quick updates: Cooking in Rez, TEDx Terry Talks, Work Study

Posted on September 9, 2011 | 11 Comments

Cooking:

I’m sitting in my room with an ancient-looking can opener and a can of tuna.  I can’t open it.  I could tell you all about Kant’s ethics or Rawlsian justice, but I’m hungry and I want some tuna!

Welcome to Suite style residence.  In my case, Ritsumeikan Residence.  The last two years at Totem and Vanier, I had purchased the compulsory meal plan so all my food was made by other people.

So far, I’ve managed a vegetarian sandwich loaded with garlic (excuse my breath this year, I intend on including garlic in every recipe), freshly squeezed lemon juice, fruit (yes, I can manage to rinse things…), and I anticipate some basic pasta and potatoes in the near future.  In the middle of back-to-school errands, a new academic term, and an upcoming Work Study, I’ve got to learn how to cook and everything that comes with it—shopping for food, balancing nutrition, cleaning up messes, wielding knives! Time to research.

P.S. If you want to cook for someone or have extras, you know who to call.

(This was written a few days ago.  I did manage to open to the can—with force, not technique.)

TEDx Terry Talks:

This was the event, a month into first year, that made me realize university was the best place for me to be; a showcase of splendid ideas and stories not from professors but from our fellow, brilliant students.  My blogpost covering the 2009 event is here.

This is the year you go to it.  I’ll meet you there, and If I don’t know you, make sure to say hello!

Register here.

TEDx Terry Talks Website with more information.

Work Study:

For those of you who have never heard of Work Study/Work Learn, you should.

After applying to 12 jobs for this school year (8 of them Work Studies), I got 2 interview/job offers.  OK, I know that looking back on those numbers now, 1:6 ratio is a pretty good deal during these times but I swear it felt like I was applying for 100 and only getting 1 interview back.  This is probably because I adjust my cover letter/resume for each job so it’s a pain.

I won’t be starting til late September but I’m excited to be a  research assistant to a Political Science Professor. I’m so grateful that UBC has a program like Work Study for students to experience working alongside/for professors, librarians, staff, etc.

Finally,

Miriam Sabzevari = most awesome Arts student?

I like this glitch.

(It’s a link to the article on my trip to the ABCDE Conference, written by Mary).

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Posted in Careers/Work, Events, Residence Life

F Word Undergraduate Conference Review

Posted on September 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

My brother and I wrote a joint-review on the F Word (Feminist) conference.  If you were there, you can check out our review in the newsletter for the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies at UBC, here (page 6).

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Posted in Events, Involvement / Leadership

Dear First Years (a letter you should read)

Posted on September 4, 2011 | 11 Comments

Dear First Years,

You’ve probably heard it a million times.

“Your university years are going to be the best time of your life!”

Let’s be clear now: I’m not exactly here to shatter that dream. It certainly has been the best time of my life so far.  I have met and even made friends with incredibly interesting, intelligent, and kind people.  I have enamoured myself with academic passions, and have found means to satiate my lust for learning.  I have loved and (I hope) been loved.  In a way, university makes me feel like a happy little atomic particle freely moving around in open space.

But.

But that doesn’t mean you should put unrealistic expectations on yourself or your experience.  Here at the Blog Squad, we tend to highlight the ups of university, not the downs.  Oh, we may mention the downs but rarely do we  truly explore them.  We’re sort of like the complete opposite of the journalism industry in that way.

There are downs.  Maybe you take long commutes and are having difficulty making any lasting friends.  Maybe you live in residence and you feel like you don’t belong there on Friday nights.  Maybe you have serious troubles paying rent and tuition at the same time and it affects everything else in your life.  Maybe you or a friend are assaulted at a party and the perpetrator gets away with it.  Maybe you develop an eating disorder, depression, or other illness. Maybe you try your best and your marks never go up and you feel like a failure.  Maybe your professor is not treating you with respect or using unfairly leveraging their power over you.  Maybe you’re stressed out thin and feel like it will never end.  Maybe you’re going through problems I can’t even think of.  Or maybe you pretend everything is going perfectly well—heck, maybe everything is, and yet you’re still feeling down.

