Category Archives: ubc

teach me how to midterm, teach, teach me how to midterm

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Midterms didn’t happen to me last semester. I’m in Arts, and besides that I study literature, and besides that I suppose I just got lucky. Midterms are happening to me this semester, though, don’t worry. I didn’t escape.

I’m not used to continuous assessment, being from the UK university system. It’s more than different; it’s like two people sat down and had a boring and in depth argument about the best way to teach and assess young adults, insulted each other, and then went away and made two completely opposing systems.

At home I have more reading and fewer assessments, but the assessments I do have are worth more. Usually I would have a 10% participation grade, a 40% final paper grade (we just call them essays), and a 50% or so final exam. We’re expected to participate in discussion more but take far fewer quizzes, and if we don’t do the reading then it’s our own fault if we fail the exam or write a shitty essay, and it’s our own problem, too.

Here, as I am sure you know, it’s a little different. Which is where we come to midterms, and my problem with preparing for them. In that I just… don’t know how? It’s half-way through the semester which means I only know half the stuff, so do I study for it about half as much as I would for a final exam? Or just as much? How come, if I don’t do fantastically, I can still get a fairly decent grade?

Baffled, I am. Or maybe I’m just using the confusion of school systems as an excuse to procrastinate. (That might be it, actually.)

Incidentally, two professors trading insults plus British humour equals…? Well, this:

avoiding the curse of study irritation and exam-time fallouts

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I have vanished from here because studying (all the studying – all of it in the world) has swallowed me whole. I had three final papers due this last week and, wow, third and fourth year literature courses at UBC are not for the faint of heart (or people who like to slack off and procrastinate on tumblr, like me).

Still, I am done with the papers and on to the exams. Which is no less stressful, but does give me a little more free time. Not that that’s a good sign of a work ethic.

Exam period is always an awful time, but I had forgotten how stressful it gets living with people who are also stressed out at this time of year. It can be really not fun, and it’s getting to the stage where everyone just wants to go home for a few days to chill out.

There are a couple of things that have been working for me when I’m trying to keep my ‘irritation at life’ levels lower than ‘oh my gosh I am going to have to kill someone’, so I thought I’d give sharing a bit of a go.

#1. Napping.

There have been studies that show that people who nap are happier than other people. You can bet Scrooge wasn’t a fan of napping. I found a handy tool that shows you when it’s the best time for you to nap through the day, and it’s helping me to stay level headed. There’s no better break from studying than getting to go to sleep. (Warning: double the irritation may occur if the people you live with do not respect your nap time. Pretty sure it’s grounds for homicide in BC, though, so you’re good.)

#2. Spending time with people other than those you live with.

Res Life can get pretty close-nit, and you might know everyone on your floor, maybe even a fair few people in your building or in the whole of your Res complex, but if you’re anything like me then you probably find yourself spending more time than is healthy hanging out with the same people. All the time. And that’s great, best friends are best for a reason (sorry, that was awful), but I’m beginning to get to the stage where even the most endearing traits are starting to annoy me. The fact that they annoy me is starting to annoy me. And with no classes and all that studying, I’m finding that I don’t get out much.

So spending time with other people, fresh faces, people whose stories you still don’t know yet, or even Skyping a friend or family member from back home, can really recharge you, friendship-wise. Even spending time with that person you don’t really like so much might not be the worst idea ever – maybe they have hidden depths (personally, I am the worst judge of character ever – some of my best friends are people I hated the first few times I met them), or else maybe they’re just as awful as you always thought, and it reminds you why you like the people you spend all your time with after all.

#3. Laughing at something, anything.

There have been lots of studies about how good laughing is for your health. I’m not going to track them down, because they’re in the news every other month (and I have procrastinated from studying long enough already). But: laughing is very good for you, and if you get to that stage in studying where it’s laugh or cry, I know which I’d rather be doing. If you need something to set you off, I’d recommend a good comedy. Romcom, sitcom, dramedy, whatever. I have lots of specific recommendations for all, but that’s maybe for another day when we aren’t all procrastinating (and I assume that’s what you’re doing, being on the internet during finals, but I can hardly judge).

