Category: Academic

Categories
Academic Miscellaneous Student Life

#069: Of precocious children and one-liners

Currently listening to: “Fashionable People” – Joel Plaskett Emergency

I do hate to use the excuse of life and work distracting me from updating on a semi-regular basis; alas, I must throw that out here. Amidst the steady loop of midterms (take one) and term papers and midterms (take two) and commitments to various extracurriculars, this sad blog seems to have fallen by the wayside. Mea culpa. Nevertheless, it’s nice to note that as we hurl ourselves into the neverending cyclone of paper and pen, there is much cheeriness around to be thankful for.

Such as the hilariously inquisitive comments of the young. The other night at work, the up escalator was broken (leading to much grumbling from all parts, including a slightly batty old lady – but that’s really a whole other story). This conversation between myself and a small-ish child followed.

Child: (befuddled) Why is there no up escalator?
Me: Well, it’s broken.
Child: Oh. (pause) Will it be there next time we come back?
Me: Yes. Yes, it will.

That takes me to the man behind me on the bus, who, in a startling fit of insight, provided us with the following gem.

“I wish buses could fly.”

Man, trust me, so do I. Especially if it were to be a flying double-decker bus. That would take us to new heights of flying vehicular frenzy.

In more personal news, I am now, as of yesterday morning, officially Canadian. My roommates, delightful bats they are, have been entertaining me all day with their pitch-perfect renditions of “Canadian Please“. It is kitschy, gloriously cheesy, and alarmingly catchy. The inner political geek in me does loop-de-loops and twirls of joy at the prospect of being eligible to exercise my ~voting rights~. It is all rather exciting!

With reference to my previous post, I still have yet to acquire a laundry card. The washing of clothing in the sink seems to have gone rather splendidly so far. Though I am on the verge of caving; we have some rather grotty-looking dish towels which could use a good tumble wash.

Alas, the Poli Sci paper I’m supposed to be researching beckons. Back to the murky world of the IMF and World Bank! Thank god I actually enjoy reading about this stuff. Till the next time, dear readers, I bid thee adieu.

Categories
Academic Recreation

#060: Of course registrations and cookie-baking

Currently listening to: “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” – Next to Normal OBCR

COURSE REGISTRATIONS for upcoming second-years start in a week (July 13) and already, a plethora of courses are either full or teetering at that point, with three seats left, give or take. I was looking forward to taking PHIL 385: Existentialism, before it filled up. I watched it diminish from 90 seats to 40 to 3 and then to nothingness. And don’t even get me started on BIOL 121, which sits there mocking me! Mocking, I say! with its completely overbooked classes and unopened waitlists except for that 8 a.m. class, which has a grand total of 15 seats left (and counting). This is especially frustrating as I struggle to get into the second-year prerequisites for both a French and a Psychology major. Seven days to go; we shall see how it all pans out. These hawk eyes are watching those French classes; nobody is taking Voltaire away from me! Meanwhile, we draw our thoughts away from those confounded course registrations to those of…

COOKIE-BAKING. I’ve been feeling rather domestic lately. This is unusual. For those who are unfamiliar with my cooking habits; well, let’s say most of my friends would rather have me play with pointy objects than cook them a meal. I have ruined microwave popcorn and would rather not tell that story here. But over the past few weeks, I’ve baked jimjams twice, once with sugar-cookie bases and the other time with peanut butter cookie bases, and Nutella swirl cookies…and a cake for la fête de la St.-Jean Baptiste, if we’re just getting into baking in general. Surprisingly, they have emerged rather successfully from the oven…to grabby hands (teenage brother in a growth spurt will demolish any freshly baked goods).

Jimjams with sugar cookie base:
Jimjams!

Nutella Swirl Cookies:
Nutella Swirl Cookies

I will post the recipes if anyone is interested!