It’s not like university is some weird phase in one’s life where –poof- all life’s sufferings disappear.  Don’t  trust the photos in the university brochures for the whole picture because they never photograph any of the above circumstances.

All I want to say—to first years, and anyone else who might be reading this, is that:

1) Expecting too much is unhealthy.  Be realistic about your goals and work towards them with your best effort.  Realize, truly (not just theoretically), that there are both ups and downs.

2)  That there are resources on campus (and off campus) provided by both peers and professionals that are here to help you help yourself.  And no, you don’t have to be going through really traumatic events in order to use these services. 

3) That you can still have great, fantastic times at university even if you experience circumstances like the ones given above.  Ups and downs, remember—not just ups but not just downs either. 

So take it easy, my dears.

Sincerely,
With love,
A third year student.

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Posted in Academics, AMS, Commuting, Residence Life, Spirituality, Wellness

AMS council passes executive pay raise (woohoo?)

Posted on August 31, 2011 | 3 Comments

Tonight, like most students, I was not sitting and watching an AMS council meeting.  I was enjoying one of my last days of summer, and only by peeping at my twitter stream did I learn that our AMS representatives were voting on an executive pay raise.

Not all pay raises are inherently evil. But this one is highly questionable.

I fully intend to provide a simple breakdown of our student government soon enough [in drawing format of course], so that this kind of news would make more sense & so I could blog about it, but for now…check out this as-of-yet-not-updated Ubyssey article:

http://ubyssey.ca/news/ams-proposes-immediate-executive-pay-increase-of-up-to-7500-54/

 

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Posted in AMS

Last Friday Night college culture: ramblings

Posted on August 28, 2011 | 3 Comments

Is it just me or has it recently become popular to sing about collegiate Last Friday Night euphoria themes?  I realize that many songs are designed for the disco (which means they have revolved around partying/dancing for some time), and I know elite parting lifestyles have always been a big music theme…but popular music seems to have taken more of a shift in the last couple years towards romanticizing the collegiate, anyone-can-do-it experience of partying, featuring: drinking until you barf everywehere, unknowingly having sex, breaking liquor or noise laws, wasting as much money as you can, etc.  I know nothing about pop music history but my intuition is that it’s changed from singers singing “I do this stuff, look how much fun I’m having” to “we do this stuff, look how much fun we’re having”  It’s become more democratized, so to speak.

What I’m talking about is displayed in Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night” below (where even the ultimate nerd can get her booty on), many  Ke$ha songs, and even Miley Cyrus and Rebecca Black.  I’m sure those music savvy can list more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlyXNRrsk4A&ob=av3e

So, regardless of whether or not this actually a new phenomenon, let’s blog about it because it does touch upon college life and this blog is sometimes about college.

*blogs about it*

These typifications of college life annoy me.  I dislike being bombarded with such notions of what the collegiate social experience is like (or should be like) because:

A) It monopolizes the definition of a fun social experience on campus. Without doing any research, I think we can say that an extremely large portion of AMS, AMS clubs, and student society money for social events is spent on dance & drink parties (or variations of them.)  Can’t we be a bit more creative?  Can’t we, as student societies, sponsor environments where it’s okay to ask that guy out, to be yourself, or to have fun–without wasting ourselves?

Questioning the monopoly is good not only because it accommodates the many students who abstain from Fright Night culture regularly for personal, religious, health, and so on reasons…but because it’s inherently awesome to come up with fresh ideas & new ways to have fun.

B) It advocates self-destruction, and I am worried we won’t be able to defend ourselves if zombies attack us while we’re partying.

In the movie “Same Same but Different,” the main character from Germany explains why he is vacationing in Cambodia—visiting night clubs, taking drugs, and bringing prostitutes home:

“We need delirium you know…on holiday.  Because everything is too clean in Europe, everything is so fucking clean so we go to Asia to get smashed….smashing in the head, inside, we need weird mashing inside, that’s holiday for us.  We’ve gotta get fucked!”

