Summer of 3rd year is quite possibly my last summer vacation ever. Or at least until I retire or strike it rich. When will I ever get four months of no responsibilities and a casual return to the usual in September again? Maybe if I take more than 4 years to graduate. (Which is likely too actually…) To try and not regret the following months, I’ve started a list of stuff I want to do before the summer ends.
Dye my hair something not brown:, blonde or red: because someday a wacky hair colour might stand between me and a job
Master parallel parking: I have my N but I still can’t really do this
Drive on the highway (after the parallel parking mastering)
Write a song
Go on a short distance trip: likely Seattle or Banff
Watch a band play live, maybe an indie show would be cool
Watch the new Batman movie
Watch the new Spiderman movie
Watch at least two movies on my IMDB watchlist outside of the two above mentioned movies
Travel somewhere farther away for over a week, or however long I can take work off
Go hiking
Play basketball
Make a creative contribution at work
Read a book
Then read another book
Learn to read and write 100 Chinese characters
Lose 5 pounds, or alternative: get fit
So the items aren’t anything seriously epic, but it’s a start.
There was actually a lot of contemplation done before deciding what to do this summer. School? Work? Full time or part time? Paid or un-paid? Travel?
Summer of 3rd year is a chance to make sure you graduate in 4 years, if that is your goal. Third year is a great time to get an internship too. What with the fear of an empty resume next spring and the many opportunities to leverage our student status for a real foot in the door somewhere.
I think getting an internship would have been the smarter choice for my future. I ended up disregarding that. I’ve taken summer school every year since grade 8, except grade 12. I worked/volunteered at the same time for most of those summers. I don’t regret any of those summers at all, but taking a summer to just be a kid again is the choice I felt I needed to pick. Many internships are full time all summer long, so travelling for something like two weeks would be out of the question. Maybe I’m just a fool who has fallen to short-sighted temptations. Hope I don’t regret it!
The semester is coming to a close and I can firmly say that third year is my favorite year at UBC so far. First year was that exciting new start, that slowly turned into “what did I get myself into?” Personally, university was more lonely than I thought it would be, all those isolated study hours in the dungeon… Second year started off as a “ok, lets not make the same mistakes this year” kind of year. By the end of second year, my thoughts were more along the lines of “I really hope this ride gets better.” It does. It did.
This is why I think third year is a good year:
1. Declared major. Meaning more classes that truly explore the stuff you like, less of those where you can’t remember why you’re taking it… oh yeah because you had to. (Actually, some of those turned out to be very useful.)
2. No more surprises. One year to settle down, one year to get used to it. Third year is where you know what to expect and have hopefully set up a good system for yourself. The course loads are heavier, but from what I’ve seen the people grew more than the course load.
3. Eligibility for exchange and co-op. It’s a change in the routine that is still productive. Exchange is probably why I look so favorably on this year of my life. I didn’t choose to take co-op but I know for some, it’s what they were looking forward to when they came into university and third year is where it finally happens.
4. You’re not the smartest kid anymore… and it’s fine. I’m sure you’ve heard it before: “you might have been the smartest kid in your high school, but when you get into university you certainly don’t feel that way.” In some case you might still be that smart kid. If you’re not, you might have had a lot self-questioning moments. In third year, it kind of passes. You’ll have more opportunities to shine in ways you couldn’t before. Ways that work with your strengths. You could be failing something, but you’re not stupid.
There are some reasons why third year is not so awesome though:
1. You’re old. Face it, you’re old. You are now in the older half of the undergrads. For those who entered UBC at 18 or 19, you are now 20 or 21. And that is a scary thought sometimes. On the plus side, you can now have a good time in Vegas.
2. “This time next year… I might be unemployed…” or still hanging on to that part time job. At the end of an awesome third year, this thought may drift into your head like a rain cloud or come raging through like a hailstorm in April, Vancouver style. A good number of us hope that our university degrees will land us something nice when we graduate. That “final exam” is coming into sight. Or for those who are unsure, “should I graduate in 4 years or 5? …Maybe I could do graduate school”
To those of you who are in third year and are planning on graduating next year: This could be the LAST summer vacation of your LIFE! What are you doing with it?
