Kathryn Schulz: On Being Wrong

I recently watched a video of a TED Talk by Kathryn Schulz (it’s posted above). Most of what she said resonated with me because there are times in my life when I didn’t want to admit that I was wrong. A recent example of this is when I told my mom that I was going to a friend’s birthday dinner and where it was, and she told me I was taking the longer way to get there. I then decided to take an alternate route to get there and she said I was also going to take the train in the longer direction. I didn’t want to acknowledge that she was right after I looked at the map and navigated my way to the restaurant.

As mentioned in the video and illustrated with my anecdote, we live in a culture where failure isn’t tolerated.  Individuals who make mistakes are seen as failures or they are humiliated, embarrassed, or teased. That got me to thinking about my time at U of T thus far. Why on earth did I decide to go to university? Originally, believe it or not, the main reason why I wanted to attend university was to learn more about subjects I didn’t know about and to expand my mind. I do admit that it was also a way to delay adulthood when it came to working full-time. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t experienced adulthood in different ways during the time I’ve spent here so far (e.g. paying bills, finding a summer job, sending and responding to correspondence in a formal manner). Yes, I wanted more information on how to prepare myself for the working world, but it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind.  I had these thoughts in my mind when I was a high school student desperate to leave the highly structured environment. Once I was admitted to U of T, all of this changed. I still remember my first month here. I was still in a state of disbelief and shock that I was admitted to a top university and was now in a completely different world. However, the honeymoon ended and reality came crashing down on me as my first midterm deadlines approached.

When participation during class became an important part of my final grades, which was after I completed my first year, I started to become more insecure. I am a very talkative person and yet I’m not one of those people who likes to impress someone by pretending to know everything about a subject; I just want to share my point of view. In some of my classes, I was told by professors that my opinion was the wrong answer or not what they were looking for (sometimes it’s true and sometimes it’s not as I’m pursuing a double major in English and Sociology). I didn’t let my professors’ attitudes get me down but recently it has affected the amount of confidence I have in my responses. I still participate in class discussion (as participation is a large chunk of my final grade in all of my classes) but I noticed that I have been more reserved in recent years.

I also noticed fellow classmates who constantly spoke in a way to affirm their opinions and manipulate their arguments in such a way that the professor would give them favour (if they weren’t asking an open ended question). I’m not saying that the students in my classes weren’t intelligent; I just thought that sometimes their answers were inauthentic and every word that comes out of their mouth is a way to prevent them from feeling like they were wrong. Most people don’t speak up when it comes to close ended questions out of fear that they’d look stupid. I have begun to develop a line of thinking that I have to be right about everything and even if I have done my research at all, don’t speak.  This way of thinking has lead to me believe that I have to impress everyone all the time. I had to have all of the right extra-curricular activities (even though I am interested in them) and earning job credentials. I kept thinking about the future and the past but not the present. I became stressed all the time and it became a larger problem and I became unhappy and started losing interest in school altogether. I am getting help when it comes to planning for school but I still felt this way for most of last semester. As I am in my third year, I battle these thoughts as graduation approaches. Now I realize that I shouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes and that I’m human. I am slowly learning how to stop putting more pressure on myself because let’s face it, the world’s harshest critic is yourself.

It’s only through making mistakes that we are able to learn. Life is a process, not a fixed path, and we need to be more open about this and creating a culture that allows us to show our flaws and not allow egotism to flourish. As Kathryn Schulz mentioned, if we continue to allow ourselves to ignore others when we are wrong, it can lead to larger problems in the future if our world and business leaders have this mindset. As Thomas A. Edison once said in an interview, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” This doesn’t mean that you don’t try your hardest or to be a low achiever, just keep pick yourself off of the ground and keep going but don’t let other people’s comments eat you alive.

 “I err therefore I am human.” – St. Augustine

Now if only I can learn to continue to practice my advice on a daily basis…

Just starting university? Moved out of your parents’ house? Suddenly realizing that living is really expensive? Read on, friend.

