MPhil, Politics, University of Oxford, 1986

Q. How did your studies in Britain help your own goals professionally and personally?

A. I formed lasting professional friendships and associations and gained access to the unique supply of manuscript and printed materials by and/or relating the 18th Century Scottish philosophers, which is my specialty. I also grew enormously as a person while I held a Chevening scholarship. There is nothing like living in a foreign country for enlarging your views and giving you a better appreciation of your home country's virtues and a corresponding awareness of its challenges.

Q. What were your perceptions about the UK (academic life, culture, etc.) before you began your studies, and what were they after?

A. Before I began my studies in the UK, Britain was a fabled land to me, a faraway place with much history, but I had no real notion of the place. After I began my studies in the UK, I marveled at the history and civilization that surrounded me in the streets and architecture in which I moved and that infused the common speech. British TV and film is such a good export and powerful engine of education about the UK precisely because it makes the fabled scenery come alive in a language that is not quite familiar - and therefore intriguing - to the ears of English speakers abroad.

Q. What was unique about the location and institution you studied at?

A. Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. There is no better place at which to learn the nature of philosophical inquiry. Fashions have come and gone at Oxford as they have elsewhere; the difference is that Oxford has had time to adjust its methods of teaching and learning to accommodate the inevitabilities of intellectual change. It is the best place, in other words, to learn how to learn.

Q. What are your personal words of advice to prospective Chevening scholars and other Canadian students wanting to study in the UK?

A. Even if English is your first language and some of your ancestors came from Britain, go to the UK with the expectation that you are going to be operating in and learning about a very distinctive culture and society whose history and outlook is different from your own.

It is also important for people to employ ‘double vision' in their studies: to focus not only on the academic side, but also to keep in mind while making decisions, the importance of making career plans and forging contacts for after they graduate.