May 2012 - blogUT

May 31, 2012

Summer Fun, etc.

I’m alone, leaning up against a pillar. The pavement is reflecting the sun’s intense rays but behind my sunglasses my eyes are darting up and down the street, looking for my mark. Her? No, that sweater’s pink, not purple. I look back at the crumpled piece of paper in my hand and the message scrawled on it: “Front of OISE. 4:00”. I’m in the right place. I turn to check the time on my cell phone when a shadow is cast over my bowed head. I look up: purple sweater, jean shorts, plastic shopping bag. It’s her. She walks up to me.
“Jeanne?”
“Yeah.” She hands me the bag. “You can check the quality, if you like.”
“Nah, I trust you.” I reach into my pocket and hand her a five dollar bill. She nods and walks away. I wait a minute and walk the other direction.

As you can tell, I’m a big fun of TUSBE – the Toronto University Student Book Exchange. It’s a fabulous website that connects university students looking to buy or sell textbooks in Toronto with each other, eliminating a middle-man like eBay or the clutter possible from a general use site like Craig’s List. Anyone can post a listing, and then when someone sees what they want they contact the poster and set up a time and place to meet and make the transaction. As textbooks are often dead weight – and occasionally bad memories – to students who’ve completed the corresponding class, motivated sellers offer better prices than the campus bookstore, et al. Best of all, waiting to buy or sell a book starts to feel like a Hollywood-type secret agent liason or Albuquerque crystal meth sale*.

TUSBE is an extremely valuable academic resource but lately I’ve been toying with the idea of using it to buy a book I don’t need for class. I wouldn’t want to waste money; I’d buy a novel or something I could actually, theoretically enjoy, but mostly I have a lot of fun pretending to be a spy or controlled substance distributor. Between my time stuck in class, the unpleasantness of job hunting, and cramming the equivalent of a year’s worth of studying into twelve weeks, a little excitement – however goofy and imagined – starts to seem pretty appealing.

If I were the prose writer I wish I were, I’d have been able to communicate to you just how much I’m hating summer school with the above anecdote and no further explanation. Then you could use my little blurb for an assignment in INI103 in the fall and the professor would comment “excellent insight” and you would get an “A” because you read between the lines, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of writing between the lines. Until then, this will have to do:

Summer school sucks.

Making believe is fun.

Summer school still sucks.

*If you don’t immediately get that reference, go and pick up the first four seasons of Breaking Bad and watch them all right now. I can wait.

May 29, 2012May 29, 2012

Tuesdays with Professor Jurgensen

As I’m doing readings in the wee hours for my US Foreign Policy class, I can’t resist the temptation to do some stalking of the professor for the class, Arnd Jurgensen.

On the first day of class, I arrived late, and hence missed out on his introduction. Only just now did I realize that his name is Arnd, which I had previously assumed was Arnold. Although most would associate ‘Arnold’ with this:

I automatically think of Arnold the football head:

Anyway, what else to do besides go on RateMyProfessor to see his ratings? Some more popular ones were “he’s verrry charming,” “HOT,” and “really really smart and REALLY good looking.” Good to know I’m not the only one who thought that. But he’s also a good lecturer; he very patiently answers everyone’s questions, going into great depth, with many examples. Having taught the course for many years, he sure knows his US Foreign Policy.

Anyway, after that cursory look at RateMyProfessor, I went to Google Images. However, the first pictures made me go, “huh?” What I expected were typical professor pictures – headshots. Instead, what I got were pictures of him rocking an electric guitar.

What?

Is this even the right guy? I mean, it sure looks like him, and how many Arnd Jurgensens are there out there, realistically?

So I went to his LinkedIn. He sure is a man of many trades, having taught environmental impacts of technology in the Engineering department and then all that Poli Sci jazz. However, he’s also active in the Toronto Music scene! And he’s not just limited to the electric guitar either. He can also play the banjo, the guitar, the saz (what?), dobro (more what?), et cetera (!!). He’s performed “with groups including: The Woodchoppers Association; Shady Tree; Toronto Improvisers Orchestra; Built to Suit and many others.” Man, the only thing that could make him even awesomer is if he played the bass!

So, after half an hour of Internet stalking, I’ve learned that my attractive professor is also a musical genius who’s taught a bunch of super smarty-pants engineers.

So go stalk your professors! You’ll never know what you’ll find. 😉

Now I shall go back to my readings. If only they were half as interesting as my stalking session.