Studying is hard, and looking after yourself is hard, and being stressed while being surrounded by other stressed people is hard. But, hey, it’ll all be over in a couple of weeks, and then we all get time off to recharge. Things and people and (if you’re in Totem or Vanier) caff food won’t be so irritating on the other side of the New Year, I promise (and I hope).

Finally, another handy little tool I’ve been using to stop myself from Procrastinating (with a capital P), is a thing called Self Control. It allows you to set up a blacklist of websites that you don’t want to access – say Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, You Tube, your email – and a time that you don’t want to access them for, and then it blocks those sites for the duration of that time. It means you can still use the internet but you can prevent yourself from using it for anything other than your studies. It only works for Mac, but there’s a rough PC equivalent called Anti-Social, too.

Happy studying!

32 things i did at ubc that you can totally do too : thing #6

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THING #6: SAW THE UBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

A slightly fuzzy picture of the UBC Symphony Orchestra.

I had no idea that UBC had a Symphony Orchestra, but we do! A friend asked if I wanted to go see them play at the Chan Centre at absolutely none of my own expense and I thought it’d be a pretty great way to spend an evening. It was. I came out feeling incredibly cultured, and me and my friend did a little bit of frat boy spotting in the audience. Who’d have thought, right? We must have been doing the cool thing.

It was an incredible show. I know very little about music, especially classical music, but I enjoyed it a lot. And I came out feeling all kinds of cultural. Their next concert, while not free, is just $15 for students, and features the the UBC Choral Union.

I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if I can go see them again sometime soon. They were incredibly talented.

32 things i did at ubc that you can totally do too : thing #4

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THING #4: SAW THE SUN RISE FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF NIGHT

Sunrise from my window.

Let me preface this by saying that all-nighters are evil. Sometimes they’re a necessary evil, but evil. All-nighters leave you feeling awful the next day. They are not worth being able to say you’ve pulled one. It’s really not that great.

However, this was not an all-nighter. Not a studying so hard you don’t sleep all-nighter, anyway, and it was pretty brilliant. It being a Sunday when I went to sleep helped.

The night started with drinks in the floor lounge with floormates. I was supposed to be going out, but we made a large sort-of bed with all the couches in the room and I was way too comfy, so I got left behind and ended up crashing a movie night instead! Best decision I think I’ve ever made? Why trek across Vancouver to stand in a line, and then pay $20 to then wait half an hour, to spend another $7 on a drink, when you can laze around with friends and watch a really great movie? (I did say this’d show how lame I can be, didn’t I? I have definitely said that before.)

“I saved Latin, what did you ever do?” – Jason Schwartzman in Wes Anderson’s ‘Rushmore’, 1998.

We watched Rushmore, which is a fantastic movie. Would recommend. Then – and it was about 1am at this point – we heard a rumour of a movie marathon in one of the other Totem houses. We crashed it. It was a Harry Potter marathon. Another best decision ever.

After watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, we headed back to the floor lounge and hung out with the guys who had just got back from Downtown Van. There was pizza and weirdly philosophical meandering talk, and three of us stayed up until five. None of us were tired, and we just talked a load of rubbish (sorry: trash – but, wait, does that even have the same meaning here? Still working on my Canadianisms…) and it was really great.

Then watched the sun rise from my bedroom window before finally sleeping. Sometimes all-nighters are worth it all.

32 things i did at ubc that you can totally do too : thing #3

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THING #3: TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE LONG THANKSGIVING WEEKEND

Polite reminder that turkeys are the most hilarious looking animal ever.

The midterms are rolling on in, the work is getting harder, and the free time you get is just getting less and less free. Must be October.

But then, as though called by a collective moaning of students, magically, a long weekend appears! There is pie to be eaten and turkey to be cooked (and hopefully not burnt) and lazing around to do! It’s fantastic.

