All Posts Tagged With: "student"
Halifax students make latest Wikileaks dump
Consulate chronicles ‘militant student group’ involvement in 2003 anti-war protests
It seems someone is paying attention to student protests after all.
In this case, that “someone” is the American consulate in Halifax, which chronicled a 2003 anti-war protest held by “militant student groups, church groups, and the self-styled ‘Halifax Peace Coalition.’” In a document released this past Thursday, the consulate describes three “major” anti-war demonstrations in March 2003. The demonstrations were described as nonviolent, though participants “engaged in strong anti-U.S. rhetoric and burned U.S. flags on several occasions.” The cable also notes demonstrators as chanting, banging drums, sounding air horns, and throwing bags of paint.
Come now, silly U.S. consulate! We all know that no student group in Atlantic Canada would ever participate in cheap stunts like that!
The cable concludes with the consulate’s acknowledgement that “militant student groups” and the “Halifax Peace Coalition” intend to demonstrate every Saturday, and that the consulate is in communication with the RCMP and Halifax police.
When flatulence is a crime
Student disciplined for passing gas
Never mind plagiarism or cheating on exams. According to an article from the National Post, a student was recently reprimanded for passing gas on the bus.
Eleven-year-old Christian Summers received a one-hour detention and a warning after breaking wind on the bus ride home. The bus driver complained to the school, saying that, “I’ve told him it’s not funny nor polite to the others in the van. While others scream, he laughs.”
According to the article in the Post, his parents report that Christian now “fears his flatulence.” He knows that if he loses control again, he could face up to five days of detention.
Mango Curry Shrimp Dip (An Idiot-Proof Recipe)
Free time will be a hot commodity in a few weeks, so my biggest piece of advice at this point is: enjoy it! Or, you can use it to catch up on a couple life skills that are in major disrepair. This attitude explains my recent enthusiasm for cooking. Or what I consider cooking, anyways, which [...]
Free time will be a hot commodity in a few weeks, so my biggest piece of advice at this point is: enjoy it! Or, you can use it to catch up on a couple life skills that are in major disrepair.
This attitude explains my recent enthusiasm for cooking. Or what I consider cooking, anyways, which is really more like… mixing. And occasionally pan frying. Very occasionally.
Last night, I re-created the most adventurous and possibly the most labour intensive recipe I have ever attempted. And I totally screwed it up! (I tried to halve the recipe, but forgot halfway through.) Even still, it was extremely delicious, and therefore it makes a fancy looking, yet risk-free, meal for any student just striking out on their own.
It’s called ‘Shrimp Mango Curry Dip.’ It was passed along on a photocopied sheet from an unknown cookbook, but I figure it has been altered to meet the needs of each passing cook. For example, I can never find mango chutney, so I just use peach or apricot jam. Still delicious. And while it’s divine on crackers, you can warm it up and use it as a sauce for penne, or served on a bed of rice. Extremely delicious.
Ingredients:
4 oz. Cream cheese
½ cup sour cream
1/3 jar mango/peach/apricot jam or chutney.
1 tsp. curry powder
Shrimp – however many you want! (I buy them frozen and cooked, heat them up in a pan, and then cut them in halves)
¼ cup onions (again, how much do you like onions?)
2 green onions (I use a handful of red pepper chunks instead. It looks prettier.)
salt and pepper to taste.
Mix it all together until smooth. It should be a creamy shade of vivid orange.
While the portions might not look huge in the bowl, this makes quite a big batch, and paired with rice or pasta, it’s very filling. If you don’t want to eat it for three days, save it for a dinner party (it should serve atleast 3 or 4) or bring it to a potluck as a dip. I guarantee you will be extremely popular.
No longer a newbie
It’s official. I’m now a Yellow Shirt
The first time I ever set foot on the University of Waterloo’s campus was last July, when I attended Student Life 101.Thanks to campus tours, informational seminars, and ASK-ME booths with current students, the day long event gave me a snapshot of what my life was going to be like for the next four years.