Categories
Academic

#059: The Slackers’ Guide to the Arts One Final

Currently listening to: “Don’t Stop Believing’ (Glee version)” – Glee Cast

I’m afraid I’ve been dreadful at keeping up with this blog over the past two months – April, through all the end-of-semester madness, and finals, and then May, when I was traipsing across Canada, mea culpa. I’ll try my best to get back into the loop. So, lots of recap for now…

APRIL

Finals came and went. I finished Arts One!!!! Yeehaaaaa!! Such a crazy course – so amazing, but so incredibly crazy at the same time! There was a point of time where I gazed around at the spread of 20 books around me, and went, “How on earth am I going to study for this final?!?!?” 20 books, so little time, so many quotes to memorize! For future Arts One students, here’s the Year-long Slacker’s Guide to the Arts One Final. I got through it, you will too :)

In the final, you will find 10-ish quotes (it varies from year to year). Yes, quotes, from any of the 20 – 22 books you will have presumably read throughout the year. You will be asked to identify the book the quotes are from, the author of the book, and you’ll have to write something meaningful about it. Seriously? Consider the fact that the exam is worth 20% of your year’s mark and the quotes are worth 20% of that. That’s 4% of the whole year. Your essays are worth the rest. DO YOUR ESSAYS FIRST. Don’t stress about the quotes.

How about the essays? Well, firstly, you have to write two. They can be about anything and everything, and tend to be some sort of all-encompassing broad idea. You’ve got 20-ish books or so. Gather some fellow Arts One students and make a giant spreadsheet of each theme, e.g. liberty, progress, colonialization. Then, analyze each book and note down where they lie in relation to other books. I shall proceed to quote verbatim from a section of our study brainstorm this year:

Progress
– Different views of progress (Linear, Regression, Plato)
– Genesis (from hunter-gatherers to cities; farming and societies take over nomadic forms of life; God as narrator disagrees with progress; cities are destroyed; there is no way to go back to perfection)
– Rousseau (savage man with no attachment to each other, has no reason and self-awareness; nascent man [ideal state]; civil man – inequality, selfish, unethical)
– Plato (idealism, achieve ideal state and staying there — grasping the truth — going from appetite to spirit to reason SEE DIAGRAM HERE )
– Mill (individual thought, rationalism, utilitarianism; diversity of opinion brings us closer to the truth)
– Gandhi (Swaraj – liberation & self rule, self respect; regression to traditional India – focus on small communities – eliminating technology & the British system / influences; education for freedom)

Et cetera. It really works! Firstly, it allows you to compare and contrast each book – ideal for those essays in the exam, where you’ll have to write on four books/texts for whatever subject they choose to toss at you. Secondly, gathering it under each umbrella theme makes for moments where you’ll be able to pull things out of your hat easily during the exam. Colonialization? No problemo, Gandhi and Forster! (And about a zillion more BUT that is beside the point.) Gender? How about EVERY OTHER BOOK we’ve read? Also, brianstorming with your fellow Arts Oners gives you nifty ideas you might not have otherwise thought of. AND you get to bond over coffee and throwing copies of Home and the World at each other. Yippie! Sip the juice of erudition from the giant bin of brain juices and watch them letters and words floating on the slick surface of thought and ideas, my friends.

Oh yea. And you have time after the essays, do your quotes. Just, you know, don’t stress too much about them. They can be tricky. Rousseau can sound a lot like Plato sometimes. Descartes abuses commas. Erratic capitalization = Dickinson. There’s no real trick to learning the quotes. You may have read the books, every single one of them, but when they throw something at you randomly, there is no guarantee you’ll know it. DON’T TRY TO MEMORIZE THE BOOKS. BAD IDEA. Just know the main ideas, and you’ll segue into it just nicely. Chances are if you know what the books are about, you’ll be able to deduce. And even if you get it wrong, you’ll have deduced, well, intelligently.

—

Just out of curiosity, is anyone (potential first-years!) reading this considering Arts One? If so, why? Feel free to ask questions et cetera. I’ll try my best to answer them (:

Cheers for now,
Mary

P.S. I promise I’ll talk about my trip at some point soon. Maybe…even tomorrow…who knows?

Categories
Academic Sustainability

#057: Chewing the books (and other recent news)

Currently listening to: “Margaret and Pauline” – Neko Case

So there’s just the last few days left to go; crammed into these few days are the following: Arts One paper to write, poems to acquire in order to write aforementioned paper, a French test, and a French in-class essay. What glee! What larks! What splendiferous joy! Okay, I’m just bitter because procrastination is my best friend and I’m feeling horribly guilty for having abandoned my essay in favour of watching The West Wing all the way from the beginning of Season One. Now my essay is like a poor orphan child begging for attention and not getting any because it is neither as interesting nor as addictive as well-scripted dramas.

