All Posts Tagged With: "summer vacation"
How to scare the bejesus out of yourself
CN tower opens new ‘EdgeWalk’ attraction this August
According to CBC News, the CN tower is adding a new ‘EdgeWalk’ attraction this year which will allow “thrill-seekers to stroll outside on the world-famous tower.” It opens this August and will cost $175.
The first thing I thought when I heard about this was, “Wow, they’re creating an attraction based on the ‘top ten list of things a sane person would never do.’ ” The EdgeWalk takes place on a 1.5 metre ledge that rings the main pod, more than 1,000 feet above the ground.
I’ve been trying to think of things that could actually motivate me to dangle from the CN Tower for a half hour. It’s a pretty short list:
1) At least an extra 10.2% chance that I’ll get into med school. It took me a little while to find the exact percentage, but after a series of non-existent experiments and several minutes of intense self-debate, that’s the number I came up with. Not 10.1%. Not 10.19%. Minimum 10.2% or higher.
2) A hypothetical serial killer says, “Climb up there or I’ll kill you!” And neither Daniel Craig or Harrison Ford are in the mood to rescue me.
3) The same hypothetical serial killer threatens to reveal the fact that I’ve read all four Twilight books.
And, uh, just for the record, my body was highjacked by a 14-year-old girl. I woke up three days later with a Team Jacob t-shirt and a tattoo of Edward on my left arm.
-Photo courtesy of Florian Dreyer
It’s not too early for summer plans
French immersion may be the solution to avoiding another boring summer vacation
Perhaps it is too early for some students to even begin planning their summer vacation. However, with many internship application deadlines just around the corner, it might be worth giving a thought. I will say with confidence that one of the best summers I ever had was the summer I spent in a french immersion program in Quebec at the Université du Québec a Trois-Rivières, and I have the Facebook photos to prove it. If you’re not planning on applying for internships this summer and can spare a few weeks of your summer vacation to not work, I would suggest applying for a bursary for the five-week french immersion course through the Explore program like I did two years ago.
Considering the bursary program is only available to high school and full-time university students, it’s a great opportunity to seize while you can. We all take advantage of student deals whenever they’re offered, so why not take advantage of a program that lets you improve your French, meet some amazing people, and a hang out in another city for a few weeks?
During the course I participated in, I lived rent-free for five weeks in the residence at the university and had my meals during Monday to Friday provided for me. Considering I was living with my parents when I was accepted into the program, I don’t think I truly appreciated how awesome this was at the time. I wish I had. Now that I’m on my own, ramen noodles have become a staple in my diet. However, the program doesn’t cover the $200 registration fee you have to pay if you are accepted, or spending money once you are there, so the five weeks weren’t completely cost-free.
While the prospect of being forced to speak French for five weeks straight may seem like a grueling experience, everyone in the program is stumbling along with you, making it a very supportive setting that makes it easy to get a handle on the language quickly. Although I did have to spend my mornings in class and complete some homework, I found that what helped me the most was that I was surrounded by so many new people that I wanted to get to know. This facilitated much more conversation than your typical classroom setting, and was much more useful in learning how to speak French than completing exercises from a textbook.
That being said, you shouldn’t go into the program expecting to become completely bilingual. When I first arrived in Trois-Rivières, I envisioned myself emerging from the program fully fluent in the language, able to wander around Montreal conversing in both of my country’s official languages with perfect grammar and pronunciation. Oh how naïve I was. Although I was able to converse much more effectively in French, I was nowhere near fluent after the five weeks were over. It is obviously nearly impossible to prefect such a complex language in such a short time span.
While I haven’t kept my proficiency in the language at the level it was when I came back home two years ago, I still keep in touch with many of the friends I made there. Along with giving me the opportunity to work on my French, the program was also one of the only opportunities I’ve had to meet students from across the country with a vast range of backgrounds and different perspectives, considering I’ve lived in Manitoba my entire life. Even if you’re not super keen on spending five weeks being surrounded by people speaking French, the people you meet during those five weeks are enough of a reason to go.
What an old house can teach you. About yourself.
My summer education
My family recently bought a 150-year-old house. When we first moved in about two weeks ago, it seemed pretty cool to be living in a house that was actually built in 1860. Although the house has been renovated over the years, there’s still an old brick fireplace in the kitchen, along with cast iron door knobs and bronze vents. Hundreds of people have walked across the ancient pine floors, which were laid down before my great-grand parents were even born.
Little did I know, there’s a trade-off when you live in a 150-year-old house: the bugs are ickier, squishier and bigger.
The first day we moved in, my dad asked me to sweep out the basement. The thing is, houses from 1860 don’t have tidy little basements with concrete floors and drywall. They have creepy stone dungeons, like the one from the Blair Witch Project. The kind of basement where you might find a Ouija Board, or a set of mysterious clay voodoo dolls stacked in the corner.
I had already walked to the middle of the basement when I suddenly realized: there were huge, fuzzy spiders. Everywhere. My first instinct was to scream and run back and forth, and then punch a hole in the ceiling and fly out of the basement. But I was afraid to move. Nobody had entered the basement for at least a hundred years, and I had disturbed all the hibernating crunchy insects. Any slight movement could create a draft, which would fling all the spiders towards my face.
