October 8th2025 Student Bursary Application Reflection
To an extent, I’ll never really understand Canadian Mennonite University. Of course, I understand the value of living in dorms, the proximity to new people that facilitates rapid development of relationships. Of course, I understand the wide breadth of courses that invites so many people with so many different dreams. I understand that the professors here truly value the process of learning, getting to know students on a personal level and encouraging academic excellence. Of course, I understand that this place is one of welcoming, a campus of open arms and understanding smiles. I understand that this place is a place of growth, leading people young and old through transformations of not only knowledge, but of values and relation. I understand these things when you put them on paper, on an organized list, but to experience them is an entirely different way of life.
This year, one of my closest friends coined the phrase; ‘Don’t come to CMU’, which he often tells prospective students. It really doesn’t sound great on its own, but he follows it with ‘Don’t come to CMU, unless you’re ready to be roped into a community that will do everything in its power to not let you go’. As someone who had only planned to go to CMU for two years to experience “Bible School”, I am now going into my fourth year of a five-year degree in Social Science. I continue to choose this institution because it is so valuable to me to be in a space like this, both as a young Christian growing in faith, and as a young man figuring out his place in this world. To learn the tenets of the Mennonite faith and to live them out daily in a place that wraps its arms so close around me has been such a blessing, and I am so thankful to be returning.