All Posts Tagged With: "holiday"
Away from home for the holidays
Why some students stick around school
Exams are wrapping up, and university campuses across Canada are emptying out for the winter break. But as The Canadian Press reminds us, not everyone goes home for the holiday season: family drama, lack of downtime, distance and and high airline costs (though, at least in the future they’ll be less deceptive high airline costs) are just some of the reasons students stay at school.
But it isn’t all bad: many students travel, spend time with friends, explore new traditions and bake. And, as the article notes, some universities host events for stranded students yearning for a home-cooked meal:
For the past 12 years, Concordia University in Montreal has hosted a dinner soiree. The school invites all of its 4,700 foreign students, and the first 300 to respond are treated to a three-course meal.
If you go to Queen’s University, the International Centre is hosting a holiday networking tea on Dec. 20.
Are you staying at school for the holidays? Share your on-campus plans.
Am I a second semester slacker?
The holidays tend to leave students not quite so refreshed and ready to start the new year
Every year of my university career, I always feel like I’m nearing the edge of nervous breakdown by the end of first semester. Try as I might to stay calm and focused, new jobs, heavier-than-expected courses, and an unpredictable circle of family and friends seem determined to not let that happen.
This year was no exception.
Yet on the cusp of second semester, those pangs of anxiety seem almost nonexistent. I know that my course load will be just as heavy, if not more so, work will be just as stressful, and my friends, family, and coworkers are not going to get less crazy now that it’s January.
Then why am I so much more relaxed going into the second half of the school year, knowing what awaits me once it’s in full swing? Am I burnt out and have just given up? Or, do I have a renewed sense of confidence in my own abilities to make it through whatever second semester throws at me, knowing that I made it through first semester’s challenges?
I’d like to believe it’s the latter, but the more cynical part of me worries that I’m just turning into a slacker now that second semester is here. Ideally, the holidays should leave students refreshed and ready to go for the second round of balancing school, work and everything in between. Yet I find every December break, the grand plans I make for quality rest and relaxation seem to go down the drain with work related projects, holiday errands, or worst of all, assignments expected to be completed over the holidays. This doesn’t exactly make me keen to hop back into my studies again after my break is over.
Being back at the University of Manitoba Wednesday, it was hard not to drag my feet a bit, and I doubt that I was half as productive as I like to be. Looking around campus, most students didn’t seem much more energetic than I, so professors excited to see students refreshed and eager to start a new semester should probably lower their expectations. Unlike the first week of September, it’s hard to expect students to waltz back onto campus after a measly two-week winter vacation with the same bright and shiny attitude they come with after four months of summer.
Despite the whining about having to come back to campus after a virtually non-existent holiday, second semester does always seem a little bit easier for me. When I look back on the extra assignments and pressing deadlines that sent me into crisis mode a few months back, I realize that while it may have been overwhelming at the time, I got through it, and it probably didn’t warrant the panic it caused me. After surviving the insanity the first few months of school, by this time of year, life doesn’t feel quite so insane.
Then again, maybe ask me how self-assured I’m feeling two months from now.
Post exam anxiety? You’re not alone.
Christmas vacation isn’t a vacation yet.
My last exam was almost a week ago, on December 15th, but my Christmas vacation hasn’t even started yet.
When I found out that all five of my exams were in a row, right at the beginning of exam period, I couldn’t decide if I was happy, or on the verge of developing a nervous tic.
On the one hand, writing exams sooner means less time to study. Not to mention, when your exams are literally back-to-back, one day after another, it’s harder to divide up your study time properly. How can you study for Biochemistry when Embryology is the day before? And how can you study for Embryology when Molecular biology is the day before that? And how can you study for Molecular biology when… well, you get the point.
On the other hand, all my exams were over in one shot. And my Christmas vacation started a bit earlier than usual.
Except it didn’t. Until my final marks are released tomorrow, I can’t sit back and enjoy my vacation.
I’m stuck in post-exam purgatory.
-Photo courtesy of alancleaver_2000
Traffic
I need better excuses for why I didn’t want to come to your holiday party
[A mid-sized holiday mixer is being hosted at a woman's home. The doorbell rings and she walks up to the door and opens it.]
Woman 1: Hey, you made it!
Woman 2: Yeah, hi, sorry I’m late. [she walks in, the door closes behind her]
W1: Oh, no problem. What held you up?
W2: Traffic.
[silence between the two women]
W1: Traffic?
W2: Yeah, it’s just crazy out there. The snow is heavy, the roads are terrible – it’s pretty bad.