I made a vow to never go in the basement again. Ever. Avoiding the basement for the rest of my life doesn’t seem too bad, anyway. There are plenty of other rooms in the house, and basements aren’t that essential. At this point, I still didn’t hate the house. Yet.
And then I encountered my first centipede.
Maybe large, squishy insects are magnetically attracted to wimps like me. Or maybe some bug from the Jurassic era had been laying dormant under my floorboards, frozen in a droplet of amber and suddenly reawakened by my footsteps. Either way, one night the biggest freaking insect I’ve ever seen was slithering around my room.
I couldn’t bring myself to actually squish it. But then, before I could grab a machine gun or flamethrower, it slipped into a crack between the floorboards.
It’s worse than having a stalker. I now live in constant fear of that bug. At any time it could show up on my pillow. On my toothbrush. Or in my cereal.
-Photo courtesy of ◄M►
School’s out
Time for catching up
Sleeping-in during summer vacation isn’t as much of a novelty as it used to be. The thing is, if you plan your class schedule right, you should be able to sleep in during the school year, too.
In university, the best part of summer vacation is being able to procrastinate guilt-free.
Now my friends and I have time for profound conversations. Like the merits of Modern Warfare versus Sniper: Ghost Warrior, which will only cost 40 bucks when it’s released next month. Modern Warfare might have AC-130s and airstrikes, but Ghost Warrior has realistic sniping missions.
With labs, essays and exams to worry about, it’s easy to lose touch with the rest of the world. And in the space of two semesters, everything changes. Sometime between last September and my final exams, everybody stopped playing Halo 3. And according to my 14-year-old brother, World of Warcraft is lame-ass.
I have some catching up to do.
-photo courtesy of Mike Willis
Summer jobs that can change your career path
One Quebec summer camp for inner-city kids has produced generations of educators
When you think of summer camp, visions of campfires and canoeing immediately come to mind. But along with roasting marshmallows and nature hikes, one very special residential children’s summer camp in Quebec is doing much more. Summer might be over, but at this camp, the impact is felt year-round.
For some university students, Camp Amy Molson has changed their lives, or at least their career paths. But the camp is also creating some of Canada’s future educators.
Susan Chisholm knew she wanted to become a pharmacist. But after working at Camp Amy Molson for a summer, that changed. For her, after spending eight summers at the camp, going into teaching became a “natural progression.” Sue says the camp taught her to “know kids as people,” and today Sue is a teacher near Ottawa. She has no regrets about changing her career path from being a pharmacist to becoming an educator.
Located in Grenville-sur-la-Rouge, Quebec, Camp Amy Molson is a residential camp for inner-city Montreal children, with an outreach program offered from its Montreal office year-round. The camp recently celebrated its 65th anniversary, holding a fundraising reunion for past campers, staff and volunteers.
Kosta Hatzis, who first started working for the camp part-time while he was a student, has been a board member since 2006. He describes the camp’s target group as “socially disadvantaged inner-city kids.” For these campers, explains Kosta, Camp Amy Molson is a safe place, a place where they can “grow in ways that they could never grow in the city.”
All five of Debbie Gunn’s children attended the camp. She says it gave her kids a chance to experience things they never could in the city. “Where I lived (in the city) there was nothing for the kids to do. Camp taught them all kinds of things. They got to go boating, swimming, and have lots of safe places to play outside.”
Shauna Joyce, the camp’s executive director, hires dozens of post-secondary students to work for the camp each summer. She says many of the camp’s staff end up becoming educators. “Social work, teachers, and education. They’re all a big trend with our staff.”
Meaghan Higginson is part of that trend. She’s worked at the camp for nine summers now, while attending post-secondary education, starting at age 15 as a counsellor-in-training. Although she describes her first year working with underprivileged youth as a bit of a shock, Meaghan wasn’t scared away. After discovering that she loves working with kids, that first year cemented her future career choice: teaching. But the camp didn’t just help her find a career path. Meaghan says it also helped prepare her for the role, giving her the skills to be a teacher. Meaghan lists confidence and dealing with classroom management as important abilities she learned from her time at camp.
Get out of the bubble
The Ivory Tower is great, but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture
The advantages of living near an university campus are many. Great night life, lots of fast food options, usually a good independent bookstore, cafe patios, and lots of attractive people to look at while enjoying a coffee. (Let the hate mail begin, yes, I’m human, I’m an university student and I enjoy looking.)
One of the advantages which cannot be immediately seen is an off-campus community of academics and intellectuals who gather to discuss ideas and issues. (You live in a student area, you get in a student bubble and forget the rest of the world exists.)
It is often said the best learning occurs outside of the classroom. I’ve found that I’ve often limited my non-classroom intellectual development to the university campus, missing a fountain of knowledge available just past the borders of the university campus.
As many of you have noticed, I’m not blogging as often as I used to. I became caught in a “routine” that didn’t see more than 48 hours in front of me. I spent so much time chasing breaking news, that I lost sight of not just things over the horizon, I lost sight of the horizon itself.
