Category Archives: Academic

There should be some kind of warning sign for this

Posted on 8 October 2007 | 5 comments

So I was clicking around the SSC randomly because what I really want is to find out if the FNSC building is the Food, Nutrition and Health building for a club meeting tomorrow (because SC stands for Health, of course), but the courses section isn’t working —

when I decide to click around the examinations area and find that, ta-da! —

exam dates are out, and why did no one mention it before? There should be some kind of warning: Oh yes, by the way, exam dates are out so you can mentally prepare yourself for December. What if I never checked until November? That would be bad planning on my part. How long have they been out? I have no idea; no one has even mentioned the subject so far.

So my exam schedule looks like this:
Thursday 6 December: Chinese 211 (8:30-11:00)
Saturday 8 December: Anthropology 103 (12:00-2:30) [my first non-music-related exam on a Saturday!]
Tuesday 18 December: English 220 (8:30-11:00), and Computer Science 101 (3:30-6:00)

Alas, two exams in one day. That does not count as an exam hardship (which would have to be three exams or more within twenty-four hours). Oh well, it’s not so bad. In fact, it could be a lot worse.

And now I am plotting to see if I can leave for HK a day earlier and make it in time for my secondary school’s end-of-term Christmas parody.

Now to find out about that FNSC building…

5 Comments

Posted in Academic

Going global

Posted on 5 October 2007 | Comments Off on Going global

Before I came to UBC, I was quite keen on doing some exchange programmes. That was actually one of the things I was considering when applying to the UK as well, but then I remembered that there are only three years and it would be kind of pointless to be traipsing about elsewhere if I wanted to do a straight English degree. Only now that I’m here, I’ve decided that I’m not going to go on exchange during the academic year.

Thanks to the IB, I have a lot of transfer credit. This makes me eligible to apply for third-year English at the end of this year, and as English is what I want to do more than anything else, I want to stick around and study as much as I can as fast as I can. I also want to do Creative Writing, which is essentially only open to second-year students. (Which reminds me, I need to check whether being a second-year student doing third-year English makes me eligible for Creative Writing. It would be too cruel if I wasn’t eligible next year, wouldn’t it? Because I couldn’t enter second-year English this year until I got my IB results, which were well after registration dates, so I wasn’t eligible when everything became full either.) I might still think about going to Glasgow for third year, but then again, I’m also thinking of doing co-op, so it’s one or the other. I’ve also noticed a lot of the partner universities only offer lower-level courses, which I am personally no longer interested in.

Despite this, I still plan on going abroad. I sincerely believe that going to different countries opens you up to so many new experiences, opportunities and challenges. After talking with some secondary school friends who went to places they’d never been to before to pursue their tertiary education, I have to say I am envious of their courage and the rewards they are reaping because of it. I am learning the hard way that great rewards only come with great risks. I wish I took bigger risks.

And so I am going to apply for summer school — or more specifically, the Spring Term (May to mid-June) at Queen’s International Research Centre in Herstmonceux for 2008. Credit transfers very easily from there; you do three courses there, equivalent to nine credits at UBC. My parents are very supportive of this idea (more so than the idea of me staying on at UBC for summer school).

I also have dreams of volunteering abroad one summer. I’m not sure where that would fit into my schedule… I need serious help planning out my degree with all the stuff I want to do.

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Posted in Academic, International

Touching on taboos

Posted on 30 September 2007 | 3 comments

So I woke up this morning with an infected throat. I slept too late for two nights in a row and this is the consequence. To those of you who, like me, cannot stay up all night, here is a tip: Don’t.

Now I’m just rather miserable (but the sickness might explain why I was feeling miserable earlier on this week). I hesitate to write the rest of this, but in my current frame of mind, I am not particularly happy about being here at UBC. Now I feel like I just broke a taboo. People are so happy and proud to be here. I was happy and I want to be happy, but I’m not.

Quite frankly, I’m going through the phase of questioning whether I made the right decision in coming here and whether UBC is really the place most suitable for me. Most people don’t talk about it, but I don’t believe that I’m the only one who’s ever asked herself those questions. And not just whether I made the right choice in coming, but whether I’m making the right choice in staying. I’ve been worrying a lot to my secondary school friends lately because it hasn’t turned out the way I wanted it to be. My classes — even my second-year ones — are not very challenging and this is frustrating me immensely. I expected things to be harder, to push myself beyond my current limits, but it’s not really happening. There is plenty of material to learn and a lot of work, but not extremely hard work. And I find I love brain-fry.