Every student who volunteered that day was wearing a yellow T-shirt. I couldn’t help staring. Not at the shirts. At them.
They were university students. Upper year university students. When my parents and I pulled into the parking lot, I saw some Yellow Shirts handing out maps and talking to other high school kids and their families. They’re a completely different species in the student genus. I was a post high school student. And yes, I was completely intimidated by them. I remember wondering how to approach and talk to them. As peers? As wise university mentors?
This year I changed species. I got my own yellow shirt.
I knew I was going to like my placement for the day. Not the garbage bin moving part. I had an out-of-body experience during those two very long hours. My team got to be in the parking lot when the new students first arrived. I was thrilled. I got to be part of the group that first welcomed them to Waterloo.
I’m not really one of those spontaneous people who like greeting strangers. I freeze and sound like a goat trying to talk. But this was different. I really care about my school and I wanted to show them what a great home Waterloo can be. I was happy and proud to greet these new students.
Until I had an internal nervous breakdown and got performance anxiety. I had no idea what I was going to say to these new kids.
“Uh, hi. Um, Welcome?”
I tried to think of warm and engaging sentences of welcome that I could bestow upon these new students. But every great idea went goat. I was still chanting sentences in my head when I heard someone say, “Come on Andy.” I turned and was facing a new student and his parents.
I took the scene in. The parents were staring at South Campus Hall, a huge building on the hill behind me, looking a little afraid. ‘Andy’ was four feet behind and to the right of them, looking at the ground, then at the sky, anywhere but at us Yellow Shirts. I was standing in front of them with a map of the campus in one hand, and a name tag on my shirt with “Hi, I’m Jenny” stamped on it.
I was frozen. Then I made eye contact with Andy and lost any chance of passing them off to someone else. I resigned myself to knowing that I was going to sound like an idiot.
I think I smiled, maybe too much, because he looked kind of scared of me.
“HI! Uh, hi. You’re in Parking Lot A. Yeah. Oh, here’s a map of the campus. If you follow the red line, on the map there, you’ll get to the Student Life Center for the opening presentation. Um, have fun?!”
As Andy and his parents walked away, I barely had enough time to agonizingly re-live my terrible greeting 1000 times when someone tapped my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, where is the Bookstore?”
After I took the map from the lost student and turned it the right side up, I told them to cross the street, go up the steps, and take the first door on the right.
“Oh! Oh, okay, thanks!”
I think it was 40 minutes later, when I had to go refill my stack of maps, that I realized what I was doing. Maybe it’s part of my first born bossy complex. Or maybe our Yellow Shirts made us more extroverted. But by the end of the day, I was actually comfortable walking up to a complete stranger and saying “Hi, can I help you find anything?”
And I was pretty sure I was enjoying it.
Facing your quarter-life crisis
Sometimes the most mature thing you can do is make time to be a kid
A couple of months ago Eye Magazine ran a well-received article on the quarter-life crisis. Time was I used to think I might have invented the concept, but apparently it goes back to 2001 (first mainstream references) and the first time I can recall thinking in these terms was 2003. I noticed something of this nature happening to students around me in university. And while the article in Eye is quite good (I’d encourage anyone to read it) I’d like to discuss the quarter-life crisis as it relates to post-secondary education.
The basic theme is this: It’s great fun to play at being a grown-up when you’re young. It’s even more fun when people seem to play along. This starts to happen around the late teens for most people. Suddenly you start getting opportunities to do adult-type things. Maybe it’s a job where your responsibilities extend further than bussing tables. Or a romantic relationship where you’re the mature party. Or, if you have really forward-thinking parents, maybe they let you decide for yourself when and if you’re going to come home each night. Any experience like this is a milestone in hindsight, but in the moment it doesn’t necessarily feel like anything has changed. It’s easy to take an event like this as more of an exception to the rule. You aren’t really an adult yet – and it’s just funny that you get to pretend otherwise once in a while.