Commuting always feels like a big waste of time to me. The act sucks up energy too. I usually end up more tired than I was getting on the bus. I try to fill up my time with random school related things like studying flash cards, highlighting case studies (or at least attempting to,) napping and pre-reading notes. Mostly napping and flash cards.
Being sick of the routine, I downloaded some apps to play with during my commute. 2 hours a day * 5 days a week = 10 hours. I think one can only have so many hours of Angry Birds before wondering if there is something more meaningful out there. Of all the apps I tried out, below are 5 that have stuck that I am using pretty actively.
All of the apps I’ve chosen are free and 4 of 5 are offline.
1. Flashcards+
What can I say? I find flashcards helpful! And with this app, I can even make them on the bus too! (Although I’d say the paper ones are better, I find myself coming back to this app when I want just enough productivity that isn’t strenuous.) You can make multiple decks, flip them around, and even download ones that other people made.
2. iTunes U
Free access to lectures and course materials from universities around the world. When my brother first told me about this I rolled my eyes at him and said “yeahhh ok, I’m not that much of a nerd.” But now that I’ve actually tried this out, it’s pretty awesome. I get to listen to lectures for classes that I’m interested in but will probably never take. Like music history and robotics. Plus the lectures are nice things to sleep to on the bus too
3. Orchestra
It’s a to-do list app. The bus ride in the morning is a good time to plan out what I need to do everyday. I was never a fan of planners because I’d always forget to bring them one day and stop using it after that. I’d never forget my phone though! (That’s not true, but if I did, I have bigger things to worry about then.) I tried a lot of list apps. I stuck with this one because you can make multiple lists and the tasks are sorted as today, someday, and some specific day. I like the “today” option because I just ended up making a list called “today” with the other apps anyway. The most unique thing about this app is that you can share the lists with someone else. The creators were looking for a way to “orchestrate” family to-dos. (It’s a good pun eh?!)
4. Adobe Reader
Reading on the bus! I don’t own very many books and I don’t go to the library often, but I am on the internet a lot! Digital books ftw! They may hurt your eyes if you have a small screen but still equally as engaging to me!
Runner up: iTunes -> audio books! Sounds lame at first, but give them a try!
5. Flipboard
This one is for people with data plans. I don’t have a data plan but this app makes me wonder if I should get one so I can use it on the bus. It’s pretty much an RSS feed that grabs articles from news and blog sources and displays it on a pretty layout where you can “flip” through the articles. (With an animated flip of course!) If you find the Metro and 24 Hour isn’t cutting it for you, check out this app. I’m not much of a news reader myself but this app has got me into it, I use it almost daily now. How it’s better than RSS: they have a list of stuff in different categories that you can select from so you don’t have to look it up yourself. If you’re not totally sure what you like, they have curated selections of articles too.
The apps I mentioned are all iPhone apps but I’m sure you can find similar ones for Android! Do you have any suggestions on how to have more productive commutes?
Hello! It’s been a while. I have a good excuse. I’ve spent my last 2 months on exchange filling every moment up as much as I can by sleeping at 4 and waking at 9 and living life to the MAX. Is that a good enough excuse? I thought not. I’m sorry. I am back home now and digesting what has been happening and I am still waiting for all of it to make sense. 2011 was a year of growing for me in many ways of which I will slowly elaborate.
On January 3rd,2011 I received a very pretty agenda. Knowing my past experiences with trying to keep Journals, the decently sized daily boxes gave me hope that perhaps I can finally consistently keep a journal since all I would have to do is fill a little box every once in a while. I filled those boxes with tiny writing, sometimes overflowing. Sometimes with huge writing. Sometimes with drawings. In colour, in black. I did this for about half a year. And then for the first time in my life I was dumped. My home life was more out of control than it had ever been. And so I stopped. And that was regrettable because on Dec 31 as I look back at it there are many fun things to read in there. Even when the entries are only 5 words long. I am not a literary genius, but 5 words that meant a lot to my past self makes me feel good that something actually meant enough to me to write it down.
Some Monday in February: “If there is something you want to say, you better say it or write it down, because those words will never mean as much as they do outside that moment.”
And so during the 2nd lowest period of my life, I went on exchange.