People say come October/November, with mid-terms and what-not, everything will get harder. But that seems to be more a time management issue than the academics getting much harder. I’ve also had varied responses as to whether third-year gets very much more intense in terms of material; some say yes, some say no, I really don’t know.

Of course I should be waiting to see what mark I got on my first essay before I say that things are easy because I probably don’t know what I’m talking about. I wish that’s the case.

This negativity of mine could all just be part of a cultural transition. Though I don’t think so — I never expected or wanted to stay in Hong Kong for university.

Plus I think I’m about to get homesick. And it’s still raining.

Now to go hunt for my laundry. Sundays are very busy days for the laundry rooms.

3 Comments

Posted in Academic, Wellness

Clubs shopping!

Posted on 27 September 2007 | 2 comments

Did everyone go to the AMS Clubs Fair? That was so exciting! I think I may be developing a shopping addiction; as Victoria mentioned, I joined a billion clubs and am feeling so much better for it.

The way for me to overcome my apathy, apparently, is to have so much to do that clubs and activities eat up my procrastination time and I work really hard whenever I have free time.

I’m not going to say exactly how many clubs I’ve joined as everyone is telling me that I am doing too much, that I should drop some, and that I am crazy. As this is what a lot of people told me in high school — interestingly, my high school friends are mostly resigned to these facts now — I am not particularly concerned (although it does get distressing to have the same reaction consistently).

In all seriousness, though, I do agree a little bit with what people are saying. Come mid-terms, finals, and November in general, my situation may well change and I will drop a couple of clubs. Having paid the membership fees, I am not too keen on this idea, but I will do that if I think it will affect my academic standing. Today I went to two meetings and already I can start to see which clubs I might be more involved in than others, but I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t go. It’s all about trying new things out.

On the other hand, I am only taking four Arts courses this term which is less than the average. I have considerably more free time than other people so it’s not impossible to manage.

And this is also what makes me happy, so who is to argue with that?

(On that note, I’d like to add that I shake my fist at textbook-reading methods and am determined to find a studying routine that works for me. I completely encourage other people to check out SQ3R, SQ4R, and all those other methods, but formulas stress me out too much to be a good thing.)

2 Comments

Posted in Academic, Involvement / Leadership

Freshman-oritis?

Posted on 23 September 2007 | 3 comments

The lack of motivation to work in your final year at high school, commonly known as senioritis, didn’t particularly affect me. When you do the IB, you can’t afford to procrastinate your second year away. Most of the people in my school were also relying heavily upon their final IB results to get into university, as many people had conditional offers from the UK or Hong Kong universities.

It seems like senioritis has hit me belatedly. I’m anywhere from two to three weeks behind on half of my readings. You probably know the effect of having piled-up work — the very sight of it saps all motivation out of you and you put it off yet again. It’s a bad cycle to be in and now I have two tests and two essays due this week. Oops.

Part of the problem is that I’m not motivated. I used to be really motivated in secondary school, but my current cluelessness about what I want to do for my degree is making me all “eh” about my work. I feel guilty about not doing it, but at the same time, not guilty enough to get moving. It’s not great to have negative motivations for studying (i.e. I feel bad about myself if I don’t do it, therefore I should), but it’s worse to have no motivation for studying at all. Maybe it will take a really bad grade on a mid-term to kick me out of this apathy, but I can’t really afford to get a bad grade. Yet even that knowledge isn’t really getting through my skull.

The other part of the problem is I’m frustrated with my textbook readings. The chapters are so thick and I spent last Sunday finding out what not to do: making notes on everything in the textbook is a huge waste of time and it doesn’t condense the notes sufficiently enough. Ideally, I’d have a page of notes on everything I learned in a week, so by finals I’d have thirteen sheets of paper to revise from instead of my current thirty or so.

Except I don’t know what to make notes on. Everything seems important! So I waste my time writing down a lot of stuff and realizing I can’t use them like that. Am I just supposed to read and absorb without making notes? That doesn’t sound right either but I really have no clue what to do with my textbooks. I talked to one of my professors about it and essentially, the message is that it’s hard to balance it all and I’ll need to work it out for myself. Which I’m trying very hard to do.

After I find out the best way of notemaking from textbooks, I’ll need to combine them with my lecture notes. (My lecture notes, by the way, are perfectly happy.) Which would be a bit of a hassle now that I’m so behind, but it needs to be done. If only I could get over this whole textbook readings/notes hurdle.

3 Comments

Posted in Academic