[insert witty title here]

Remember when Rabi would post up photos of UBC and we’d guess where the picture is from? Ok, I have one.

I bet every student at UBC has been in this building, it’s just a matter of getting this view.

Tomorrow is my final exam for JAPN 212, the 3 week long summer version.  As you can see I am totally procrastinating right now.

Anyway, I wanted to write a post about this course because I was scared out of my mind to take it. 5 hours a day, 4 days a week, for 3 weeks. Japanese is hard as it is during the normal school year so I had no idea how I would survive this.  But I am here to tell you it is not as bad as it sounds.

Sure I had to take cut down shifts at work, load up on coffee when the end of the week comes around but I am still managing to have a social life once in a while and getting decent marks (hopefully that final exam will be ok…)  By the way Super 8 is a fantastic movie.  So is X-Men: First Class.

The schedule: homework almost every day but it doesn’t take up much time.  Doing well is a matter of getting a good night’s rest so that you have enough energy to go to class in the day and still be motivated enough to study in the night. (Easier said than done for sure… I was not able to do this.)

The best part: I thought I wouldn’t really learn and just be cramming to survive, but I feel like it is sticking. For now anyway.

The worst part: sometimes you just have to suck it up and take the grind.  Get out of bed, stay awake, keep writing and remind yourself it will be over before you know it.

I think sometimes it is just a mind over matter thing.  Relative to the winter semester it seems chaotic but if you take 4 courses in the winter, time spent in school is about the same.  It is harder when you believe that summer is for summer vacation and you ask yourself what the heck are you doing in school in July.  This moody Vancouver weather we’ve been having these last 3 weeks is making it much easier to take though.  I don’t feel like I am missing much by being in here with the cold and clouds out there haha.

Side note: OMGz. Universities across Canada are gathering at UBC tomorrow for ROBOT RACING.  I have no idea what it entails other than robots and racing but it sounds cool.  Or maybe I’ve been at school and sleep deprived for too long.

1. Unless you make special arrangements, you have to pay for a full course load.  In other words, 5 courses.  You can take less courses but you have to pay for 5.

2. Just because UBC has given you the go-ahead to your school of choice, you still need to apply to the actual school as an exchange student.  (I knew it was too easy!)

3. I forget the number, and it may only be a Sauder thing, but there is a limit on the number of courses you can take that are the equivalents to your core courses. Ie. You need A202, B204 and C203 to be promoted to 4th year, you are only allowed to take 2/3 abroad.

4. You might not know what you are taking on exchange until after your course registration dates at UBC. So if spots in your faculty are competitive, plan ahead and make some extra worklists.

5. Even is you are rejected by your 1st choice, have your 2nd and 3rd choice of schools fill up, there is still hope.  I am going to my 4th choice! =D City University of Hong Kong (which was actually my original 2nd choice until I changed all my plans 2 days before the forms were due)

6. Student residence in other countries may be cheaper than you think.  If money is something holding you back from exchange, remember that your tuition is the same, less in a sense because you won’t be paying for things like a UPass, so the only difference is your living expenses, unless you are already paying for them.  (Considering we are in Vancouver, chances are you will be saving money.)
*side excursions to nearby countries not included

7. All Go Global students get a scholarship of up to $1000 per term! (and a bunch of other possibilities)

Random money tip: when applying for a visa, those photobooths in the mall (not sticker photo) will work and you will save about 20 bucks.  But unless you are drop dead gorgeous, your picture will probably look ugly. Photobooth pictures do not qualify for passport renewal pictures, visas only.

I don’t mean for the Canucks. I mean for blogging about the riot.

Actually, this psycho analysis of the causes for the event pretty much sums up everything I want to say: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/737263-vancouver-riot-psychology-not-hooligans-is-responsibile-for-the-chaos?fb_ref=article_headline&fb_source=profile_oneline

I’m sorry but I hate it when I hear how people say that our city should be ashamed.  Man, I love this city! Not that rioting is ok or that it is anything we should be proud of, it was just the human reaction.

If you are into psychology and social phenomena (or can’t get straight in your mind why the hell things like WWII could occur with only one man at the helm… not that the article explains that but it did help me a little in figure it out.)

In other news, I got accepted to my 4th choice of exchange! (Yes, 4th.) ‘Till next time…

So you’ve heard of team buying right? aka “Groupon” and related sites

In case you haven’t, basically it is a “deal” that you buy online through a team buying site such as www.groupon.com where every day a different local business offers min 50% off from the regular price on a deal of some sort.  That’s right broke college kids like me, 50%. Minimum.  The only catch, you need a credit card to purchase.  Seriously, that is the only catch.  Unless someone has a bad experience they would like to share.

I’m beginning to feel like a commercial but honestly, it’s so cool I just have to share.

At work today I caught word of a new Groupon type thing launching tomorrow called Groupon Now!  Basically, you state your location (or let your phone find out where you are for you through an app)  and it will pull up deals that are running in your area sorted by category.  Unlike normal Groupons, there are multiple deals running on the same day.  Not only that, they may be time sensitive to the time of day the deals are active.

So you don’t really get too much flexibility for choosing when you get to use your deal, but it sounds pretty fun to explore the random stuff the city has to offer when it is all conveniently in a map-like application.

www.groupon.com/now

I swear this is not a commercial, it just looks so fun!

Here are some more team buying sites in case you were interested =) Please share if you know some good ones!

www.socialshopper.com
www.swarmjam.com
www.wagjag.com
www.livingsocial.com

Side note: you know what else is tomorrow?  A day that will go down in history.  Go Canucks go.

Dear UBC,

I am a 2nd year student at Sauder and today I am an unsatisfied student.  I’ll just be direct, I feel like I’m being robbed.  Please explain yourself.