Last night at a party of about 25 friends from high school + some strangers, someone asked me “How was exchange?” I said it was amazing and life changing. He asked “how?” I didn’t have any answers. No, I did have some, but they were just too personal to say out loud. As for other changes, I felt like they are there but I can’t put my finger on them just yet. The dust is still settling around the solid formation of what I have learned and who I have grown to be.
I’ve learned a lot about the person that I can be. Without being fake, without trying too hard, without feeling uncomfortable. There was a me in Hong Kong that I was, that was very much me. However, at the same time, very much a me I had not been. It’s hard to explain. I wasn’t putting on an act, I was just being myself, it just wasn’t the same self that I am here usually. If anything I felt I was more true. The environment and the conditions were completely different. You know the limited time you have with those people, you know your chances of seeing them again are small, so for me, I was everything that I am without hiding away behind social masks because of time limitations to develop relationships. I suppose.
Exchange was the best decision of my life. It was a grand adventure. The adventure continues now in a different way as all the things I’ve subconsciously learned, and all the ways I’ve changed, are trickling into my current reality.
Like how when I was at my brother’s wedding a week ago and spending family time, I had a sudden recollection of a conversation with someone I met in HK about family. My family situation isn’t rare but it’s different and I always thought that my reaction to it is something extremely shameful. I admitted something to that guy that I have never been brave enough to admit to anyone before only to find that my rotten thoughts were so impeccably shared. At the wedding it came back and this feeling of “it’s ok” hit me. Something that I had been struggling with so long is on it’s way to being set free.
Like how last night when my ex-boyfriend said “I want you to be happy” in a tone that seemed to assume that I wasn’t, my heart secretly gleamed with happiness and I couldn’t understand why. I thought then that maybe it was because I was happy that person actually still cared about my happiness. When I thought about it this morning again I understood. It was because, and I am not exaggerating at all, I was happy every single day in Hong Kong. Almost. Not just happy, ecstatic. I was actually enjoying my life almost every single day. I don’t know about you but that doesn’t come easy for me.
2 days were exceptions. 2 days where I cried myself to sleep because I was depressed (good thing my room mate didn’t move in yet.) Other than those 2 days, every day was a wonderful adventure. Even when I lost my cell phone in Korea and spent my last day running around Seoul looking for it. Even when I lost my camera in Hong Kong and photos of the past 2 months, including everything of Korea. (I took a trip to Korea while on exchange, it’s pretty common to travel around while on exchange.) I have never ever experienced such an extended period of happiness in my life. I am incredibly thankful to have received this. I am also thankful to now know that everyday can be a good day. Since I was young I believe that bad days are what make the good days good. No, good days are good days. Bad days will still happen, live with it. But my life isn’t in this zone of accepting things as they are. I don’t have to wake up or go to sleep thinking “…it’s another day already.” I don’t have to accept that “shit happens.” This world is huge but it can feel like something so tiny when you realize it is all in your reach after all.
Actually, maybe one of the reasons why I felt like I was not the same me in Hong Kong was because I was so happy and smiley. What friends I met in Hong Kong describe me as is not the same as what my friends here describe me as.
I am still passive and indecisive, but I’ve become more in control of my life.
Maybe it is because Hong Kong is an bustling sunny city where I don’t have to have days sitting at home being unwilling to go out because of the rain or sit at 11 pm thinking there is no where to go because everything is closed. (You are still #1 in my heart Vancouver!) There world is still there. A previous me would say that the world is not waiting, things are ever changing and if you’re not running fast, you’ll be run over. I used to just let myself get run over once in a while just because it felt too futile to try, and I needed to accept failure sometimes. (Going back to Me Inc. in 1st year: “Failure is not final!”) I still believe the world won’t wait, at least not forever because the world IS waiting, it’s a sitting duck and all I have to do is go get it. It is that simple. Just don’t miss your opportunity.
2012, I will try my journal keeping again. Maybe a different approach this time. No lines please.
Happy new year everyone!
I think I have a tendency to think that a new year is a new start, I’ll try to tell myself that it is a new second and that is a new start too.
I hope to share more of the things I did on exchange and what it was like in a later post (rather than just talk about my personal growth), so if you have any questions please ask away!