Moving out of the house, even if it’s just into a dorm with a mandatory meal plan, can be a sonic boom shock to the head in terms of adjusting, and, more importantly, money. I won’t go as far to tell you to steal toilet paper from the local McDonald’s, but for everything else….

1. Food: actually eat at the cafeteria. While there may be a surplus of people you’re trying to avoid and a lack of people not at your college, it’s the most efficient in the food option since you’re already paying. Stash fruit, cookies and anything else that you can stick in a sweatshirt kangaroo pouch for those late-night, early-morning, or in-class munchies. Not feeling the caf food? Be a typical student; pick a sub that you like and find out which day it sells at a reduced rate at Subway. Also: save your receipts, fill out a survey online and get a free cookie! (no, Subway is not paying me…much).

2. Partying: while clubs and pubs can get very expensive very fast, partying at home/the dorm with some LCBO product, or just good old fashioned Boggle and the friends you actually enjoy spending time with can be a cheap and ultimately more enjoyable alternative. Sponsored club and pub nights or 4 dollar cocktail events can also offer a cheaper entrance fee to a good time.

3. Other Entertainment: movie Tuesdays are a particular guilty-pleasure of mine, especially when the Carlton theatre close by offers a five-dollar flat movie ticket on Tuesdays and reasonably priced popcorn. At the welfare level? Skip the concession stand and pack your own, pop some microwavable bagged corn, some canned pop, and Bulk Barn spoils, and bring a big purse. Living on the street level? Stay home and watch a DVD (Bay Street Videos has an impressive selection), or if you are of the current generation, download online: add friends and Orville Redenbacher to both for immediate effect.

4. Toiletries/clothing/other: if your parents are anything like mine, this is where you get with the emotional moocherie. Pick up toothpaste, deodorant, or stylish footwear when you’re out with your parents. Casually slip your items onto the counter and flash an I’m-the-fruit-of-your-loins smile and they’re all yours, free of charge.

5. Walk around a little! As a downtown area Toronto offers more than its fair share of nut-jobs with fliers on street-corners and its true that while most stick to unwanted religious advice there are the rare few who hand out coupons/ free Reese’s Pieces/diet soda.

6. Transport: grab friends with cars who are comfortable footing the gas bill or stick to public transport. If you commute daily grab, a metropass; if not use the matching limbs sprouting out of your pelvis and walk! Technically everything is within walking distance…short of other continents.

7. Get a job, ya mook!

Given hormonal changes, weird smells, and an actual workload, university can be a handful at times, on the brainpan and the wallet. Keep it simple, avoid the caviar and champagne, and if all else fails the toilet paper at McDonald’s is really not so bad…

So, I just finished watching The OC and, I must say, I was skeptical about the show near the beginning. I even got bored at certain points but, now that I’ve finished it, I realize how much I truly loved the show. For those who haven’t watched, it’s about a 14-year-old kid named Ryan, whose mother is an alcoholic and whose Dad and brother are in jail.

The show begins with public defence lawyer Sandy Cohen bailing Ryan out of jail (Ryan’s brother forced him to help steal a car) and, after seeing how hopeless Ryan’s situation is, he decides to bring him home. Sandy lives in Newport Beach, where everyone is extremely rich: they all have huge mansions and all the teenagers have their own cars. Soon, Ryan becomes part of the Cohen family and bonds with Sandy’s son, Seth, who is a social outcast until Ryan comes into his life. From there on, Ryan meets Marissa, who is a popular and attractive girl. Things get especially complicated as Marissa’s boyfriend starts getting into fights with Ryan. By the end of the show, you see how much everyone’s lives (including Ryan’s) have been impacted because of Ryan’s arrival to Newport.

This show does a believable job of presenting the class issues involved in having a “poor kid” move in with a “rich family”. Others have pointed out that it avoided the initial cliché by having Ryan and Seth become friends, but later episodes have shown that, in spite of their friendship and common interests (like comic books), there are still deeper issues of class and sexuality that show how different their worlds really are.