This Thanksgiving weekend was my first (and possibly only ever) Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, and I am not alone. In my res there were plenty of people for whom the same was true. Maybe it was their first Thanksgiving, or maybe it was their first Canadian Thanksgiving. For some people it was the first Thanksgiving away from home, or the first Thanksgiving where they’d had to go home to get to it. For a lot of people it was their first Thanksgiving since they became college students. There’s a lot of firsts, is what I’m saying. And I think that’s kinda cool.

Everything is better when there is pie.

There’s also a ton of different things you can do for Thanksgiving. A lot of people on my floor went home for the weekend. I traveled to Vancouver Island and stayed with some relatives I’ve got there – I was spoiled pretty thoroughly and it was wonderful. Other friends took advantage of the extra day off by traveling somewhere for a hike or for some shopping over the border. And a fair few people on my floor stayed at UBC and had a turkey dinner together.

What I’m trying to say is that, well… you don’t get a lot of breaks in the school year, and Thanksgiving weekend is one to really take advantage of. If it’s anything like this year, the weather might even still be good!

32 things i did at ubc that you can totally do too : thing #1

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Here marks the beginning of a thing I’m trying, in that I’m going to try to pick out something I’ve done each week (and I have 32 left before the end of exam period in April) and talk about how brilliant it was. Very probably this will showcase how lame I am, but that’s okay. I live for other people to laugh at. I have come to terms with that.

So, without further ado:

THING #1: WATCHING THE SUNSET AT WRECK BEACH

Wreck Beach at sunset.

If you don’t know, Wreck Beach is right at the west edge of campus. Follow University Boulevard all the way down (if at any point you hit the Village, you’re going the wrong way; turn around and start again) until you hit Marine Drive. Then turn right and you should see the top of the stairs down to the beach. You’re there! And we have just discovered that I should never give directions! Hooray for learning new things!

So, yes, it is a nudist beach. Yes, that meant there were bits out in the open that, regressing to school kid age, I kind of wanted to laugh at. But, whatever, you know why it’s a nudist beach? Probably it’s got something to do with the cliff you have to climb down (via stairs, but that’s not as much help as you’d hope) that keeps the naughty nude people away from the innocent eyes of the students who live up top. But, also, more importantly, Wreck Beach is genuinely a place of beauty in that actually breathtaking way that seems to happen a lot more often around Vancouver than I, deprived traveler that I am, am used to. It’s inspiring. It inspired the group of friends I was with to whip out a ukulele and sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Likewise, it inspires a lot of other people to take their clothes off. Each to his own.

Wreck Beach, post-sunset.

Wreck Beach is a beautiful place to be, and, if you can handle the stairs back up, watching the sunset down there, maybe singing a little, and, maybe, if you’re really brave or stupid, going for a quick swim, is the loveliest way to chill out after a packed day of classes. It was warm, the sky was clear, and the sun took its sweet time setting. It totally cured me of homesickness for that day, too. Go try it.

(A note on the stairs: I thought I was going to die. It was so horrible, and there is a reason the UBC Fun Run Club holds a Wreck Beach stairs challenge. Don’t think you are better than the stairs. You aren’t, and they will beat you. Bring water and someone to collapse on who you can dramatically grip by the collar and make promise to carry your body and last words back to civilisation. When you get to the top, have a sit down. Grab an ice cream. Celebrate having survived.)

entering the deep unknown

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I have just finished my first (half) week of classes. And wow. I have a lot of work to do.

That’s the part of moving out here for my exchange year that, thus far, I have managed to ignore. The ignoring it part has been pretty easy. You know the feeling; it’s the same one that you get at the end of every summer as you return to school, when you pick up your pen and think, wait, how do I use this thing again? It’s the brain turning slowly to reality TV mush feeling. That one. In the midst of that feeling, I’d managed to almost totally ignore what it means that I have to actually… work this year.

Ugh, work… I’m taking five classes this semester where I’m used to just three, though the reading per class is significantly less. I still feel like… how can I begin to keep up with this? It’s a lot. There is a lot to do.