W1: Traffic.
W2: My car wouldn’t even start at first and – let me just take off my coat – and it was just sliding across the ice.
W1: You’re an hour and a half late because of traffic.
W2: Yeah, I mean, I’m sorry I’m so late but -
W1: No, no, it’s fine, it’s just that I didn’t think you’d have to drive such a short distance.
W2: Well, typically I would have walked but it’s so cold outside tonight.
W1: But, you live next door.
[silence]
W2: What are you trying to say?
W1: Nothing, it’s just that you live literally twenty steps away from my front door.
W2: So?
W1: You’re telling me that you physically got into your car, put the key in the ignition and drove 20 – maybe 30 feet – and you somehow got stuck in traffic.
W2: Well, if you’re going to say it like that.
W1: I just don’t understand how you could have gotten stuck in traffic.
W2: Well, you’ve got at least twenty people in your house. I was looking for some place to park.
W1: It took you over an hour to park?
W2: There was a lot of snow. And besides, it’s not like your house is so easy to find.
[silence]
W1: What?
W2: What?
W1: You live directly next door to me. You can wave to me in my bedroom from your bathroom window.
W2: It’s so shrouded! You have so many plants and there were all those cars.
W1: Look, if you’re just late, that’s okay. I mean-
[crosstalk]
W2: I just don’t understand -
W1: you might have been doing your hair -
W2: why don’t you believe -
W1: and you just lost track of time -
W2: that your house is kind of hard to find -
W1: and you’ve created this elaborate story.
[silence]
W2: It was just traffic.
W1: Alright, well, you’re here now so it doesn’t matter. Lets just get you a drink. [She walks to the window and pulls the curtain back.] Wow, I guess you’re right. There really is a lot of snow outside.
W2: Yeah, I know.
W1: Where did you end up parking anyway?
W2: Oh, I just drove around until I decided to risk it and park in your neighbor’s driveway.
[silence]
W1: You parked in your own driveway?
W2: You know, that’s a great top. I have it in blue.
The professor’s non-holiday
The holidays are at hand. Now, I can finally get something done.
The best thing about the annual Christmas break is that I finally get a chance to get some work done. I mean “work” here in the professorial sense of my own research.
Don’t get me wrong: I love teaching. And even the many administrative tasks that seem to fill up my days provide some measure of satisfaction. But like many professors, I can’t help but feel that my research is my most important, even if most often neglected, work. Now, I know that I’m not curing cancer or anything like that, but here’s the thing: as much as I know that teaching does reach a certain number of students who are changed for the better, and as much as I love that idea, my students are few and those who are capable of being inspired are even fewer. I’m happy to teach for the dozen or so young minds I might help mold, but when the possibility of a few free days beckons, I can’t help turning my imagination to bigger things.
Research is so appealing to professors because, especially for those of us with tenure, we are free to pursue what interests us. Courses are taught because they need to be taught, but research is done because we want to do it. The courses belong to the university. Research belongs to us. Finally, research has the potential for enduring impact in a way that teaching does not. Students come and go, but a book is forever.
So thank the muses and St Jerome for this wonderful holiday. It’s time to get to work.
Life is worth living again
…until next semester.
I still have two exams before Christmas vacation. I’ve got six chapters of my microbiology textbook to read before Friday, and I’m trying to not even think about history. But ever since last Thursday, life has been worth living again.
Organic chemistry is finished. Gone. Forever.
Until next semester. When I have Organic Chemistry Part 2.
One thing I didn’t do during reading week
It’s like when Frosted Flakes claims to be part of a nutritious breakfast
In public school, that long endless gap between Christmas break and summer vacation is tolerable, thanks to snow days, P.A. days and Easter weekend.
But in university, there are no more snow days.
You’ll never get a Friday off because of a P.A. day.
And Easter weekend isn’t until after the last day of lectures. Yes, it means university students are being robbed. If there isn’t any school missed, it doesn’t officially count as a holiday.
Only March break survived the Public School Holiday Massacre. But first it had to go under the Vacation Protection program. March break got a new name. And, uh, it isn’t in March anymore. Now it’s in the middle of February. And it’s called ‘reading week.’
It’s sort of like when Frosted Flakes claims to be part of a nutritious breakfast. Sure, it might be part of a nutritious breakfast. It’s just not the nutritious part.
Calling it ‘reading week’ just means the old March break got a facelift. An unexpected upgrade. And now we’re all just pretending that we’re, uh, reading.
Right.