Every semester I’ve had so far in university starts off chiller than a ice cube sitting on a bigger ice cube in the tundra. In the case of exchange, it starts off the same, only in this tundra it is always Friday night. As the end of the semester approaches it is always like I’m stuck on a treadmill with no stop button and water is just out of reach. I could probably reach it if i tried but it’ll probably end in a mess on the floor without a single drop ricocheting into my mouth. That or I’ll fall off the treadmill. The no stop button meaning the never ending troubles that come up and the water being all those fun things that seem to happen when you finally buckle down to study.
Okay, I’m exaggerating. I am a strong believer that the work hard, play hard thing can be done. I just haven’t quite figured out how to do it yet. Breaks can be productive. If you have a good idea of what you want inspiration for, for some reason, when you’re out there taking a break, it’ll come. Usually. Eventually. Hopefully.
Anyway, back to the topic. At the peak every stress season, I find myself always going between “I’m screwed” and “I gots this” feelings. Here’s a graphic representation:
Yesterday night:
I’m Screwed -> “Holy crap I have 3 presentations this week and 3 presentations next week but i have absolutely no interest in working on the first few ones, but i have to get them done because they are due first but for some reason i have a group meeting for the later projects this week, wait, doesn’t this meeting clash with that meeting?? WHY IS THIS WEBSITE ONLY IN CHINESE? I need to schedule this out- no there’s no time just gogogo. LOW BATTERY?! What am I going to get for that guy’s birthday?? OMG I ONLY HAVE 1 MORE MONTH IN HK BUT I HAVEN’T DONE EVERYTHING I WANTED TO DO YET!!!!!! *check FB for the 6th time today anyway*”
And now:
I gots this -> “You know what? I gots this. I’ve been… productive. It’s been a while, lets go write a BlogSquad post…”
Repeat this cycle a few more times until the end of my projects and repeat again before finals and I think I have my next few weeks summed up. Nah. I’m loving being in Hong Kong and CityU. It’s too early to let go, but I’ll talk about that some other time.
“Life gets so rushed, people just need to do some pointless stuff before they can return to the productive stuff.”
Ok, that sounded way better in Chinese but I hope it makes sense. I have so much stuff to do, and only 3 weeks left of classes here. Time passes by so extremely fast and I have all these things I want to talk about but no time to talk about them and I’ll probably forget them all or be uninspired by the time I DO get time for it. *inhale*
Here is something “pointless” that is subtly wise and very entertaining. I think it captures a lot of what university students of this generation are/will face.
Reason: I suddenly feel very thankful for something about school and needed to share.
I’ve been having a bad week. Midterm stress, realizing I have an increasingly stop-breathing-ly-harmful fear of public speaking, haven’t played sports in a month and I’m somewhat malnourished.
So amidst this anxiety at 1 am of a Monday while writing up my assignment for advertising class I suddenly realized, that for the first time in university, I was writing for a business class. Not just some executive summary or a few paragraphs for a part I was responsible for in a group project. This is a “legit” 3 page single spaced analysis of a print ad (and the chance to create an original print ad =D.) Somehow getting to write makes me elated. Arts students may be saying “you crazy fool! Be grateful you don’t have to write these 1928397 page/word/sentence essays!”
I’ve had to write in university before (phil, psyc, eng) but not very seriously for Sauder. I am on exchange so I could be misguided but 3rd year is a long ways away from 1st and 2nd year. It feels like I have finally arrived at university instead of standing in the doorway trying to stay awake.
If I haven’t mentioned it before, when attending UBC I live at home in Burnaby, an hour away from school by transit, with my family. My dad, my overprotective brother and my mom who is there once or twice a year. Hong Kong is a whole other story. I am living in student residence. Hall 2 of 9 Halls with other people around my age with a distribution of about 50% locals and 50% other (international, mainland China, exchange.) Or at least that was what I was told the distribution is.
The only similarity is the distance to the nearest mall is about the same and the route to it is divided by a similarally steep hill.
I love living on campus to the point where I am starting to wonder if there is something wrong with me because I feel like I should be feeling home sick. Lets arbitrarily analyze this with a +/- scale and see if I am being blinded by my freedom from commuting (and freedom in general) or if this really as wonderful as it feels.
