I received a text message from a lovely young lady I know today that said: “Obama!” Indeed, he was the reason I did not sleep at 9 pm last night. That, and I was cramming Old English grammatical paradigms into my head.
But I did indeed receive over forty emails on Monday, not including newsletters, subscriptions and spam, mostly work or co-curricular-oriented ones requiring replies. Of those forty-plus emails, one was an acceptance into the Co-op program.
I’m happy.
Imagine you’re mingling at a dinner party and guests are talking about their lifework. You have five conversations.
The first one is a researcher who you know is looking for a cure for HIV/AIDS. He tells you what technique his team is now trying and why they are investigating that, as well as the theory behind it, and how much that would actually contribute to finding something out.
A second man explains to you the mechanics of suspension bridges and how they are built, and how tunnels are made beneath the ocean floor, linking one island to another.
A young lady talks about her work in a third-world country setting up a micro-credit institution that allows local villagers the means to kick-start their own independent businesses and the effects that this has had on their lives. She tells you the theory of why it works and how it works.
Another man tells you how it is possible for a large, ‘factory’ farm to downsize to a family, sustainable, organic one and yet still make 30 times more money than he did when he was being subsidized by the government.
The last woman speaks about her writing, albeit hesitantly, and why and how she writes about identity crisis; why, in a world where people are being born where their parents had never been before speaking languages their grandparents may never even have heard of travelling to places no one ever imagined, this is important to her to express and to allow other people to resonate with that.
Wouldn’t you, on some level in the furthest recesses of your heart — even if none of this has any applicability to you, even if all you’ll ever do with this information is file it away in some dark corner of your brain or forget it entirely — be interested? Just interested in learning what someone else is doing (even if you’d never, ever do it yourself), interested in having a whole new perspective on familiar things or learning something you would never otherwise have heard of?
I would be.
And if you would… then why do we have all this faculty rivalry, with students from each one putting the others down? Why don’t we stop and ask and listen to our friends from other faculties — for we all have those — without pre-judging: So what do you actually learn?
Posted in Academic
I know I am not the only one who is really looking forward to the long weekend. A break!
Also Thanksgiving, of course. I didn’t know how big Thanksgiving is until this Friday last year when I returned to Vanier to see floods of students being picked up by their parents in cars. Prior to this the most frequently asked question on my floor was, “Are you going home for the weekend?” Well… no. Even though I hadn’t expected Thanksgiving to affect me, given that I’ve never celebrated it, it still hit hard.
Fortunately, I was knocked out with a fever on Thanksgiving itself so didn’t have enough energy to be homesick. And then I want dancing in the evening.
This year I am far more prepared for the possibility of homesickness, but I think I should be fine. I have essays and other things due on Tuesday so I’ll probably be doing those on Thanksgiving Day instead of eating turkey and stuffing (which I first tried this Easter, by the way; I always imagined stuffing was something you put in the turkey).
But the whole point of my post, ignoring my digression on Thanksgiving, is to ask:
Where on earth can we go to suggest some form of Reading Week in Term 1 as well as Term 2?
Because a week’s break is exactly what I need right about now to take a step back, breathe, and catch up on everything without feeling overwhelemed. I’m not panicking, but it is hard to keep on top of things, and talking to a friend in New York University the other day has made me royally jealous of their fall break — apparently, they have a new, one-week fall break, courtesy of students complaining about having none before. Why, I want one of those!
While I have not counted the actual number of days, I don’t think that there is a huge difference between September to November and January to March (actual teaching days we are in class for). Psychologically, at least, I feel like we are in school for longer in the first term than the second. Maybe it’s not that way at all once I actually juggle the figures, but that’s what it feels like.
I have resigned myself to the fact that my non-Canadian friends have huge holidays. The US and the UK give three to four weeks for the winter break. They have reading weeks and/or fall and spring breaks. Some old classmates of mine had not only Reading Week in February, but then six weeks off for Easter too (admittedly, that was a little insane, since other UK folks only get four off). Granted, they only have three months’ summer as opposed to our four to make up for their larger holidays in between, and I realize that people can use four months to do a lot of things, like work and study and travel.
Though I suppose that if people had a month off for winter break, they could also work quite a bit then if in need of cash.
But the point is, while I’m not sure that everyone is willing to have one less month of summer in order to have longer and more holidays in between September 1st and April 31st, I don’t think an autumn Reading Week would hurt.
So can we pretty please have one?
Posted in Academic, International, Wellness
I just found out that exam timetables are up — I don’t know when they came out — and my schedule resembles something like this:
Monday: Term paper due
Tuesday: Take-home essay/paper due
Wednesday: EOSC exam
Thursday: Chinese exam
Friday: Old English exam
and I will probably have a Chinese oral exam to do online due around then.
The crunch is really not the exciting part (in fact, I think I will get butterflies in late November).
The exciting part is that I’m done by December 5th. I’m walking about a little dazed and stunned by the possibilities this opens up to me — I can go home earlier, maybe even much earlier. (My ticket’s currently booked for the 21st.) My two weeks’ rushed holiday is a month. I can get my wisdom teeth pulled out before they close for the winter holidays (I insist on going to my lifelong HK dentist; I fear Canadian dentists). I may be able to make it back in time for my mother’s birthday. I can visit my secondary school and see some of my old teachers.
But while a part of me is tempted to jump onto the next available midnight flight between the 5th and the 6th, I suppose I should check with all my various commitments and find out when they can spare me, and I was going to take some time after exams to get my L driver’s license (that’s right, I have not yet done the written test and am not qualified to drive, mostly because legal driving age in HK is 18 and there wasn’t enough time between my birthday and leaving for uni to learn), and I was looking forward to hanging out with friends here for a couple of days after exams (because face it, there’s hardly any time to really relax together during school)…
Oh forget it, I want to go home.
Posted in Academic, Off-Campus Life, Recreation
No, I am not making a comment about the financial status of those under so-and-so age. I’ve been prancing about the UBC Calendar while toying with the idea of a Minor and have gone through almost every possible Arts department now. I am now smacking and berating myself with, “Where have I been?”
Where, indeed? In less than half an hour, I have discovered that there is indeed an International Relations minor, and that there exists such minors as Health and Society and Migration and Globalization Studies. Once again, I am in awe of all the possibilities that exist out there, and am in very great danger of never minoring in anything at all because I want too much.
Oh, if I had found out about these before and tried to plan some of those lower-level requirements into my degree accordingly. But I never was interested before — I had very specific questions — “Should I try Psychology, Sociology or Anthropology?”; “Can I do something with all this Chinese or Anthropology that I’m taking?” And so I looked for answers to those questions. What I should have done, I now see, is to ask, “What is there?” and just look and look and look, and hopefully that wealth of variety would come hammering down on me and open my eyes.
Now I am contemplating if it’s possible to shove two years’ worth of requirements into a summer or some other ridiculously compact amount of time. For I am almost certain to do more than 120 credits at the rate I’m going.
Dreadful thought. If I do more than 120 credits and fulfil the requirements for an Honours degree and a second Major/Minor, they’ll actually count all those credits, right? They won’t say, “Pick 120 of the 360 credits you did”, right? Double-counting is only going to go so far, after all…
Posted in Academic
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