All Posts Tagged With: "back to school"
Couches burn near University of New Brunswick
In Fredericton, furniture blazes are dangerous tradition
Photo courtesy of qmnonic on Flickr
It’s a sure sign that students are back at school in Fredericton. The Fire Department has responded to three couch fires since Sunday, Platoon Capt. Jeff Mills, told the Times & Transcript newspaper.
“It’s a joke and it’s fun for someone,” said Mills. “But it’s tying up personnel that could really benefit someone else,” he added.
There was an epidemic of couch fires near Fredericton’s two new universities, the University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University, in 2007, when 43 furniture fires were recorded on Graham Avenue alone. After the the city created designated days for roadside pick-up of trashed furniture, the total dropped to 17 in 2008 and nine in 2009. Including the three this frosh week, there have been six so far in 2011.
Mayor Brad Woodside offered a message for students after hearing of the fires. “This is your home away from home and live, love, laugh and enjoy,” he said, “[But] respect the community when you’re here, we’ll treat you like family, but treat this like it’s your home as well.”
The French existentialism edition
What good is having a degree if I can’t pretend to know about philosophy?
This September is the first one where I won’t be going back to school. I’m not sure how to feel when I see new students moving into my former residence (good old Pitman Hall) or when I hear about my friends going back for another year or starting their post-grad degrees. Mostly, I feel equal parts of envy and relief that I’m not in their shoes.
But I will be going back to school. Except instead of a student, I’ll be a (kind of ) teacher. Leaving behind being in an institution that you’ve grown to know, hate and love is terrifying and liberating. Sometimes I wonder when I’ll be able to break myself off from the formal education environment completely. Judging from the number of people I know who want to be teachers in the Canadian public school system, I’m not the only one with this issue.
Now that I’ve put in my four years and received my degree, there’s nothing keeping me in Toronto, or Canada. My friends (Canadian and international) are doing their own things at home or new places. After having spent so much time abroad in the last half year and now with school done, I feel like I don’t have a life in Toronto anymore. There are people and reminders of my old lives (university, high school, part-time jobs) everywhere but no real reason to stay or return for more than a visit. Finishing school isn’t so daunting compared to the overwhelming freedom of what to do next. Having a seemingly endless number of options of what to do with life is a middle-class privilege and a middle-class curse.
Recently I’ve had the urge to put on the French philosopher’s hat (or beret, if you will) for a moment and think back to the existentialism class I took in second year. Earlier this week I tried to re-read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity for some guidance (and to put me in the mood for France), but couldn’t get past the first few pages. Bringing myself to concentrate on actually reading something longer than 140 characters has been too much to ask of my brain recently.
Back to school.
The three most hated words by students everywhere
When I first realized I have less than a month of no homework and sleeping in left, my last three weeks of summer vacation instantly got sucked down that Back-to-School preparation drain.
I started playing a kind of switching game in my head.
Reading a good book. Switch that with a two-inch psychology textbook.
Sleeping in until 11 a.m. Switch that with standing at the city bus stop at 7 a.m.
Doing whatever I want, whenever I want. Switch that with a rigorous study schedule, attainable only through a strict eight coffees a day regimen.
I found it hard to enjoy anything I did because I couldn’t help seeing it through my I-won’t-be-able-to-do-this-once-I’m-back-in-school filter.
But yesterday I suddenly phased back into my summer vacation. And that’s because I really thought about what I was going back to this September.
University.
There are no bully students. There are no bully teachers. You’re in charge of your educational plan. You’re going to a place that’s built for you. University is an exciting place to be.
Maybe going back to school isn’t so bad after all.
Back to School
You knew it had to happen, right?
I don’t want to spoil the last month of anyone’s summer (I’m certainly still enjoying mine) but it’s pretty much that time. The stationary supplies are in all the stores, laptop manufacturers are hawking their wares, and it’s officially time for back to school. It’s time for the extended version anyway – like how Christmas starts in mid-November.
A lot of students head into each new school year hoping for better results. Unfortunately, however, many students pin those hopes only on renewed determination and vague resolutions to “try harder.” While determination and resolve are certainly useful they aren’t enough on their own. If you want a different result you’ve got to change the way you go about doing things. So if you’re serious about improving your grades and performance in school, next year, this is the time to actually sit down and figure out in concrete terms what’s going to be different this time.
I can’t tell you what needs to change in order to sort out your particular problems. It might be your sleep cycle and your social life. It might mean reexamining program choices. Maybe you need to lighten up on the work hours, create a more structured study schedule, or form a study group. Even if you realize you don’t know what to change that can be a good place to start. Book an appointment to visit your academic advising office and they may be able to help. If you can visit campus during the summer that’s a great opportunity to really sit down with sometime. They tend to have more time.