Ke$ha’s lyrics sum it up as well:

“We’re dancing like we’re dum dum-dum dum-dum-dumb
Our bodies go num num-num num-num-numb
We’ll be forever youn youn-youn youn-youn-young”

Bass lines drowning out all sense, mind-numbing, clogging self…it’s problematic in my view.  I could go on but I don’t think anyone would want to read it.

And so here is the sorry end to my blogpost. To bed!

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Posted in AMS, Recreation, Residence Life

Summer Course Update (Philosophy of Religion, American Politics)

Posted on August 22, 2011 | 2 Comments

I’m feeling a bit like this right now:

It’s been a month and I have much to say but I’m blocked, so to speak.  So you’re stuck with a course update:

Without knowing my grades yet…

PHIL 349A (Philosophy of Religion): Oh dear, oh dear, oh my, and anything else Rabbit from Winnie-the-Pooh might say.  OK, I can’t speak for everyone but my reception of this class both in the particular (course readings, professor, etc.) and the general (course content, the general premise) was not so great.  As you may know from my previous blogposts on spirituality, I am not in the least interested in “proving” or “disproving” God, in analyzing Jewish and Christian scripture extensively (especially while superficially covering Buddhism, Islam, and other religious practices), nor listening to fundamentalist atheists argue in circles with fundamentalist Christians in class.  OK, I have to admit, that last part was pretty funny—seeing both sides interpret the world (rather, twisting the world) to fit inside their respective frameworks really reminds you to take a look at your own.   While the professor was reasonable…if you’re considering taking this course, let’s seriously talk in person about it first.

POLI 320A (Government and Politics of the United States): As a compacted summer course, it had a few too many readings and small assignments to get by just relaxing on the beach.  This is basically like POLI 101 except American, and with lots and lots of learning about what political scientists think.  Rather, what political scientists prove in their amazingly “empirical” studies (P.S. I’m being sarcastic.  I’m into politics, not political science.)  Learning about American politics really made me appreciate Canadian politics—at least we don’t have massive institutional obstacles in the way of change, and our prime ministerial candidates don’t hold fear-inducing prayer rallies or reject climate change on the basis that C02 is “natural.” Overall, a decent course!

*             *             *             *

As I re-evaluate the purpose of this blog going into third year, is there anything you think I should write more or less about?  (In particular, any topics worth covering in comic/drawing format?) Let me know in the comments!

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Posted in Academics

My Honest Opinion of UBC Arts One: the Alternative First-year Program

Posted on July 29, 2011 | Leave a comment

I wrote a  700 word blog post on Arts One for UBC Jumpstart’s blog.  You can check it out here! Complete with a cartoon breakdown of the classroom structure.  Feel free to ask me questions in the comments or email me at miriamsabz@gmail.com

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Posted in Arts One

I’m slightly obsessed with UBC’s rose garden

Posted on July 27, 2011 | 2 Comments

The roses don’t ever seem to be in bloom during the winter session.  Now that I’m taking summer courses, I make sure to visit my floral friends when I’m on campus.  But that’s okay, I’m not the only one who loves it.  Just the other day, someone (probably an alumnus) nearly started crying because she had “never seen it like this before.”  It is quite the sight, not to mention the fragrance!

Some photos I took today:

The rest of UBC is also the stuff of postcards these days.

As for me, life is bittersweet.

Quote of the week: “We’re going to punish him with democracy and love.” – Oslo Mayor, Fabian Stang

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Posted in Uncategorized

Justice for Rumana Monzur

Posted on July 13, 2011 | 4 Comments

[Originally written for the World Bank Youthink! blog, visible here. I speak only for myself.]

The Silent Global Epidemic: Domestic Violence Against Women

A glance at the world’s news headlines will tell you all about today’s military wars, terrorist attacks, and territorial disputes. But there is an oft forgotten war occurring everywhere in the world and at all times; the war in our homes.

To paraphrase a worker at Vancouver’s Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter: no country in the world, developed or developing, is exempt from the otherwise ordinary men who beat their wives or lovers. I recently attended a discussion panel consisting of professors and women’s activists at my university addressing this very issue.

