Tagged: school
What I learned at my graduation
- by admin
Which actually happened last Friday as I'm sure most of you know but I didn't want to write about it until I'd had some time to sit back and reflect on what happened and what it actually means to me, if anything at all.Here goes:
It's not about you, the graduand, at all.
Which seems like an obvious statement but when you spend a bunch of time preparing for what is supposed to be one of the most important moments of your adult life, your transition from being a lowly student to being a lowly intern or administrative assistant or whatever, you kind of expect it to focus a little more on you which it really doesn't. Or mine didn't, at least.
The UW sent out this "what to expect when you graduate" form a few weeks before which, in addition to providing me with my place in line and gown rental info also said that Convocation lasts around 2 1/2 hours which I assumed meant that there would be a speech or two and then a bunch of us graduating because that's why we were there.
This was an incorrect assumption on my part.
Instead I sat with my graduating class in an auditorium while a bunch of people awarded degrees and titles to each other and gave flowery speeches about how great they, the person giving them the award, and the university in general was.
It also happened to be the 100th Convocation which meant that they felt the need to give awards to dead people as well as people who could be there to accept them.
The whole ceremony was so long that it had an intermission for people to get up and stretch their legs and during which my poor Nan and Granddad had to leave because they actually had other stuff to go and do and hadn't expected to be there that long. Luckily for the time that they were there I was seated close enough to them that we could make faces and eyerolls at one another to indicate how bored we were, so that was nice.
All in all the whole ceremony was nearly three hours, two and a half of which the University of Winnipeg staff and alumni spent patting itself on the back instead of recognizing the students they were supposedly there to honour. The actual process of everyone going up, walking across the stage to shake the necessary hands and get their diplomas, and sitting back down took about twenty minutes.
I was too hot, stiff, bored, tired and absolutely starving by the end of it.
But that weird feeling of pride, that swelling in my chest when I moved that silly tassel from the right side to the left of my mortarboard was something I'm so, so glad that I experienced.
Even if it still doesn't feel quite real just yet.
Frank Turner stole my heart and I think that's okay
- by admin
I've been needing new music in my life lately.
Scratch that.
I've been needing new music in my life lately new everything in my life lately.
Maybe it's the never-ending winter or my looming exams or my mounting student loan bill but it's been a bit tough to look on the bright side lately. I'm a cynic by nature and I've been working on it but things feel stale, stagnant... I'm waiting for the change I know is coming and it can't get here fast enough.
Good to remember this today:
Just had a cup of Earl Grey but shouldn't have. I need to go to bed soon, I've got my two exams tomorrow basically back-to-back and my hand is going to be a shrivelled claw by the end of my 6+ hour writing marathon. Essay-style exams are the best because I'm good at them, but the worst because they're so physically draining. Word up to my rhetoric peeps!
Beers afterward with Colin and Adrian at the Toad in the Hole afterward though. It's going to be well-deserved and it's going to be good. Tweet @ me if you'd like to come by and say hello!
Sitting on a campus bench: a poem
- by admin
uncomfortable benches
in the lobby of Centennial Hall
people crammed together
on their smart phones
individual worlds.
heavy escalator traffic
going up
going down
am I late for class?
most girls wear their hair up
lululemon head bands
lululemon everything
nice bums.
oh hello
three piece suit guy
where did you come from
where are you going?
I'd follow you but
my legs hurt from my run
damn.
had a dream about classes ending last night
- by admin
and I always have weird dreams about school or vacations or my job or whatever I have looming right away in life.
in this dream I walked into my visual rhetoric class and my prof
-who of course isn't the actual prof that teaches the class because then it wouldn't be a dream-
was all
"okay we're going to have a term exam as well as the final exam so open yr books and two of the questions listed"
which honestly freaked me out (in my dream) because we hadn't been told about any term exam so I was freaking out a bit and my friend @JohnNorman was there and his wife also who is super smart and they both told me it wouldn't be an issue because I was smart, too.
except I didn't remember reading the books mentioned in the term exam questions
one of the questions asked about how the changing hairstyles of one of the secondary characters represented their internal conflicts (struggles?) and I was all
I have no idea how changing personal styles represent developing and resolving internal conflicts
wtf am I doing in university
and I was freaking out because johnny khemlab had already written two pages and I hadn't written anything yet and for some reason I was carrying around all these papers in my bag. like weird looseleaf pages from old homework and hand-outs and crap that I didn't need but had for some reason.
so I'm going through this huge pile of paper because I'm trying to find my lecture notes so I can answer these questions and not get an F on my term exam
stressing hard because it's almost the end of the term how could I be so disorganized and not be able to remember what the changing hairstyles mean at a critical moment?!
then the cats decided to walk on my face and yell at me which woke me up
so that solved that problem.