The quarter-life crisis hits at exactly the point where it stops being a game. You wake up one morning and you realize that this whole adult thing isn’t a mask you can put on and take off at will anymore. Now it’s your life. And just like your typical midlife crisis, that can be profoundly scary. You always thought you’d be able to go back again and now you find that maybe you can’t. Some people respond by trying to go back anyway. Which in a quarter-life context means retreating from all those adult responsibilities and trying to be a kid again. Of course this doesn’t happen to everybody, but I think it’s more common than we tend to notice.
This topic is especially relevant to students in post-secondary studies because their lives as students are just full of adult responsibilities. To begin with, there’s the fact that no one is monitoring their attendance in class and no one particularly cares if they hand in work on time or even at all. The failing grades will roll in around the end of the term but other than that there are no immediate consequences to slacking off. And there are the many organizations that students form and may become involved with. I know from personal experience that some of these organizations come with startlingly real responsibilities. And of course there’s the general life-management stuff that comes with greater independence – especially for students who have moved away from home. The only adult voice left around to point out that bedtime matters, or that pizza can’t adequately cover the four food groups on its own, or that laundry day was three weeks past – well, that’s the student’s own.
People talk a lot about students who aren’t ready for the adult responsibilities of university and there certainly are some who aren’t. I’ve seen some students show up and I seriously wonder if their mothers walked them to the bus stop. But those are easy to spot and there’s no mystery about what’s going on there. Some teenagers just aren’t ready. What’s more interesting to me is when a student who seemed like they had everything completely together suddenly falls apart. And I’m convinced that a particular variation of the quarter-life crisis is to blame. That student is perfectly capable of functioning as an adult so long as there’s a choice. But then when they notice the choice is gone and adult behaviour is now a full-time expectation the wheels come off.
There’s no magic bullet solution to the quarter-life crisis. Pointing out that something happens isn’t a guard against it happening. But this may help explain what’s going on with someone you know, and it may help you identify a problem in your own life before it gets out of control. Because a quarter-life crisis, much like a mid-life crisis, is really just an over-correction. It’s a response to feeling as though your life has become something you aren’t happy with or ready for. And the way to prevent that from happening is to keep your life more tolerable and stay happy with it.
My advice to any students, therefore, who feel overwhelmed with the sudden adultness of their lives is to make time for a break every once in a while. Pick one day of the week where you slack off and do whatever juvenile thing you feel like doing. Keep at least one hobby from your high school days no matter if it seems like you should have outgrown it already. Learn how to say “no” to new responsibilities and demands on your time, even if someone is giving you a great opportunity to do something important. One of the dangers of seeming like an especially mature and accomplished young person is that people will keep loading things on you until you collapse – unless you learn how to say no. Sometimes the most mature thing you can do is make time to be a kid.
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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.
Police rescue kidnapped student in dramatic takedown
18-year-old was snatched from his downtown Vancouver apartment last Sunday
An 18-year-old Chinese student, who was kidnapped on the weekend, was rescued in a dramatic takedown early Thursday morning, according to Vancouver police.
“[Police] executed numerous takedowns on multiple vehicles and the hostage was rescued uninjured,” said Deputy Chief Doug Lepard in a news release. “Reports of shots fired in the area were the result of ‘flash-bang’ grenades being used during the rescue by Emergency Response Team members, which give off a loud noise.”
The Chinese student was kidnapped from his home on Feb. 15. Police say they were notified by one of his family members, who lives in China, after they received a phone-call demand for ransom.
Officers then put their “kidnapping protocol” in motion, initiating emergency wiretaps, 24-hour surveillance, and other techniques police declined to disclose. During the course of their investigation, police say they identified several Burnaby homes they believed were connected to the kidnapping.
No one was injured in the takedown, and police say five suspects are currently in their custody. They say more arrests may be made and several search warrants will be executed.