May 24, 2012May 19, 2012

Summer School, Summer Woes

Before university, back in the good ol’ days, the first day of school was something I anticipated. Finally, I’d see everyone again! The end of bumming around and finally seeing everyone again would get me excited. Especially during high school, it seems like there was always somebody would always grow a head taller or whose face would now have facial hair.

University has changed that. After two measly weeks of “summer,” another semester commences. While everyone else is posting pictures on Facebook about their epic summer adventures, I can only offer a fake smile when explaining my current situation to my friends in the States. “Yeah, summer ended for me already.” Instead, what I have is six weeks of intense studying. Since I’m taking 1.5 credits this term, my weekly schedule consists of four daily two-hours classes and two two-hour classes. When university eased me into a pretty relaxing weekly routine, having everything this intense is a new change. Instead of a week, I now only have a day to finish forty-page readings. The midterm? Oh, it’s in two weeks. A research paper? Due in four weeks. Besides the obvious academic challenges, the social challenges are great too. It’s rare to run into someone you know wherever you go, and the absence of extracurriculars makes it even lonelier.

But on the bright side?

I’d like to think that summer school does not carry the connotation it had back in the days. Instead of taking it because of a failed class, I’m doing it for intellectual pursuit, lightening the workload for next year, and using time productively. That’s what I’m convincing myself with.

Trust me, it helps when your friends keep inconsiderately posting pictures of themselves on exotic beaches, and you’re reveling that you can Facebook stalk them in lecture since you have Wi-Fi access.

May 23, 2012October 8, 2014

I Fell Into The Fountain At The Louvre Today.

I fell into the fountain at the Louvre today.

Yes, it is true. There is also incriminating evidence that I’m not sure I want to ask for (intended to be a nice picture of me trotting along the ledge — OK, that sounded more doable in my head…) Ha.

It was a lovely visit altogether, in spite of the fall!

How this all went down: One of my really close friends had come to visit me in Paris for the weekend, and we went on a fantastic visit to the Louvre on Sunday. It was sunny and lovely and we had a blast. I had been a few times before but a) in much worse weather (you’d think it wouldn’t matter because you’re inside a museum but, with the lounging at the pyramids outside and the glass-encased courtyards and entrances inside, a sunny day does make a big difference!) and b) without an audioguide. I think the audioguide made the biggest difference. I never knew much about the paintings in the Louvre before. I’m not much of an Art History buff, and so on previous visits I would flit between the paintings, trying to decipher the short French captions, giving up, and not much more. I saw people with their heads tilted, staring at 1 painting for an hour. I wondered if something was wrong with them. Let’s just say I didn’t get a lot out of my visits!

But on Sunday when we went, we got my friend an audioguide to go along with the paintings. It was in a Nintendo DS and everything. High tech, eh? I never bothered to in the past because I always thought, ‘Maybe next week!’ but I’m so glad we did it this time. I learned so many things about these paintings that rendered them fascinating and relevant to me in a matter of minutes. There was such rich context, history, stories behind these pictures. The thought that went into them, the perspectives used to create them… I’d never been aware of this. I mean, the guide wasn’t perfect by any means, but it showed me just how much I had been missing. I might go back one day, rent out the guide myself, and learn a little bit more about all these paintings I enjoy. I walked out of the galleries inspired, curious, and feeling perhaps a little more cultured. Hahaha!

This was what my visits were like before:

But Sunday was a little more like I’m guessing it’s supposed to be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJxH-QuJeXo

(Minus the soundtrack. But, I mean, don’t you wish your life had a soundtrack like that?)

We had lunch at the cute café in the Louvre, lost each other, found each other at the Pyramids outside, and lounged around outdoors. I sat at the fountain beside a lady sleeping on its ledge. She woke up immediately, smiled, and told us in French that the sound of the water was calming for her. I listened a bit. She was right — it was.

Then the woken lady whipped out a card from her bag. It was a card version of the largest painting in the Louvre, the dinner painting with Jesus hung up in the room right across from the Mona Lisa. She asked us if we knew what it was of. I hadn’t stopped by it earlier, and embarrassingly didn’t know much at all other than that it was the site of his first miracle. She pointed things out and explained it all to us, from the details of the rich robes that the other guests were wearing in the painting and why they were wearing them, to the presence of the monks, to the man cutting lamb right above Jesus’ head. It turns out she was a professor of art appliqué (applied art) in Paris. We chatted a bit, she wished us a good time, and then she got up to leave. I told her I was contemplating dipping my feet in the water and she said it might not be the wisest idea. I should have listened to her. I didn’t.