Finally, I was surprised to see that the writers were actually able to make me care about the problems of the rich characters! (The adults, anyway.) For too many nighttime soap operas, portraying the “problems of the rich” are just a way to get us “unwashed” types to sneer at the problems that money brings (“I wish I had those problems!”). In The OC, the writers actually explore questions of money, class, and love in the various adult couples in a way that brings Jane Austen to mind; we can relate to the struggles the characters are going through even if their day-to-day lives are completely foreign from our own.

If you haven’t watched this show or still feel skeptical, I suggest you watch the first 5-6 episodes. I’m sure you’ll be hooked.

On the days when I have two or more classes, I look forward to the breaks that I have between classes. It’s an opportunity for me to relax, update my to-do list, or if I’ve procrastinated completing an assignment, finish it off and edit it one more time. I’ve had breaks lasting from anywhere between one hour to three hours.  Over the past three years, I’ve learned to use this time wisely as it allows me to do some things I’m unable to do at other times in the day.

Here’s a list of some productive (and not so productive) ways of killing time between classes:

1.      Organize your schedule

This usually doesn’t take a lot of time once you’ve started the task. While meeting your deadlines and attending events is another task in itself, at least you’re prepared for the weeks and months ahead. (It’s the thought that counts, right?)

2.      Watch your favourite TV shows

It’s a great way to kill time if you only have an hour-long break. Although, it’s really hard not to scream or yell at my laptop screen when I’m catching up with Pretty Little Liars (Seriously, the show is filled with plot twists).

 3.      Read a chapter/section of an assigned reading

This is a good activity to complete during your break if it’s right before the class that the reading is for. It’s also an opportunity to review the material (or complete the reading if you haven’t started!).

4.      Meet with friends

This year, it’s hard to meet up with my friends as we’re not in the same classes like last year. It’s even more difficult to meet up outside of classes because of our busy schedules.  Last semester, I started to arrange lunch dates with friends during my breaks. This gives me an opportunity to catch up with friends in person while I’m still on campus, as I’m a commuter.

5.      Take a nap

If I’m going to spend most of my nights working on assignments, I’m going to have to rest some time. I’m one of those people that NEEDS their sleep. (I think I’m one of few students at U of T who will admit this…)

How do you spend your time during your breaks?

U of T is full of unique opportunities. They’re the bread and butter of this blog and my life; there are few things I like more than learning about a hidden spot or quirky club or meaningful volunteer position on campus. I scour the blogs and papers as often as I can, holding up event listings to my mental calendar and wondering if I can fit in a play, philosophy discussion, and homework in one afternoon. (I can.)

That’s why I was surprised and a little embarrassed to realize that U of T has had an entire faculty of performers right underneath my nose (and Museum Station) this whole time. The Faculty of Music is full to the brim of brilliant composers and performers, and features them in free shows at least once a week. Couple in the fact that a sudden epiphany (read: episode of Frasier) made me realize how much culture is missing from my life, and suddenly I’m cruising the Faculty of Music website for upcoming events.

In the past two days alone, I’ve seen the finals of a concerto competition (that bassoonist nailed it), listened to new pop pieces by students with classical backgrounds, and [I'm not sure what the verb is] an experimental theatrical music… thing in honour of the 10th anniversary of the passing of its composer. The last two events were part of the Faculty’s New Music Festival, which runs until the 27th and features nine more free shows. I’ll go to as many as I can.