No matter what else you do, if you intend to make a change you need to figure out the steps that are needed to make that change and then follow through with them. Changing your results in school is not different from any other part of your life. Whether it’s exercise or diet or even saving money you can’t get anywhere just because you wish you were better at it. You start with the desire to see some change and then you settle on concrete steps. Write them down if that’s what it takes to keep yourself honest. Treat them like back to school resolutions.
One thing I really like to do before I head back to school is read some material for a class or two on my own schedule and with no rush. Of course that works especially well for English studies but it can work for any subject as long as you’re genuinely interested – and you are interested in what you’re learning, right? You don’t need to make a special effort to start a whole class early or to read what comes first. Just pick anything from your courses and read for the heck of it. If you aren’t sure what you’ll be reading try e-mailing the instructor. Most will have the reading list already sorted.
What I’ve discovered, from doing this, is that I have far better memory and retention for things I read just because I want to. I’m sure we’re all like that. Do you remember your course work from a year ago? I’d bet not. But the novel you read that you really enjoyed? That’s a whole different question. If you can trick yourself into reading course material for fun you get the best of both worlds. And it’s not as hard as you think. Once you remove the deadlines and the pressure, and you read just because it’s the book you happen to have with you, the material is often quite interesting. And you will retain and remember it, I promise. Even if you don’t get to the text for months you’ll know it better than your classmates who sped through it all the night before.
Finally, I really recommend to everyone you try to do at least something near the end of the summer that’s productive and intellectually stimulating. If you’re doing that already that’s fine, but if summer has been just one long vacation or if you’ve got a boring and repetitive summer job you want to break out of that pattern before the first week of September rolls around. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks to shake the dust off. When you fall behind early you might find you’re playing catch up all year long. Some people are so used to that pattern it feels natural and inevitable. But when you break the cycle and stay ahead of the game everything just feels completely different – and a whole lot less stressful.
It may be a bit sad to contemplate the end of summer but just a little time and thought about the pending school year could make a world of difference. So invest a little now to reap the rewards later. And then get back to enjoying the rest of the season.
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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.
Schools fine-tune emergency plans in case of H1N1 outbreak
“The worst of part of any of these health crises is not the disease itself,” says doctor
As students stock up on school supplies and get ready to hit the books this fall, post-secondary institutions are making preparations of their own, fine-tuning their action plans in the event that swine flu cases surface on campus.
The Public Health Agency of Canada says that under the Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan, all large institutions – including colleges and universities – are encouraged to have pandemic preparedness plans.
But when it comes to emergency planning, universities are hardly starting from scratch. In fact, many are tailoring existing strategies to address a potential flu outbreak and the possible ripple effects that could have an impact on school life.
Both Montreal’s McGill University and Simon Fraser University in British Columbia had much of their planning done to address another strain of flu – H5N1, or avian flu.
Dr. Pierre-Paul Tellier, director of student health services at McGill, said the university has been much more active since the H1N1 epidemic was observed in Mexico this past spring and later declared a pandemic.
Tellier said there are weekly planning meetings involving individuals representing various groups including human resources, student representatives and communications staff.
They are preparing documents to go out to students arriving in residence telling them what to do if there is an issue surrounding H1N1, how to take care of themselves and where to seek care. In addition, a website is being developed to provide information to students, parents and staff.
“The worst part of any of these health crises is not the disease itself,” said Tellier. “It’s really dealing with the population around who become very anxious and very stressed and that you have to … constantly clear up issues and matters on an ongoing basis, and that’s where a lot of your energy is spent.”
“If you’re able to prepare a lot of this ahead of time prior to an episode occurring… then it makes it easier.”
Part of the contingency planning also addresses what to do if faculty or staff are out of commission. Every unit is being asked to identify essential services and key individuals and to ensure they have trained backups for their positions, Tellier said. Professors are also being encouraged to record lectures or organize material for students to access if they can’t attend class, he said.
Apollonia Cifarelli, director of environmental health and safety at Simon Fraser University, said educating people on infection control has been their primary focus.
In addition to spreading the word about sneezing etiquette and proper hygiene techniques, they are encouraging faculty to do the same by providing information to students and making them aware of health services on campus.
Students in residence are being provided with personal containers of gel or sanitizer to further drive home the message about hygiene. Dorm leaders or community advisers would act as the eyes and ears of the floor and as a link to administration, providing updates if necessary if students get sick.
An area has been identified where those living on campus would be relocated if they fall ill. Cifarelli said it isn’t a quarantine, but rather an area where they can keep an eye on students and provide essential support.
“People are infectious two days before they show symptoms, so quarantining people is really not going to do a heck of a lot,” she said from Burnaby, B.C.
Medical care would fall to health services, but if symptoms are more severe, it might be recommended that students be transferred to a hospital, she said.
The university also has a mass communication system in place to send out messages by phone, email or text if necessary, although it is only put in use in the face of an imminent emergency, Cifarelli said.
