All Posts Tagged With: "reading"
Embracing your midterms
Less time for studying means more time for relaxation
When I first found out that all my midterms and lab reports were due before Reading Week, I was disappointed that I wouldn’t have the extra studying and report-writing time.
I quickly realized that I was actually lucky.
Had everything been due after Reading Week, I would have spent the entire nine days procrastinating, but not the fun guilt-free kind of procrastination. I’m talking about the type where you know you should be studying, which means you can’t quite bring yourself to do anything fun.
So instead you stare blankly at the TV with your notebook and textbook open in front of you.
I even listen to the infomercials. And not in the normal “I can’t believe anyone would actually buy that thing” way. But in a, “I’d rather watch someone enthusiastically clean their kitchen with a ShamWow cloth than study for my physiology midterm” kind of way.
But heading into Reading Week with my midterms and lab reports behind me, I’m free to spend the whole week reading. Yeah, sure. Reading.
What every student should read
It’s completely free. And it shows up in your email every day.
If I had to choose between a stack of Microbiology readings and a novel that I started during Christmas vacation, I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t find myself reading about terrestrial and aquatic microbial habitats. So I don’t let myself make the choice. Between January and April, any books outside of my five textbooks (and lab manuals) are banned.
Two weeks into the new semester, I still haven’t touched any non school-related books. Instead, I’ve started reading my spam before killing it off. It doesn’t exactly compare to reading a good book, but it sure is a lot more lucrative. In the past few days I’ve already won hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash prizes.
My spam is even warning me about problems with my computer. And offering helpful solutions.
“Your computer are virus detected. Download antivirus for protect your computer free!”
It’s disappointing when I turn on my laptop and I don’t have any new spam. Just a bunch of emails that I don’t bother to read anymore. Sorry Academica’s Top Ten, but you’ve never offered me any health advice. Like, “Eat pill once a day and BREAK THROUGH WALL!!!”
I’m even getting investment offers and financial advice from complete strangers.
“Hello good sir. My name is Arthur Fowling and I am searching for an investment partner in my lucrative new business venture…”
By the way Arthur, the only people who say “Good sir” are characters from “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Sherlocke Holmes.” It’s about 200 years out of date.
“Greetings from the Gmail team. We are in the process of deleting inactive accounts due to bandwidth limitations. If you do not want your account to be discontinued, please fill in the form below.”
1) Username
2) Password
3) PIN number
4) Credit card information
5) A photo of yourself, so we can include your picture in our annually published book, “People who actually sent us their credit card information and PIN number.”
What I did wrong
Don’t make the mistakes I did.
By any objective measure, I was a very successful undergraduate student. I earned A’s in nearly all my courses, won awards and scholarships, and was accepted to all the graduate programs I applied to.
Still, over twenty years after I first enrolled in university, I am painfully aware of things I could have done better. Since some of you are preparing even now to begin university in the fall, I thought I would share a few thoughts on what I would do differently if I had it to do over again.
1. Take advantage of language instruction. As an undergraduate, I made two half-hearted attempts at French courses (the second of which landed me with the only C I ever got), partly because I thought that’s what smart English Canadians did, and partly because I needed a second language to get my honours degree in English. But like many of my own students do today, I endured the courses; I did not embrace them. Looking back, I shudder to think how much French I could have learned over those two years if I had really worked at it. And if I wasn’t prepared to work at French, I should have tried something else. Today, working as a scholar of the Renaissance, I could sure use more than my high school Latin.
2. Read everything. In my undergraduate years especially, I took pride in getting good grades without reading everything on the syllabus. I knew exams gave you your choice of questions, and I was naturally clever, so I could dodge and weave around what I didn’t know. But I now realize that every book unread is a whole series of missed opportunities, partly for what is in the book, and partly for developing the open-minded discipline that comes with reading what needs to be read.
3. Have more humility. In my first-year English course I was assigned a book about essay writing, which I bought, but promptly tossed aside. After all, essay writing had always been my thing in high school. Surely that book was for other people who had done worse than me in schools easier than mine. And then the B papers started to come back. Gradually, I came to learn what a university A-level paper was like and I wrote plenty of them, but I could have saved myself a lot of anguish if I had been less cocky.
Coming soon: What I did right.
Are you getting your money’s worth?
Canadians concerned about the value of an education, finds poll
As young people prepare to don caps and gowns this month and take the stage to grab their diplomas, Canadians confess a certain skepticism about the value of an education in this country.
Nearly half of the Canadians polled in a recent Harris-Decima survey said they feel Canada’s educational system does not adequately prepare young people for work in the modern economy.
Albertans are most pessimistic about the system – 52 per cent say they find it inadequate.
Younger Canadians, between the ages of 18-34, are more likely to say it is up to snuff than older respondents.
Nathan Seebaran, a student at Edmonton’s Ross Sheppard High School, says he feels optimistic about the training he’s getting through a registered apprentice program.
He’s studying to become a cabinetmaker and will be doing projects at the University of Alberta as part of his training.
“I was thinking of dropping out of high school because I didn’t really think I needed it, but I’m glad I stayed to do this,” Seebaran said.
Confidence is the hallmark of the so-called “Generation Y,” which is now hitting graduation age, says Harris-Decima vice-president Jeff Walker.
“Part of that self-awareness and self belief of that generation of people is the feeling that they work extremely hard and that the system has been beneficial to them,” said Walker.
When asked to grade different levels of education, Canadians gave high school the lowest marks.
Only 37 per cent felt high school did “very well” or well at preparing young people for the workforce.
How to suck the fun out of reading
I promise you won’t be tested on this
Nothing sucks the joy out of reading like knowing you’re going to be tested on it.
After eight months of university, it’s really bizarre to not be on a strict reading schedule. I’m still in shock. No more textbooks. No more readings.
University is so super condensed that every moment has to be planned. And most of it’s spent reading. Every possible second that could be used reading textbooks has to be squeezed out of each day.
Forget reading for fun. You eventually forget what ‘fiction’ is.
But a lot of what you’re reading is actually really interesting. Like how when oxygen is broken down by your body, the byproducts can actually damage your cells. Or when a queen clownfish dies, the largest male of the school of clownfish will change it’s gender and become female. You’re just so caught up in trying to keep up with the readings, or trying eat the textbook for future regurgitation on a test, that you can’t appreciate it.
I’ve been off school for a month now, but I still have moments of dread, thinking there must be some health article or physics chapter that I should be reading.
Even after four weeks, it still seems like a foreign concept. Reading. For fun.
I’m still getting used to it.
Snacking on Religious Studies
I just finished my last religious studies reading. Out of all the textbooks, tutorial manuals and lab books this past year, this has to be my favourite sentence: “The relationship of the daughter to the father is that of filiation.” Filiation? That’s a word? Really? To me, ‘Filiation’ sounds like a way to describe how [...]
I just finished my last religious studies reading. Out of all the textbooks, tutorial manuals and lab books this past year, this has to be my favourite sentence:
“The relationship of the daughter to the father is that of filiation.”
Filiation? That’s a word?
Really?
To me, ‘Filiation’ sounds like a way to describe how full you are. Like after a handful of macadamia nuts, you’re ‘filiated.’ Heck, when someone isn’t cooperating during interrogation, why bother pulling fingernails- just ‘filiate’ them. With some macadamia nuts.
They’ll tell everything.
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.