On the other side of things, a week in, I feel like I’m getting the hang of living on campus. When I’m walking around I mostly know where I am now (and, okay, I still check a map before I set off anywhere, but that’s just me bowing to the very real fact of my awful navigational skills and seeking the help I need). I’ve been to the Village four or five times, and I’ve clocked where the libraries are and how to get things photocopied (though printing still eludes me, but I’ll get there). It’s a slow-going slide into familiarity and there are still ten things a day that jar me from thinking okay, I’ve got this into thinking wait what just like that, but the days are busy and I feel good about keeping them that way.

Before I came out here, people kept asking if I was nervous and I kept saying no. I wasn’t lying; it honestly didn’t occur to me to be nervous. In my imagination, this was only ever an amazing opportunity in my life, and being nervous would have suggested that it wasn’t a great thing I was planning to do. I couldn’t, and still can’t, see where the bad aspects of this exchange year are. Not that I don’t think parts of it won’t be hard. I’m sure parts will be very hard. Some parts already are, like my courseload and the fact that I have to remember to say ‘zucchini’ instead of ‘courgette’ (not particularly hard, right? But I’m an actual idiot).

But, in the scheme of things, what’s to be nervous about? If things are hard, I’ll deal with it then. Hopefully I’ll learn something from it. I’m not going to be nervous about something I can only imagine as wonderful and exciting and all of those good things that unreal futures are. So, I’ll keep going. Tomorrow I will learn the printing-on-campus ropes, and I might even figure out the banks out here. And maybe I’ll learn something.

i’ll be spelling realize with an s

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UBC Campus.

Let’s skip the introductions and go straight into talking about how absolutely beautiful British Columbia is, shall we? Because it is beautiful. I’ve been here for a week, and so far not a day has passed where I haven’t been knocked breathless and stunned by beauty. You Canadians ain’t so bad, either. *cheezy wink*. (I mean that in a spiritual sense. Mostly.)

You may have gathered that I am not from around these parts. Perhaps, for some of you, the stunning beauty of Vancouver is something you barely notice anymore, but I know some of you’ll be like me; new to this area and feeling a little overwhelmed by the picture-perfect-ness of it all. I come from a very picturesque part of the world, as it happens, but dang, Canada. Woah.

View from Comox, Vancouver Island, across to the mainland.

I’ve moved here for just the year on exchange from the UK and being here for just the year is already feeling like not enough time. How do I go back to Norwich (famous for precisely nothing, though maybe you’ll know who Stephen Fry is – he’s a national treasure to us Brits) after a year at UBC? Amongst the most beautiful sights you could wish for, in one of the most exciting and interesting universities in the world?

Fountain opposite Irving K Barber Learning Centre, UBC Campus.

I am a worrier, and this is a genuine worry for me. But, okay, I’m going to try to do the grown up thing and ignore that for now. I’m going to try to do all those things you get in annoying motivational emails like live for the moment and seize the day. I will endeavour to suspend my British cynicism and leap before I look a little. Not too much. I’ll be the one flailing in mid-air and screaming. It will not be graceful.

I come from a tiny little place in the north of England and I go to uni in a city that is, when compared to Vancouver, minuscule. Suddenly, I’m half way across the world. Time zones are the worst thing – when I wake up it’s already evening meal time at home, and my friends are waking up for class or work as I’m heading for bed. But I’m in Vancouver. I’m at UBC. I’m mid-way into spending my first night in res and this exchange thing is something I’ve been talking about doing since 2010.

I’m finally here. That feels amazing. You can throw anything you like at me, UBC. I’m in it for the experience – for the free-fall after opening out my parachute. And I promise to wave to you all – Queen-style – on the way down. Because this is going to be a fantastic year.

Sunset from Canada Place, downtown Vancouver.

(Note: Incidentally, I have no plans to parachute off of a very high thing this year. Partly because I’m terrified of heights.  Also because metaphors are awful and deplorable things and I am not going to encourage myself to use more by realising any of them. Everything I actually do, I’ll blog about.)