“We are reminding people this is really, in essence, this is the flu – it’s the seasonal flu,” she added. “The main difference is that we have no vaccine for this flu at this point in time, and we do know that because younger people have not had a lot of time to develop immunities to viruses they might be more vulnerable.”
Nostalgia is for dummies
I’m trying to keep in mind all the nasty things childhood entails.
It’s August, and in Calgary that means a long slow spiral towards a wintry September. The strangeness of the city is that by the 1st, the summer seems to have run its course, and the air starts to smell like sharpened pencils and mulch.
Generally, nothing quite gets me like that back-to-school feeling. Even in elementary, when going back to school meant standing on our porch being photographed in a dress designed by the Amish, followed by ten months of “Math Minutes”, I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were about to happen.
During a university summer, going back to school means four months of working are mercifully over, and as I wistfully examine my timetable, I see a long happy year ahead of “Hindu Aesthetics and Imagery” and “Canadian Foreign Policy Since 1945.” Good, practical pursuits that don’t require me to master a vacuum cleaner or remember how to calculate GST.
But this year, I still can’t help but feel a little short-changed. Where was my summer? Where were all the camp songs around the fire, the feeling of the wind off the lake, the smell of Stampede sausages roasting on a grill?
Upon closer reflection, the majority of these nostalgic longings seem to be several years stale. To locate their source, I have to look back a little further than last summer, or tenth grade. In fact, I’m not sure they’ve been in fine form since puberty hit. And even then, things weren’t quite as peachy as I remember.
Summer camp, for example, often entailed living in a cabin with a bunch of sociopathic pre-teen girls, all more developed and much scarier than I, and hell bent on getting a boyfriend by mid-week.
Any lake was forbidding, as it meant the wearing of a bathing suit was imminent. This was something I avoided with an intensity bordering on the obsessive. Convinced that my legs were the size and texture of Godzilla’s, I would have preferred to enter the water wearing a sheet.
And I shouldn’t even start on Stampede. It was marked with pancake breakfasts at ungodly hours, every day for at least a week, where my entire family wore matching bandanas and dorky pins of cartoon cows, and I would get kicked in the face by kid-sized spurs while in the bouncy tent.
So I try to keep in mind the nasty things childhood entails as I lurch grudgingly towards adulthood. Playing dodgeball. Getting lice. Wearing floral stretch pants.
I try to remember these things, while August has already given itself over to autumn rain, and friends are slowly heading back to the cities they increasingly call home.
But I’m still trying to make a few last childhood memories, flawed though they might be.
Lifelong learning: Going back to university can be fun
One in five U.S. adults take a course out of personal, not professional, interest each year
It was starting to get embarrassing: I’d been living in New York City for 20 years and had never been to the symphony.
I considered myself a well-educated person, read books and magazines, spent hours at art museums. But for some reason, live classical music intimidated me. Maybe it was the tuxedoes and evening gowns worn by the members of the New York Philharmonic, or those mysterious pauses between movements when everyone seemed to know not to applaud.
So last fall I audited a music appreciation course at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York – the first time I had been back to college since I graduated in 1976. I wanted to learn just enough about western classical music to enjoy an evening at the opera or a chamber music performance. I also wanted to finish what I’d started in my first semester of college when I signed up for – then dropped out of – an introductory music class.
About one in five American adults, or about 40 million people, take a course out of personal, not professional, interest each year, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Classes in subjects ranging from computers to cooking are taught at colleges, community centres, libraries and other venues.
Whether the recession will diminish this flow of so-called “lifelong learners” to the classroom remains to be seen. But Sean Gallagher, a program director and senior analyst at Eduventures, a higher education research and consulting firm, expects demand to continue.
“You get a lot of value in taking a course,” he said. “If you take a course for $200 and it meets weekly for eight weeks, that’s a lot of value compared to some other activities.”
Some take classes just for fun, others to nurture undeveloped talents.
Kumar Shah, 60, has taken two writing classes at the 92nd Street Y in New York City since semi-retiring from a career in corporate finance, where his business reports earned him a reputation for a “pretty decent way with words.”
“It suggested I might have a talent and interest in the other direction,” he said, “and maybe a course like this could be fun. It gives me a chance to talk to and be with people who enjoy this activity. Many of my other friends don’t have the same level of interest in reading and writing.”
The 92nd Street Y offers more than 4,000 classes, some taught by leading scholars and writers such as Margaret Atwood.
Summer vacation is over- for my brothers
This is my last week of summer vacation- but it’s also the best week of summer vacation. Last week my 10 and 12-year-old brothers started back at school. As in, seven whole days before me. Suckers.
This is my last week of summer vacation- but it’s also the best week of summer vacation.
Last week my 10 and 12-year-old brothers started back at school. As in, seven whole days before me.
Suckers.