15 minute walk to school vs 1 hour transit? No brainer. +10
Not having the worry about staying at school extra late doing projects (which is surprisingly common here) and then waiting for the bus in the rain. +5
No longer having ask if I can go out (I have “Asian parents.”) +7 Though still getting checked up on over the phone. -2
Haven’t had a decent home cooked meal in a month. -4
Eating out at unique places all the time. Only +4 because then you realize it gets expensive and you start saving by going to some not so good for you places *cough*McDonalds*cough*
Big Mac meals and McNugget meals here are only $2.50 here! +0… It’s McDonalds.
The stove here is actually a hot plate. Only -1 because I don’t cook here.
Another -1 because I don’t cook.
Weekly dessert night for Hall 2!!! Only +1 …because I have gotten fatter =I
Unhealthy changes in appetite due to lack of affordable quality portioned correctly food on campus. -6
When your food gets stolen or destroyed in the tiny common fridge. -4 because then you’ll never put anything in it again.
Another -2 for the sheer lack of space in that fridge.
Having an awesome room mate who likes the stuff you like and has similar sleeping patterns. Neutral. Because it could have easily been the opposite. But +2 because she is just that awesome.
Hard time getting alone time to be depressed and moody. -5
Easy time to find someone to hang out with. +4
Learning about other cultures because res is so diverse. +6
The sharpest rise in number of Facebook friends (and real friends of course ) I will probably ever have. +1
The hall committee banging on doors every night trying to solicit votes. -1
Living independently for the first time can be really taxing on your self control. Neutral. It’s good preparation for life?
There are no dorm parties here but there is the nightly drinking and hanging out on the lawn. +2
I can’t sing as loudly as I want to my music of questionable taste. -3
That moment when you realize you don’t have basic supplies such as an umbrella, toilet paper or a blanket for the changing weather. -2 because then you realize those things are super cheap in Hong Kong.
Grand score: +11
Yes res life. You are that awesome.
^View from my hall of Hall 4 and 5 and the direction of the school.
I’m sitting in my dorm in Hong Kong thinking of posting and staring out the window at the hazy sky that reminds me very much of Vancouver. You know, the gray-about-to-rain looking kind of skies. I can’t decide what to write about. Challenges of healthy living at dorms? School stuff? The exchange student partying habits? Extracurricular activities? Budgeting? Homesickness? I can’t decide.
I made a friend here who is from HEC in Quebec. He says it must be a Vancouverite thing, the indecision. You know those times when you hang out with a bunch of people but no one wants to make a decision on what to do? I have a friend from home who is taking a semester off in HK and when we all hung out, he said it’s not indecision, it’s being considerate. I think it’s just personal indecision on my part. Is indifference the same as indecision or just an excuse for it?
People who return from exchange often say they learned so much about themselves and the world. For me, even though it’s only been a month, it’s the meeting people all the time factor that is affecting me most. You can’t call up your best friends to go out when you’re lonely or rely on someone to be on MSN to fill your social gap (time differences boo.) The business student teachings also kick in and tell me to go out there and “network.” Get bored, meet people more often than I would at home, and then I’m plunged into the awesome cosmo of knowledge and insight that is the bigger world.
I met up with an “acquaintance-friend” (those people who you would say are your friends but you don’t know them all that well) who quit school to move back to Hong Kong and work in his family’s business. I learned he is very ambitious. When I hear about what he has been doing and what he wants to do it makes me wonder if I should be ambitious too and build great dreams risking failure or just be calm and content and stable? At times I wonder if there is even a decision there. I guess it’s more like I don’t have a picture for my future. Like its an empty frame hanging in white space. Maybe I’m uninspired. I love ambitious people, I always learn so much from them.
Go be ambitious, you’re young, just do it.
(September 12, 2011: Mid-Autumn Festival, Victoria Park)
Whilst talking to my friend I noticed two feelings that young ambitious people tend to tell me about:
1. We want to do something great and we know that we can, we just don’t know what it is yet.
2. We either hold fears that someday we will be [age] and we won’t be where we want to be or we are already feeling like we are not the person who we thought we would be by now.
Do you think this is universal? It is striking how extremely similar my friend’s feelings were to other young ambitious people I know.
“If only I had a dream, then I’d chase it like mad” I would tell myself. People my age with dreams tell me “if only I knew for sure this is what I want.” I’d like to hear what someone who knows for sure has to say.
2. iTunes U
3. Orchestra
4. Adobe Reader
5. Flipboard
Paulina Tsui