Post-Secondary Ramblings

As the school year is nearing its start, it’s time for students to buy/sell textbooks again! I consider myself lucky as my friend lent me most of my first year textbooks. I ended up only having to sell one textbook this year, my MATH 104/105 textbook. That shouldn’t be too bad right? I bought it new from the bookstore last year because UBC decided to change the textbook so I wasn’t able to buy new.

Wrong. UBC decided to change up the textbook again. Although I do suspect they just split it up into 3 volumes like what they did with the Biology textbook last year, I’m having little to no success selling my Math textbook. I’m angry because I spent the whole year keeping my book in mint condition hoping that I can sell it for a good price, but instead I’m potentially left with $168 of mint condition dead weight in my room.

Really UBC, do you need to change your textbooks every year? Especially for math where most of the material hasn’t changed at all.

Starting this September, UBC will be having a different U-Pass program. After looking through the FAQs, here are some notable differences that I saw.

First thing of course is the new look of the U-Pass. Sorry to break it to everyone who loves collecting U-Passes, but starting in September, it will look like this:

Personally, I don’t really like the change. I quite liked the plastic-y feel of the card. It also no longer has your picture or name on the pass so it seems like a generic bus pass, without the ads. It is stated that it can only be used by the person whose name is written on the back of the U-Pass, but I can see this being exploited. Although TransLink employees do have rights to verify your eligibility, how often would they check?

Another notable difference is of course, the increase in price. The U-Pass currently costs $23.75/month for UBC students. Starting in September, the price will increase to $30. Even with the increase, it is still a huge discount from the $151/month for a 3-zone adult bus pass. The price for a replacement U-Pass has also increased from $26.50(?) to $35. I suspect that the increase in price of the replacement cards is partly to prevent the reselling of U-passes. It should also be noted that the prices will be the same across all schools participating in the program

Which leads to the last major difference I saw. Currently, the U-Pass program is named the “Vancity U-Pass Program” and only 4 schools are participating (UBC, SFU, Langara, CapU). This will change in September when program is renamed to the “U-Pass BC Program”. As the name suggests, more schools will be eligible to participate in the U-Pass program.

I’m indifferent about the new U-Pass Program, but I do think I will miss having my name and picture on it.

The other day my friend was sitting in my CHEM 123 lecture and was on her laptop. I looked around, and then whispered to her “You know there are only two people here using a laptop? You’re one of them.” She replied back with “Why is your class so keener?”

I’ve been asked on more than one occasion why I don’t like using laptops during class to take notes. It’s not really that I don’t like it, I just find it really impractical for science courses. In the time that it takes me to properly format a chemical equation or math formula, I could’ve taken half a page of handwritten notes. Having to draw diagrams is another story.

In short, I don’t find a laptop all that useful in my courses except to keep me entertained, but I already have my iPhone for that. I honestly don’t think that it’s necessary to own a laptop once you enter university. I have a friend that uses a desktop and when he needs to use a laptop at school, he heads to Koerner. Having said that, owning a laptop definitely makes things more convenient.

Living in Vancouver all my life, and having friends that were attending UBC before I was, I was fortunate to hear much about what went on and what happened as a UBC student. I was excited and had a mental list of things that I wanted to try out once I went to UBC. Unfortunately, due to various reasons, I wasn’t able to try all the things. To make sure that I participate next year, I’m going to jot them down.

1. Form a team for Day of the Long Boat. The athlete inside me was really looking forward to this, but I had too much going on in the beginning of the school year that I missed the deadline for registration. I’m sure it was a lot of fun and I’m definitely not going to miss out on it again next year.

2. Participate in Storm the Wall, possibly even as Ironwoman. The other major event is Storm the Wall, which is actually happening now. I was really disappointed because none of my friends wanted to participate with me, and the teams that I found all disbanded eventually, thus leaving me with no team. Walking by the walls every day at school made me really sad because I wanted to participate in this even more after I missed Long Boat. Next year, I’m going to make sure I’m part of this even, even if it means doing the whole thing myself as Ironwoman.

3. Bike to School (or maybe just home from school). I live about an hour bus ride away from campus, and it’s always been one of my goals to bike across the city to UBC during high school even. I was quite excited seeing the sunny days and thinking of the perfect time to accomplish this goal. Unfortunately, my bike is under repairs at the moment and thus this was never done. Biking to campus will have to be done some time next year because I’m sure it’ll be memorable for me. Even if it’s just biking back home from a long day at school.

4. Go out of my way to meet new people. I went into university with a bunch of my high school friends, and just friends overall from my life in Vancouver. Being in Science, there weren’t many chances for me to meet many people since I would sit with my friends during lecture and didn’t have many group projects. It wasn’t so bad for me since I was involved with UBC REC and a few clubs. I was still disappointed though, as I thought that going into a larger community would mean that I would have the opportunity to meet a lot of people.

5. Stream a Canucks game over a lecture hall projector. I’ve watched a Canucks game in the SUB. I’ve watched a Canucks game on my laptop. I’ve watched a Canucks game hooked up to a projector in a Buchanan classroom, but I haven’t done it in a lecture hall before. This might be a bit challenging as I’d have to find an empty lecture hall, but it shouldn’t be that big of a problem since there shouldn’t be classes at 7 anyway. I would imagine it to be pretty exciting and a neat experience. Hopefully there’ll be an NHL next year and I’ll be able to accomplish this too!

I don’t know about you, but I really hate evening midterms. I know it’s all about having it standardized and all, but there are so many little things that make it not worth it.

1. It sucks when your classes end at 12 and you have to stay at school for 7 hours just to write a midterm. It sucks even more when you don’t have class that day and the midterm is on a Friday night. I had that happen to me once. It wasted my long weekend. It was a very sunny Friday too.

2. Staying late means I have to pack a dinner in addition to a lunch. I personally like to pack my own food because I don’t really like the food served on campus, and thus having to bring that extra meal in addition to my textbooks and possibly my laptop makes my backpack look like it’s going to explode. Lugging it around the whole day is another matter.

3. Commuting is a bother. I live about an hour commute from UBC, so when I have a midterm that ends at night, busing really sucks since there are very limited buses. It sucks even more because everyone ends around the same time and make it to the bus loop around the same time. The result? Overcrowded buses.

4. Building up on that, people are prone to talk about the exam you just wrote. I don’t know about you, but when my midterm is over, I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to know what I got wrong. Just let me get home first.

Just my little rant about why I prefer in-class exams more.