By Glen Herbert

“It’s been really crazy, to say the least,” says Caroline Bissonette ’22. “I knew going into it that it had a reputation to be pretty cutthroat, so that wasn’t a surprise. I was lucky that I really enjoy what I’m doing. It’s been crazy though.”

The reputation Caroline mentions is that of Rotman Commerce, the business school at the University of Toronto where she just recently completed her first year. It’s perhaps the most highly regarded business school in Canada. Located at U of T’s St. George campus, it’s also in the heart of the nation’s largest, most congested metropolis (as reported by the CBC, earlier this month it took 52 minutes to drive three kilometers across the downtown). In terms of visuals, it’s about as far as you can get from RLC. That’s partly what she’s thinking when she says it’s been crazy, though the workload is part of it, too. Given the size of the student population, for example, assessment is largely done through exams. Caroline estimates that she sat upwards of 50 exams, both midterms and finals.

It’s a lot. “But a lot of RLC students do end up at U of T,” she says. There’s a good representation of Caroline’s RLC cohort there with her. She’s in regular touch with Jolie, Justin, Fire. They see Alias and Jack when they come in from the U of T Scarborough campus. “We all hang out quite a bit. It’s nice knowing they’re around. Sometimes you see them on campus and you’re like, Wow, look at you!”

“When you’re in high school, whenever you hear someone say ‘community’ you just kind of roll your eyes and are like, ‘whatever.’ Because you don’t really know how important it is at that point. At least that was my perspective in Grade 12. I was like, ‘auggh, who cares?’ But now that I’m out of it I can see where teachers were coming from. You know, wow, this is really important. And going to U of T and not really having such a community, it really opened my eyes to how special it was.”

I ask how she feels RLC set her up for success in her first year, and she says “just being open to new experiences.” It also gave her a unique lens on what she’s doing. “RLC had such a big impact on me. Next year I’m going to be starting a minor in geoscience, and I don’t think I would have done that without going to RLC.  Because geoscience is very environmental, at least the way that I’m going at it.” Indigenous perspectives are also key. “And, you know, just from a finance and investing perspective, I wanted to incorporate both.”

She adds that “I really wanted to incorporate that—and this is probably pretty niche—with investing strategies. … a lot of the companies I look at—especially with lithium—nothing can really happen to these mines, because a lot of them are located on Indigenous territory. … and lithium is really important if we want to move forward with all the environmental factors.” She notes that Canada will become a leader in lithium production, and handled correctly, she sees it as an opportunity for all of us to grow together. “It's really about understanding where [we all] come from, and implementing so everyone is happy in the end.” The world markets are changing, but not so fast that we don’t have time to make sure of that outcome, and Caroline wants to play a role in that process.

I ask the obvious question, but I think it’s a good one nevertheless: What advice might she give to a student  who just graduated this past June?  She laughs and says, “well, if I could have given myself some advice, I would have said, just enjoy the calm. The summer leading up to university is pretty hard because of the anticipation. But I’d definitely tell myself to just enjoy that time of relaxation. And sleeping. I feel people really underestimate the power of sleep.”“First year is really, really hard,” she says. “But I feel quite accomplished. I’m very excited. It’s all very interesting, what I’m doing. It’s very fulfilling to me.”

Caroline Bissonette ‘22 is spending her summer doing marketing and outreach for Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Muskoka. She starts her second year at Rotman this September.