5 minutes later, I was sitting in the Louvre fountain, soaked from head to toe. (It was a lot steeper than I had anticipated.) WHOOPS!!! I’m trying not to dwell more on this event than I have to, haha. My friend and I couldn’t stop laughing.

May 21, 2012May 19, 2012

The (?) Kinds of People You Meet in Summer School

I’d tried drafting this post a few weeks ago, when I completely, finally, ultimately decided I would be taking classes over the summer, all summer. At the time I found myself unable to express what wisdom I had on the topic of summer school and the kinds of people who take it, which, as the topic of the post, left me in an uneviable position. But since talking to some of my peers and ferreting out whom among them would be joining me from May to August in murky, humid classrooms in Toronto’s murky, humid downtown, my blog post vision has become clearer and I know now what it is I want to say.

I want to say that throughout the summer you will likely encounter three different kinds of voluntary* summer school students. For your convenience, I have prepared this anecdotal reference guide:

I went to a high school in Toronto that prided itself on university preparation, and most of its students had at least the vague intention of going to a post-secondary institution. I had one such peer in grade ten who, miraculously, come grade eleven, was no longer my peer, as the extra courses he’d been taking throughout the year and over the summer advanced him a year ahead of the rest of us. He graduated before me and went off to university – this university – and picked up right where he left off, taking a full course-load and studying over the summer. It was he of whom I thought** while hovering my cursor over “enroll” on ROSI a few weeks ago, wondering how much closer taking extra credit classes would make me the kind of student who leaves his friends behind to graduate slightly sooner. After all, if I take two full course equivalents each summer, I will finish a year ahead of my peers; a college graduate at twenty. That’s the dream, right?

The problem is that I can already feel how it’s affecting what little there is of my social life; by the time my fellow philosophy majors start cracking the spines of their ridiculously expensive-for-public-domain Ancient Philosophy textbooks, I’ll have already completed the course. How will this affect our relationships? Will they bond over the material or the classroom or a funny quirk of the professor without me? Will I have to precede Ancient Philosophy-related comments with the phrase “spoiler alert!”? I’ve considered this, too: my FLC peer mentor this past year has decided to study for five years instead of four – will we be graduating at the same time, side by side in Con Hall, awkwardly avoiding conversation about topics like how just years prior she spent an hour and a half every other week providing me with the guidance and wisdom only a student two years my senior could?

In summation of that whole mess, there’s a kind of summer school student called the “social climber”, so named, to me at least, by the aforementioned peer mentor because of their distasteful decision to put a small part of their academic careers before their friends and peers. They’re the kinds of people who people who pray for a bell curve and, in the throes of their prayer, make sure to invite their friends out for the sole reason that there’s an assignment due the next day that the social climber’s already done. They’re not entirely malicious but not quite pleasant either, and I do generally pride myself on being quite pleasant.

Another kind of summer school student is the scholar, who happens to be almost always indistinguishable from the social climber. The scholar obsessively searches for curriculum-approved knowledge and can never get enough, will almost definitely go on to graduate school, and probably doesn’t have time to talk right now sorry but I’m studying and I do need to know this whole chapter by Wednesday if you could please keep it down thank you this passage is very important. The key difference between the behavior of the scholar and the social climber is that the scholar could not care less what your grades are, so long as you’re not getting in their way. The social climber is generally less obsessive about their GPA, too. I do enjoy knowledge, to be sure, but that’s probably not why I’m taking summer school.

The last category I can think of is the student who just needs something to do in the summer that’s more productive than watching all of “Entourage” in five days (read: me, circa June 2011). They probably also work as well, but not enough to fill the day. They go out and party a lot more than the social climber or the scholar, and to them summer school provides an unique pleasure amidst all the others because of the satisfaction that what they’re doing is productive. Of these three categories, this one best describes me. I don’t have a full time job, sure, and I don’t go out either (though not for lack of trying), but I know earning credits and reading Alice Munro will be much more productive than what I’d do at home; lounging on the couch and reading Alice Munro.

Much like my infallible gift theory and my unshakable inferences regarding The Mike’s hidden agenda, these distinctions may appear unsupported and the arguments for them weak or all-together non-existent. That’s why I open this up to you again, dear reader: why are you taking summer school classes? Are you a social climber, a scholar, or someone trying to make the most out of their summer? Do you think there should be a fourth category? A fifth? An eighth? Let me know!