I also had another dream about a strange man who followed me around a scrapyard as I made art from sand but that's another story.
Aloe Blacc is making my day
- by admin
was under-dressed today by accident.
wore a dress & suit-jacket to school thinking I looked posh but what I actually looked like was cold.
it was raining and I didn't have an umbrella but I didn't care because I was just going to class to sit and learn, anyway.
I was the only person smiling at the crosswalk
everyone else was frowning under their umbrellas or hoods and wearing jeans and sneakers and I was getting drenched in my dress and grinning like a maniac
because why the eff not?
life is good, damn the rain.
a boy looked at me like I was crazy but I just grinned at him and he smiled, too
and asked if I wanted to share his umbrella
I said no, thanks, but you're a peach for offering
and splashed in a puddle on my way across the street.
first day back at school and I almost didn't blog omg
- by admin
to be honest I was a bit stressed that all my books wouldn't come in on time
especially the odyssey which omg I have to read six sections of by next monday and a bunch of chapters from the book about
orality and literacy
both of which I am quite good at
omg
jk
(not kidding)
neways
I know everyone loves what they're taking in school or at least likes it to some extent
because why else would they take it
but I seriously love being a rhetoric student because language and communication is so, so
important
and fascinating and weird and I come out of my classes all jazzed up about it
which I guess makes me into one of those over-zealous students I used to make fun of
(and still kinda do)
keeners
omg
I'm a keener
I've gotta start making better binder covers
I live here now
- by admin
okay not really but it feels like I do. classes end last week(ish) and I'm stressin' hard about getting everything handed in on time which is stupid because most of it is done/on the way to being finished and how hard is it to write a couple of papers, really? not hard at all. but papers combined with two exams on the same day have me crawling up the walls and probably driving poor Tyrone insane with my manic stressing-out, I can't wait for this term to be done so I can spend a month working and playing video games and drinking beer in the n00d in the middle of the day.
manic panic thoughts.
time to dance it out.
got a phone call just now
- by admin
while I was sitting here freezing in our apartment with no heat (it's not that cold out but apartments are weird like that and I have circulation) and this weird phone number came up as calling me so I picked it up and it was this lady asking me if I was still interested in breast reduction surgery which obviously I'm not. then I remembered that she was calling from an office I had visited two months before I even got in to see my surgeon and they (the office that just called) had told me that my surgery wouldn't be able to be booked until probably July or so and as a result I'd kept looking because at that time it was March or something.
anyway I told her I'd already gotten it done and she got really snooty like 'why didn't you call and tell us?' and I didn't know what to say because it's not like I was on some schedule or something and frankly I forgot because that was seven months ago and my surgery was in early May and wow it seems like a whole lifetime ago looking back. also wtf was this surgeon doing all this time where it took them three months to after they'd told me I'd be in surgery to call and see if I wanted to book next month? seriously.
I can't even imagine being that size anymore. I just re-watched that vlog I did the day before my surgery and woah they were like the size of my head.
I love/hate when people bring up reductions like they're implants because I can argue about them because getting your boobs removed/reshaped is different than getting more put in and doesn't mean I buy into any of the crap about how heterosexual women's self-images are shaped by the hyper-sexualized media dominated by male perspectives it means I had huge boobs and my back hurt a lot and now I can wear a button-up shirt for once in my life.
in case you haven't noticed I am kind of crabby today. I blame the cold apartment.
hey Alyson how was your first day back?
- by admin
good but I'm not done yetI knew school was starting today because last night I had crazy-manic dreams about sleeping in late and missing either my bank appt (student stuff) lunch with Dad or my first class. have you ever had a dream where over and over you're trying to wake up, and in the dream you wake up and somehow realize that you're not actually awake and doing stuff but still asleep, and then you wake up and do it again but none of it is real? me too.
in fact, it happens a lot when I'm either sick or stressed out. it's like my mind is trying to snap me out of dreamland to focus on something that's stressing me out but my subconscious just refuses to let go and I'm stuck in this in-between limbo of sleep/awake/sleep paralysis.
remember when that scary sleep paralysis stuff happened to me?
thank god that doesn't happen anymore.
luckily I was on time today and apparently because the building we were in today isn't available for the rest of the term which means we'll be having out classes in the Ukrainian Labour Temple which looks like this:
and we get to sit on chairs in a circle and have discussions like we're in AA
but it's time for me to jet off to HISTORY OF SCIENCE so I'll leave you with these words from Samuel L:
Now that we know who you are, I know who I am. I'm not a mistake! It all makes sense! In a comic, you know how you can tell who the arch-villain's going to be? He's the exact opposite of the hero. And most times they're friends, like you and me! I should've known way back when... You know why, David? Because of the kids. They called me Mr Glass.