I just turned 20 a few days ago and it was – shockingly – a very awkward day for me. I am usually very cheerful and excited on my birthdays, as I’m sure everyone is at some point in their lives (if not always). But, for the first time in my life, I felt depressed. I consider myself a kid at heart and, up until the age of 19, I have always felt young and tell myself that I have time: time to do things I have always wanted to do; time to live the life that I have always dreamed of; time to find the right person. But now I feel that, soon, I’ll be 30, then 40, then 50… and my life will flash by before my eyes so much faster than I can imagine. Where I’m trying to go with this is to emphasize the fact that as students we spend so much of our time studying, cramming, writing exams, sitting in lectures, tutorials, and labs, and that we don’t realize that we are missing out on the best time of our lives. We are at our physical and mental peaks and are probably more energetic than we will ever be in our entire lives yet, although we all realize this, most of us don’t change our lifestyles. This is not to say that studying isn’t important – I study very hard and strive for the best grades possible all the time but, aside from doing part-time jobs, pulling off As in our courses, and getting amazing scores on LSAT/MCAT/GRE/DAT exams, we must also prioritize other aspects of our lives such as friends and relationships. At this point in our lives, our careers are our first priority (as they should be), but I think that we become so focused on our goals and become so detached from the outside world that we get lost and forget that all these accomplishments and possessions that we dream of probably won’t mean as much at the end of the day without love, friends, family, relationships, etc. I feel that it is an endless chase that we indulge in for the rest of our lives. Even after we get into  law school/med school/dental school/a business internship, we always want to get a promotion, get paid more, want more money, want more possessions, and we keep working harder and harder. Our desires are endless. I don’t want to seem very depressing, but I think as students we should all take a look at our lives and maybe readjust a few things here and there. Our grades/career take first priority, but we must also equally prioritize and make time for things that make us complete. This could be a hobby such as playing the guitar or piano or hanging out with your best friends or partying. You don’t want to wake up one day when you’re 30 or 40 and look back at your late teens and early 20s and regret that you didn’t fully ‘LIVE’.

Do you agree? I would love to read your thoughts on this. Until then… Happy New Year!

“This is exercise four. You need to write the capital of Canada.”

“Oh,” says the grade 9 I’m tutoring, “what’s that?”

A thousand readings and lectures flash through my mind – the roots of oppression, the colonization of the Americas, the myriad sociological, psychological, philosophical reasons a 14-year-old born in Canada would not know its capital.

“Ottawa,” I tell her. “The capital city of Canada is Ottawa. That’s where the Prime Minister lives.”

As she writes the answer on her worksheet and moves on to exercise five – identifying the Great Lakes on a map of the country – I reflect on the past sessions I’ve spent volunteering, for a few hours a week, at a high-risk high school in North York. The program, co-ordinated by the Center for Community Partnerships on campus, has been challenging and rewarding. Challenging because it demands waking up at six-thirty and working with thirty high-energy kids with smartphones and iPods and serious attitude for three straight hours on a Monday; rewarding because it lets me put school work and anxiety out of my head, at least for a little while. There are times, like when students in grade 9 ask about something they should have learned in grade 2, that academic notions creep back into my head and the students become subjects of thought. Mostly, though, they’re distracted, disrespectful, delightful nuisances.

The University of Toronto has a reputation for placing academics above social lives, extra-curriculars, and athletics; a reputation consistently upheld by its bookish students. This is nothing new, of course – UTians figured this out decades ago, and have been blogging about it since.* The problem is, we constantly frame it in the context of stress or of fun, and rarely consider the other possible side-effects of getting swallowed up by an undergraduate program.

One such side-effect is the theorization, abstraction, and lesssonification of our universes that comes from studying them. In the Humanities, at least, post-modernism is so heavily concerned with developing new terminologies and frameworks that it’s way too easy to see real, concrete things as avatars of their academic subjects. The screen you’re looking at – is it a computer monitor or a product of a neo-colonial system of exploitation? You see what I’m getting at – it happens every time you stop talking and start discoursing or dialoguing.

We need a balance. We need to offset the abstract world of our studies by entering the real world and realizing that, however meaningful an application of Standpoint Theory may be at the time, it’s not going to shade in those Great Lakes any quicker. The merit of the TDSB Tutors in Schools program and those like it – and there are many – is that the experiences are so real and so engaging that they offer perspective where it is otherwise absent. In doing so, they allow us to reflect with some degree of clarity on our own lives, academic or otherwise.

I highly recommend them.

*I might need a fact check on that…