After a series of personal, professional, and academic shocks; I finally realized that I was failing to maximize myself. I was too busy living for today that I was failing to build tomorrow.
Over the past three months I’ve spent a great deal of time reflecting on all topics, reading lots of books, and digesting as much data as I can get my hands on. Much of it has been on higher education, much about politics (especially geo-politics), and plenty of philosophical/religion readings.
I’ve also spent time taking in new experiences and events.
(I went to a performance of the Canadian Opera Company. Those whom know me well were shocked that I actually went; I was shocked that I enjoyed it. I even wrote a piece for The Silhouette on my experience. Me writing on culture, who would have guessed. More shocking, I’m now a season-ticket subscriber to the opera.)
First day of university classes
Not to jinx myself, but…
Up until today, everything I knew about university was second-hand. For years, I’ve heard adults describe university as a place to, “discover yourself.” A place to “define who you are,” and, “explore your future.”
University kind of sounded like an artsy movie.
I figured that after sitting through official university lectures, I’d be Changed as a Person. I’d willingly read Hamlet, and probably say stuff like, “How could I not have recognized the poetic intricacies of Shakespeare’s prose before?”
Heck, I’d be able to legitimately use the word, “prose,” in a sentence.
I thought that after a whole day of university, I’d have a Confucius quote memorized for any given situation. If someone gave me a hard time on the bus, I could tell them that, “He who seeks a path of violence begets only a hallowed spear.”
But my high school-adapted mind made foolish assumptions about university. For one thing, the biggest change I noticed between high school and university has nothing to do with my Inner Core or Sense of Self: mainly, I noticed that people have an enhanced sense of body space in university.
Nothing in existence moves slower than a pack of grade nine students (other than plot lines from movies made in the 70’s). But in university, Slow Walkers are almost nonexistent. The almost-extinct species no longer travels in packs. The rare herd of Slow Walkers will actually acknowledge the fact that someone is walking behind them, and then will diverge to let them past. People hold doors for each other.
The best thing about being an official university student, though, is impressing all of my 12-year-old brother’s friends.
Yup, they’re in awe of my four months of summer vacation.
The cheesy triforce of summer vacation
Now that school’s out for the summer, my family is planning our annual trip to MarineLand. But with seven people involved, going to an amusement park for a day is no longer a vacation. It’s officially classified as a military operation. The problem is, I’m not a General. Or a Lieutenant. Or even an assistant [...]
Now that school’s out for the summer, my family is planning our annual trip to MarineLand. But with seven people involved, going to an amusement park for a day is no longer a vacation. It’s officially classified as a military operation.
The problem is, I’m not a General. Or a Lieutenant. Or even an assistant drummer boy. With my mom, dad, and 18-year-old sister ranking ahead of me, I barely have the authority of the drummer boy’s secretary. The one who isn’t allowed to answer the phone. Or sharpen pencils.
I’m four years older than David, seven years older than Michael, and 13 years older than Sam. Yes, my parents will be crispy 50-year-olds by the time Sam is in Kindergarten, but that’s a separate (and kinda repulsive) issue. The point is, my family obviously isn’t seniority-based.
I’m going to university in less than a month and a half. I’ve been breathing air four years longer than any one of my brothers. If my family were a law firm, I would have made partner by now. But my parents are denying my natural right to Bossy Older Brother privileges.
Sure, in terms of mini-van seating arrangements, I’m ranked ahead of David, Michael and Sam. But that still puts me in the back row, in the land of no arm rests, where cup-holders are spoken of only by the Village Elders, who remember the days of prosperity when it was possible to sip from a Coke and then, in a feat of luxury, tuck it into a convenient little pocket.
I’m squished into one bench seat with all the other lowly Privates, who aren’t old enough to comprehend the etiquette of eating Doritos. When any of my younger brothers eat orange-powdered cheesy ass, they suddenly start taking deep, open-mouthed breaths, deciding that the time is right to make up for every time they’ve held their breath underwater.
And then there’s the debris factor: when anyone under the age of 12 eats a Dorito, they end up with more powdered cheese on their fingers than what was originally on the chip. After an hour-long drive, thanks to three younger brothers exuding second-hand Dorito, I’ve aspirated a lethal amount of concentrated, processed cheddar.
It’s an unfortunate scientific fact: hot Dorito breath rises. In the midst of such poor air quality, my body will kick into survival mode, forcing me to take short, shallow breaths as a desperate defence mechanism. I don’t know which would be worse: suffocating in a dense cloud of Dorito powder, or being resuscitated by David’s Dorito-powdered breath.
Worst of all, my parents don’t understand the backwash situation that ravages the Land of No Arm Rests. They don’t allow private water bottle ownership. Water bottles are community owned. Even if I get first-lips on a bottle of water, within minutes, the entire supply will be tainted. After enduring the triple-gauntlet of my younger brothers- also known as the Triforce of Cheesy Sips- the contents of the water bottles are more solid than liquid.
There was only one thing to do: overthrow the Republic of the Back Seat of the Van and form a complete dictatorship.