Below is a screenshot of my tuition for 2010W Term 2 tuition.

All of my 3 credit courses cost $669.42, I have 2 Arts faculty electives: Japanese 200 level and social psychology.

Below is a screenshot of my friend’s tuition for 2010W Term 1 tuition. He is a 2nd year Arts student.

All of his 3 credit courses cost $451.80.  Notably, PSYC 305A which is a personality psychology class.

We are both 2nd year students, entered in the same year, same age, same citizenship, but different faculties (ok he also took personality psyc and I took social psyc but either way…) How is this fair?  Even if I took PSYC 305A 002 with the same prof in the same room, at the same time, learning the same things, I would still be paying $217.62 more.

In first year, both of our 3 credit courses cost $442.95.  Excluding first year, to graduate with a BCOM we need a minimum of an additional 18 credits of non-commerce electives.  Without factoring in annual tuition increases and tuition increases due to being in a higher year (which doesn’t make sense because arts doesn’t get that increase,) and the “time value of money” for you finance kids out there, this translates to $1305.72.

I suppose you can say that is a small price relative to a whole degree but that doesn’t mean it is justified.

Perhaps Sauder students should have to pay more because of our teachers/facilities.  No, that doesn’t justify why we have to pay more for courses not in our faculty.  I’m sorry, but this feels like robbery.  I paid it, but that doesn’t mean I signed up for it.  The school did not tell me I was paying more for my courses by being a Sauder student.

UBC, I’d like some answers.

Sincerely,

Paulina Tsui

@readers, What can I do about this?  I actually don’t know, someone please help me with a next step.

By the way, does anyone know how much non-commerce students have to pay when taking a commerce course?

Financial tip to incoming business students: take summer school in first year.  You get to pay first year fees for those courses and knock of some requirements at the same time.

Back from a short vacation in New York…  first thing I do after arriving home at 3 am?  Check my marks haha.

Surprisingly, I did better than I thought.

2nd year was much harder than 1st year and my marks reflect that.  Strangely though, I mentioned it before, I feel very chill and almost apathetic when it came to studying and putting in any extra effort.  I think I’ve reached that point where I have accepted that I am not going to score in the top percentiles anymore, so why not just enjoy the other joys of life more and settle.

*Steve Job’s commencement speech pops into head: DON’T SETTLE!*

I think I’m still recovering from that “you’re no longer one of the smart kids” blow.  Sometimes I find myself pushing the limits of the minimum amount I need to study and still get above my minimum standard.  What happened to the me that chased ideals instead of heading backwards to my minimums?

I did it back in high school too, just not with my grades.  I did it with my wake up times.  How late can I wake up and still make it to school on time?  Then everyday I would wake up later and later until the day I was late.  Then I realized that showing up late wasn’t a big deal and my new limit became how late can I be before the teachers start caring.

Thank god for summer vacation.  I don’t want these mind sets anymore.

Still the best part of University: I feel like I’m growing up faster than ever before.  (which I probably would anyway but “University” is the title of this chapter of my life)

UBC LipDub. If you haven’t seen it, well get a move on.  If you have, watch it again.  Every view contributes donations to the Make a Wish Foundation!

The epicness of this video, the whole fact that this video is all over my Facebook feed and the fact I’m seeing all this love for our community makes up for waking up at 9 am on a Saturday morning to dance in a rain poncho.

Okay fine, getting to see Marianas Trench for a brief second already made up for it. =P

I hope my remaining years at UBC will have moments like this again.  I passed by the launch party today at Robson square and I was planning to stay for a song or two, but there was that feeling of community hovering in the air.  It drew me in and I stayed out in the cold for two hours.  I hate it when people are all up in each other’s face with UBC/SCHOOL PRIDE and I can’t say that this video made me gain pride for being a Thunderbird (although I must admit I did chant that day.)  However, the video made me, for once, feel that we’re not just separate segments of people who happen to gather at the same 993 acres of land every week.

(Did anyone else notice the product placement for the Compass Translink cards at the end? =( good by old UPass system)

All the worries of my days in university so far have all been fixated around time.  There’s so much time spent on things like commuting, breaks that are too long but not long enough between classes, time spent on recovering energy from commuting too long (which by the way doesn’t make any  but I still do it.)  And the procrastination.  Oh my all the procrastination.  By the time the weekend comes along I still don’t feel like I have enough time and then the weekend passes like it never even came.

Yesterday Robert Herjavec, one of the Dragon’s from CBC’s The Dragon’s Den came to speak about what mostly seemed like inspiration.  He told us a story about a time when Arnold Schwarzenegger went to speak at a university and a student was upset about the tuition increase proposals.  The student said that a tuition increase would mean that he would have to get a job.  Arnold said so what?  The student then argues that getting a job means less time to study, and he’ll do bad in school and he won’t have any sleep (I bet that sounds familiar).  Arnold asks him how many hours he needs to sleep.  Boy replies 8.  Arnold says 6 is enough.  Boy says 6 is not enough for him.  Arnold says “sleep faster.”

Were you waiting for something deeper?

Herjavec’s presentation was indeed deep, that was just something he said that I really wanted to share.

Anyway, the majority of the presentation was about achieving success.  He said that if you’re poor, or if you’re ugly, or if you’re just stuck with some bad dispositions, of course it’s going to be harder for you.  And then the next point he made stuck with me so much, the only equal playing field we have is the fact that we all have the same amount of time.

Think about someone you admire, or someone you envy.  What are they doing with their time that you aren’t?  Why aren’t you?

That is so easy to say but it’s not like I’m satisfied with every action I make.  But I’m working on it, maybe it’s all a part of growing up.  (…Am I going to be 30 years old some day and still being saying stuff like “it’s a part of growing up?”)