End-of-semester also brings me to my extremely worried state whereby I realize that 1. incredibly short of money for next year, and 2. am in typical Mary fashion, taking the money I do have to go backpacking. In fact, I get my bus tickets tomorrow, and I’ve got my travel schedule mostly worked out, for those interested. This, of course, will result in me needing to get another job when I get back. I am increasingly finding money more and more stressful to deal with (or well, the concept of having to pay for university); the thought of dropping out of uni (for now) to indulge in any and all bizarre whimsy and backpack everywhere for a few years is becoming more and more tempting by the day.

Now allow me to rant belatedly about the World Water Forum’s conclusion, on March 22, that water was to be deemed a “human need” and not a “human right”. Canada, with all our fresh water, should be held a lot more responsible for dealing with water and its status in the world. But no, we choose to stand in opposition to the most fundemental human right -the right to drink clean water – and for what purpose? So that we can profit from our abundance while other water sources are rapidly drying up and being stretched to their maximum capacity? So that we can blissfully and guiltlessly pick corporate greed over human life by lying to ourselves and saying that it’s not their right as much as ours? Waiting, biding our time till we sell out to the bottled-water industry and make people pay in water, in blue gold? (amazing book, by the way, do read it if you get a chance.) Here is my basic stance on this issue. The right to live is a fundemental human right. Water is needed for life. As is oxygen. If we start privatizing water and making water a commodity like any other, where is the line one draws? Paying to breathe? Paying to stay alive? We are so privileged, and so unworthy.

Categories
Academic Careers / Work Involvement / Leadership Miscellaneous

#055: The return of the mad hatter

Currently listening to: some trumpet major practicing études

After a record 11 days of not blogging, I am back in the blogosphere, having been driven sufficiently mad by the past week-and-a-bit’s onslaught of papers/schoolwork and elections and work and well, life in general. It never ceases to amaze me how tiring just…being awake…can be. Suffice to say, my brains are quite frazzled, as are my nerves, and so as I hide out in the Music library, listening to the soothing (?) tones of trumpeting trumpeteers, I’ll do my best to remain coherent. So here goes nothing.

Arts One is pushing me to the brink slowly but surely – the menagerie of Indian-themed books we’ve had piled upon us this whole semester has been in a word, insane. Too much of a good thing can become a very tiring thing, such that any break at all from Indian literature is a huge relief. Which is why Walcott’s poetry, and Survival in Auschwitz, have been so incredibly welcome. For future reference, following up The Satanic Verses with ghazals and A Passage to India after having thrown in Gandhi and The Home and the World and random poetry packages is really not a good idea. As most of us stew in our own ennui and plow through the nth essay on colonial rule and Britain and India, I think there’s a general build-up of frustration and dare I say, boredom. While we’re at it, as much as I’m completely for reading books outside of the Western literary canon, I don’t see why we’re limiting it to Indian literature. It would be absolutely wonderful if we could’ve delved into Middle Eastern writings, not to mention South American books, or even aboriginal/First Nations tales and other such. In any case, we’ve only one book left – The Intimate Enemy, and yes, it too is about India in colonial times – so somehow, we’ll make it through (and pick the essay topic on Walcott).

In other news, French Club elections are over, and as in-house nut/social coordinator (which gives me a bulletproof excuse for being eleventy thousand times more enthusiastic about everything) for the upcoming year, I’m quite excited about all the great fun that ’09/’10 shall bring in due time *rubs hands in wicked glee and tosses blue white and red confetti* in other words, CREPES AND LITERATURE AND CREPES AND HATS AND CREPES AND ~FRENCHY THINGS~ !!!

Sorry. Was the nuttiness showing again?

Anyhow, work-wise, Indigo is great as usual. I’ve quit my position as a page at the library; instead, I am now reading to small children and it is the most amazing and rewarding thing ever. I mean, seriously, how many jobs do you get to act your shoe size and read Scaredy Squirrel Makes A Friend complete with HAND ACTIONS AND FUNNY VOICES? Seriously. The kids are absolutely great, too; they’re all so enthusiastic and happy and untainted by life. God, I wish I were six again. It’s frightening to think that I’ll be turning nineteen this year and twenty the next and grow old. Meanwhile I’ll just live vicariously through the ‘ickle ones, and books like Where’s My Sock? (great book, by the way, the psychedelic illustrations look like they were painted by someone completely tripped out on cotton candy.)

Well it’s still only 2.45 p.m. I’m going to be here till 7 p.m. tonight, sigh. then busing home, hooray. hopefully something ridiculous happens on the bus, such as the re-emergence of Vegetable Sandwich Man, or Celtic Music Guy.

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