The panel was set up in response to a case of domestic violence against one of our international graduate students, Rumana Monzur. In a visit back to her home in Bangladesh, her husband brutally attacked her in front of her daughter; she was left hospitalized and hurt in many heartbreaking ways. Rumana Monzur, by publicly seeking justice, has garnered much international media attention for the unheard victims of domestic violence.

The panel was quick to dispel any myths that domestic violence is contained to developing countries like Bangladesh. In my own country of Canada, where we pride ourselves in gender equality, violence and sexual violence against women is prevalent and largely goes unreported.

The problem is of course exacerbated in many developing nations.

There is a common notion that lack of economic development causes domestic violence, as insinuated on one of the World Bank’s own webpages: “An increase in poverty, unemployment, stress, and frustration among men leads to a rise in marital disagreements and domestic violence.”

While this is likely true, the panel decided it was wrong to view economic development issues as causes of domestic violence. Domestic violence is a reflection of attitudes engrained in all cultural systems of the world that view women as lesser human beings. This is why rich men, and men in developed countries, still beat their wives and lovers. Therefore, developmental efforts to reduce domestic violence should not focus on alleviating men’s frustrations, but on empowering women.

Rumana Monzur came to Canada to advance her education, and her right to education was challenged by her husband through violence. The global epidemic of domestic violence will not end until societies proactively support women in their life endeavours.

Edit (Jul 13, 2011): Please see Lilliene’s point in her comment below as well!

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Posted in Politics, Wellness

10 Reasons Why a Philosophy Degree is Awesome

Posted on June 19, 2011 | 2 Comments

“ Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe – the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” –Immanuel Kant

I want to share some of the perks of studying philosophy at the undergraduate level!  In no particular order:

1. By studying philosophy, you are actually studying everything else.  There’s Philosophy of Art, Philosophy of Economics, Philosophy of Science—you name it.  You get exposure to a wide variety of different fields.

2. You develop  a deep sense of humility, Socrates-style.   This is partly because: “Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.” –Bertrand Russell.  But mostly, it’s because you’re always wrong.  Good luck finding a golden answer..

3. Fellow students are thoughtful and know how to STFU most of the time.  Yeah.  You know what I mean.  If you don’t, read this hilarious Onion article (which is ironically about a Philosophy student.  Oops.)

4. You learn how to easily find the main string of any argument.  That’s because we regularly read sentences like this: “Since men in their endeavors behave, on the whole, not just instinctively, like the brutes, nor yet like rational citizens of the world according to some agreed-on plan, no history of man conceived according to a plan seems to be possible, as it might be possible to have such a history of bees or beavers.” -Kant (What’s that about bees and beavers?) And this: “If I can know something without knowing what I know to be the consequences of it, then I can know that I know something without knowing what I know to be the consequences of my knowing it.” –Some philosopher I have willingly blanked out of my mind.  It also means you will never be distracted by rhetoric or fancy fluff.

5. You get to intensely study topics that every human thinks about at some point in their lives.  Some people think Philosophy is a lofty and leisurely activity but I think it permeates our everyday, down-to-earth existence.

6. You spot and swat down fallacious arguments like flies.  Unfortunately, the side effect to this amazing superpower is that reading YouTube comments hurts your soul.

7. You learn how to write clearly, to justify all of your statements, and to be persuasive.  (For those regular readers of my blog looking at me in disbelief, this does not apply to my blog posts!)

8. Your papers are relatively short.  Example: I had a total of 13 pages to write in a Philosophy 300 course, and a total of 16 pages for a Political Science 100 course.

9. You walk out of many of your lectures or tutorials, mindflipped.  Lectures actually interest you, and you don’t understand how other students can fall asleep in theirs.   Also, you always look forward to your readings.

9 ¾. Male to Female ratio often feels like 60:40.  Hey, “awesome” can be subjective.  And temporal…

10. Philosophy is highly normative, meaning you’re not just absorbing facts of the world but thinking about whether or not those facts should change; you ask questions about what “should” or “should not” be.  Political Philosophy: Should our society have a welfare system?  Epistemology:  Should you believe in science?  Ethics:  Should you participate in assisted suicide?  etc.

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Posted in Academics