Monthly Archives: June 2014

Course Selection Season A.K.A Ultraviolence

Much like the beautiful and tragic new Lana Del Rey album, we are greeted by something also equally beautiful and tragic: Course Selection Season.

It’s the thing that keeps you up at night, wondering if you’ve been good enough all year to not get a schedule full of coal.  You can’t sleep the night before.  You hold your stuffed alligator or what have you close to you at night, and let out a childish wimper, as this is something even your respective parent can’t fix for you.

Here’s some tips for making it through it:

1. Food

Rule #1 to any conflict in my life always revolves around food.

For course selection, might I suggest a handful of trail mix, or some camomile tea.  Let’s aim for something calming. We all know that your Sociology discussion is probably going to fill up about fifteen minutes before your scheduled registration time, and spilt tea is a lot easier to clean up then like a two-six of Dr. Pepper.

2. Multiple Worklists

I’m going to say it again for everyone’s benefit: MULTIPLE

Keep a sheet of what courses you really need.  The key is to register as fast as possible.  I’m not saying course selection is like a race, but I’m also not, not saying that. You feel me?

3. The Worklist May NOT Match Your Registered Courses

Remember that if you don’t get everything on your worklist, and you end up frantically adding something else, it will only pop-up on your “registered courses” and not your worklist.

Make sure you make a final worklist of your registered courses, as to save yourself some confusion in the future. Seriously, trust me. I’m freaked out too many times when I thought that two courses were overlapping in term two.

4. Advising is Always (ok, almost always) There for You

Call your faculty’s advising line, or shoot them an email if you run into something major.

If you don’t know who to go to, talk to your Enrolment Services Professional (ESP.  They know what’s up, and who to holler at. (Shoutout to Cara Low for being an awesome ESP!!!)

5. Profs are USUALLY Pretty Cool

What I mean by this is they are like usually really approachable over e-mail or something.  Sometimes not, sometimes they don’t email you back, but like this is one of those YOLO moments. Sometimes they even let you into their class even though it’s technically full. (Thanks, Dr. Oh!)

6. Waitlists Happen

Don’t be scared off by the waitlist! Go sign up for it if you REALLY want that course.

7. Check the SSC a BUNCH during first week

People drop out of a lot of courses during first week.  If you STILL want that course, go check for it during first week.  It could save a whole lot of paperwork for you and your faculty’s advising department!

8. Go Online (At Least) An Hour Before

See if any of your courses are already full, and shift your schedule around a little bit earlier.  This will save you a ton of stress, hopefully.

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And finally…

New York Dreams

Sunday

It’s 12:38AM, and I lie here listening to the sound of a party in the distance.  The bass is somewhat absent in what is the neighbour’s son’s College graduation party.  People’s taste in party music has always been fascinating to me.  It’s weird being alone in the basement of an Upstate New York house, on a mattress.  A few days previously I was stressing about my final Creative Writing 200 assignment, and the state of my personal life.  I lie here knowing that the end of the summer term left me more alone than I had originally thought.

Loneliness is a fear I have.  Why? Because most of the time I think too much, and before you know it, I wake up having a panic attack.  Sometimes my dreams are not too kind to me, but we can’t blame them for telling me things that I am too afraid to admit to myself.

I thought this trip thousands of miles away from everything would be like a trip to rehab, to be perfectly honest.  I expected to go to a place with no internet, just the company of a pool and the scorching sun.  Perhaps rehab is a hyperbolic comparison, but who doesn’t like a good hyperbole?

My brain was making all kinds of situations up, probably to distract myself from the fact that this would be the first time I flew alone.  My journey to the New York/Newark airport was memorable for sure, thanks to my connection in Chicago at the Orly Airport.

Chicago Sunrise

 

I had the pleasure of being on a red-eye out of Vancouver.  I trapped myself next to the window and fell asleep after I found out that the $9.00 internet did not let me watch Netflix [sigh].  We landed at 5:00AM Chicago time, which is about 3:00AM Vancouver time.  As groggy as I was, I managed to get myself through Customs, and on to the train which would take me to the terminal where my connecting flight was.  Once there, I discovered that my 1.5 hour wait for my flight had become a 3.5 hour wait.  I trudged to the Starbucks nearest to my gate and drowned myself in a caramel macchiato.  No one at my gate seemed too happy due to the delay, so I decided to go sit with people flying to Denver.  Sitting with people who weren’t mad at United Airlines really helped my psyche — that, and the caffeine I had just ingested.

I slept all but fifteen minutes of my flight from Chicago to Newark, and woke up feeling human again.

The sight of my mother in the arrivals terminal brought tears to my eyes.  I think the only thing I really didn’t like about flying alone was not having a shoulder to sleep on during the flight.

I lie here, in this cool basement, surrounded by my family.  Not directly surrounding me, but they lie only two floors above me.  It’s comforting.

—

There are moments that have happened today that I will never be able to recreate:

-When the navigator steered my mom and I in the wrong direction and we ended up knee-deep in the Bronx, for instance.  The entrance of the area so congested, and humid that there were men selling bottles of water to the people stuck in Saturday traffic.

-The look on my father’s face as I snuck up behind him, and yelled ‘SURPRISE!’  He had no idea I was coming out to see him for Father’s Day.

-Winding down the night with the company of my extended family surrounding me, as they laughed at how I held a pool cue.

All of that makes the fear that I had seem so unnecessary.  Sure, there will be hours alone while I’m here, but everyone is only an iMessage or a Snapchat away.

I lie here alone, trying not to drift away in my thoughts of what could’ve been my past summer term.  I’m trying to dream up what I want to do when we go into the city, instead.  I still don’t know, there are so many options.  Instead, I listen in again to the faint guitar in the distance, at the graduation party, and I realize that facing the loneliness is not as scary as I thought it would’ve been.