*Volunteer = isn’t short on credits or pre-requisites

**I swear, I don’t actually talk like this.

May 19, 2012

Feeling Summer School’s Pressure? Utilize the Power of a Class Google Account

Summer school is a unique challenge. A summer course is twice as fast and half as long as a regular one. Even if a student is good with schedules, s/he’s still likely to run into problems. Two summers ago, my friends and I ran into two typical summer student troubles.

The first was chasing our friends for lecture notes. When we missed a class, we’d contact our classmates for notes, then wait (sometimes days) for them to get back to us. The time we spent waiting was time we could have spent studying.

The second problem was exhaustively trying to coordinate our conflicting schedules to meet up for study groups.

We found a practical solution to both these problems by creating a class Google Account.

First, we created a Google Account, emailed the username and password to the whole class, and encouraged students to upload their notes to the account after every lecture. After a couple weeks, we had a central repository for all our lecture notes. We didn’t need to chase down friends for notes for missed classes, since we could just download them from the class Google Account. We also weren’t as reliant on scheduling study groups, since we could write a list of study questions on the account and any classmate could use the Account’s collaborative features to answer them.

The Account was like a godsend for our class during the exam period, where we had convenient and immediate access to all the notes we needed.

To create a class Google Account:

Go to the Google Accounts login page
Click the “Sign Up” button in the top-left corner
Choose your username and password

Make sure the username and password is easy to remember. Choosing something related to the course code and course name helps. For example, to create a class account for the hypothetical English summer course ENG999H: Superman Studies, we would choose a related username like “2012.SummerofSups” and the password “Superman.Studies”. Both of these are related to the course and simple enough to keep in mind.

You can fill the rest of the account information like the first name, last name, and birth date with junk data. However, make sure that the birthdate is older than 13 years. Google doesn’t permit people younger than 13 to create an account.

With your new Account, login to the Google Drive. Your class will upload their lecture notes here. Click the blue “Get started with 5 GB free” button on the upper right corner of the page. Then, you’ll see the main Google Drive interface.

To create documents on the drive, click the red “Create” button on the upper left corner of the page. To upload documents, click the button to the right of the “Create” one. The interface lists each document on the drive in the centre column. When you click a document, it takes you to a Microsoft Office-like interface where you can read and edit the notes.

The last step is to tell the class about the class Google Account. The best way to do this is to send a mass email:

Log into Blackboard
Click your course code in the “My Course” module
Click “Tools” in the left-hand module
Scroll down and click “Send email”
Click “All Student Users”

In your email, give the account’s password, its username, and basic instructions on how to use it. Encourage them to use the account by outlining a few of its benefits. If no one uses it, it becomes useless.

The class Google Account helped me and my friends with our problems, and I’m sure it will do the same for you. It’s a very versatile service with numerous features; I’m certain that little time isn’t the only problem it can solve. With a bit of exploration, I’m sure you’ll find that me and my friend’s use of a class Google Account was just the beginning of its capabilities.

May 8, 2012

So Long, Farewell

I remember the first day I moved into residence. A bunch of energetic frosh leaders took my things and moved them into my room. Upon entering my room, I was shocked at how small it was. The lighting seemed too dim, the floor too brown, and the wood furniture too chipped. The frosh leaders’ saying “wow, this is such a nice room” did not help alleviate my feeling of doom.

For one year, I was going to be trapped in this box-like room.

Now flash forward eight months later. I’m still in my room and there are boxes. Except this time, it’s because I’m moving out.

Having graduated from high school last year, saying goodbye was the hardest. To those dear friends you’ve created so many good memories with, how do you part? This year, although I’m living with the expectation of seeing them again next year, the fact that we won’t be gathered here, “slumming” it out together in the collective experience that is res life, is sad. Sure, you might bump into them occasionally at Sid Smith or Robarts, but there won’t be any late night food trips or dropping in randomly to watch movies together. Residence is a perfect place to do devious things to your friends, such as taking a dustpan, pour milk onto it, and slip it underneath your friend’s door (not talking from personal experience…maybe). Instead, you’ll have to specially schedule ahead to meet up, unless you take a trip to visit your friend’s house in your PJs uninvited.

The boxes, the torn down posters, and the bareness of the room establishes that this was never really my home, but a temporary stay in my four year trip.

So with that nostalgic-ness aside, I’ll say:

Goodbye, residence. Goodbye, first year. Next year will be better.