Midterms season — or, depending on who you are, the break in between midterms. For me, I haven’t got any "crunches", only a few things to do every week. It never ends. Following a mini-emotional crisis last night, I decided it’s time to write this advice out, as much for myself as for anyone else who may find it useful.
Posted in Wellness
QPR training is a workshop designed to help you, as a regular person, reach out and help those within your circle of contact, with the goal of preventing suicide. Much like CPR, the purpose is not to “save” a person entirely, but to administer help and support until they can access professional help.
The format is basically: Question (ask: “Are you thinking of killing yourself?”), Persuade (get them to agree to get help), and Refer (take them to or give them the means of getting professional help).
I recommend the training. No one wants to be in the situation where their family, friends or acquaintances are considering suicide, but much less do people want to be in the situation where their close ones complete it. No one really wants to be at the scene of an accident just to flex their first-aid training, but the point is: these things happen. It is good to have some way of proactively helping and dealing with the situation than feeling helpless and wishing you could do something. We are not perfect people and we are not expected to rescue anyone on our own, but we are people, and as such, we are connected to one another and are one another’s support network by our simple existence.
I got my CPR training from UBC’s Red Cross on campus last year, and I daresay they are running the training again this year.
Posted in Wellness
The Chapman Learning Centre is my favourite place in the library to be when I need to study. It’s the most castle-like/Harry-Potter-esque room I’ve seen so far, with enormously high ceilings, artful windows and the most comfortable chairs in the world. And if I hang around long enough, I can usually get a computer with internet access to websites other than the UBC Library (though I’ve noticed the CLC is getting increasingly busy as the term goes on). This is good news in my book when I need to access emails, my main means of storing homework and other items these days.
And the chairs! The chairs… I was reading an article for my English presentation next Monday and by the end of it, I could no longer resist the temptation. I sank blissfully into a good half-hour nap and woke up with pins and needles all over my back, but refreshed enough to go on to studying my Earth and Ocean Sciences course. (Online courses are, by the way, very difficult if you don’t have good self-discipline. I struggle on my weak days.)
I know I’m not the only one who welcome falling into the arms of those delectable sofa-chairs — I was studying away at EOSC when a girl walked up to the empty chair in front of me, put her bag down, sat down and immediately closed her eyes. So sometimes, people come to the CLC just to get a bit of rest. And I think it is wonderful that no one tells people not to sleep there, because it’s so good when you are absolutely shattered and need a quick power-nap to recharge your batteries…
I don’t recommend sitting in them for too long though, particularly if you have back problems — I’m sure there’s something about overly-soft seats exasperating such pains. And I definitely had to unbend myself when I woke up, though maybe that’s because I sleep like a cocoon.
Posted in Wellness
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
Grey days.
I’m going to record an earlier time.
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When the sun was casting its drawn-out summer beams on our campus, I was striding up Main Mall beside Buchanan one day to get to somewhere or another. The autumn leaves were thickly strewn about like a giant carpet and crunched beneath my feet. A toddler — a babe? — stood in the middle green grass with its parents. (I shall call it a him because it looked like a him, but really, one can’t tell properly with small children.) His parents were making magic for him: his father was gathering handfuls of the dry leaves and tossing them into the air, letting them fall or float along on an occasional wind. The child knew exactly what was going to happen every time his father threw the leaves up — but that was part of the wonder of it all, that you knew and that it happened the way you knew it would. Every time the father threw the leaves, the baby laughed. I couldn’t help but smile at the scene and his mother smiled at me too.
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Here are some of the snippets of life I wish could have been captured with a camera when they happened:
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A black-and-white feather drifting down in the middle of my vision against a background of green and gold and grey.
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A helium-filled blue balloon caught by the glass ceiling of 99 Chairs, trying still to fulfil its calling to fly.
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A Marbelous cookie from Blue Chip Cookies and trying to work out just what makes it taste so good.
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It’s the smallest details that remind me it doesn’t matter if it’s a grey or golden day.
Posted in Wellness
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