months after graduating, I got a position as a Contract Management and Licensing Compliance Specialist at the Bank of Canada as a term position. My term was extended three times – in May 2022, my position was made permanent as a Content Acquisition Librarian. My plans for the future involve a relocation to Ottawa and aiming to have my books be traditionally published.