It Just So Happens To Be Cold Again

I am not going to spend a bunch of time explain why it took me until the middle of October to write my "School has started again" post. In a nutshell this has been the kind of autumn you spend all summer preparing for and then all of the sudden you are failing midterms and wondering where it all got off track.

Some Feist lyrics for your consideration:

We're so helpless
We're slaves to our impulses
We're afraid of our emotions
And no one knows where the shore is
We're divided by the ocean
And the only thing I know is
The answer isn't for us


The answers I don't know could build us all a life boat to get out of this mess. But I do know that it is (at last, at least) getting cold again. There is really no fun in school when you don't have the cliché biting wind and stunning trees to fall back on. Well, school really is no fun on a general whole but in following with all the previous platitudes you get out what you put in. I digress.

My favorite fall fashions this year ?

Opaque Tights : Warm cosy and solely responsible for adding a level of modesty to the fall wardrobes of all the Prostifrosh running around campus (I am looking at you Wolfe House)

Organic Cotton Scarfs : Whoever said Fair trade wasn't sexy was sadly mistaken. See also Bamboo Clothing. (Don't drink the coffee though, it is still gross) And for the boys... the Man-Scarf especially really crafty looking heavy knit ones will be key for winter, but until then stick to the Dress-Shoes-And-Jeans thing.

Home Streching and Kvetching

The end is near.

I am, as of last night, three quarters of the way done my first year of University. And what a year has it been... there is far too much that has happened in the short (and long) months since we embarked on this journey dear friends to even begin to come to terms with it.

The end of the year isnt at all like what I expected it to be. I was thinking it would be similar to the chaotic and fast paced end of semester one. Instead it is like a beheaded cockroach that just refuses to die. It has worn on and on for nearly a month of final tasks, tests and assignments. I find myself in an unhealthy and tired relationship with Varsity Arena.

I am beginning to pack up my rez room and sort out my summer plans, but honestly the end of the year is likely to never end.

sam

Signs of Apocalypse

I can't stop thinking about Freud. I dream in Dali paintings. I see the world in the angles of a pool table. I wear sweatpants out of the house.


University is that kind of parasitic entity that works its way into your system and then feeds of your nutrients. It starves out your internal organs, and give you a caffeine craving like you would not believe. All thoughts have to be filtered, revised- hell cited-before leaving your brain to become something useful. The process is all analytic.

Maybe it is just a figment of my post-pubescent mind, but it seems like everything I am being taught is self-reflected. They are trying to make you ask yourself the kinda of questions that you can only get on the therapist's couch.... or from Gauguin paintings.

It is possible that it s just my degree that implants these auto response critical thinking processes. On the one hand I have my Art Historical bias- this consisting of prodding, probing and digging your way to some 'internal truth'. It is all about asking what the back story is, or the historical context, where is the deviation from the norm, where is the continuing of precedent, did the painter have a soft spot for their mother?

Filling that out a little more is my Religions side of things. It adds about a million more questions to the list of Things To Ask Oneself In Any Given Moment Of Time; what is the goal of this, what is the reality, who started it, who continued it, who will come after, what is the common ground, where does it happen, what's the hagiography.

And far worse than either of those is the proverbial PSYCH 100. Every class is one of three things;
a) A Self Awareness Exercise
b) A Historical Review
or worst of the worst
c) A Lesson in How To Psychoanalyze (read:manipulate) Friends and Family

I am beginning to feel that my brain has been prepped to carry out the global domination strategy of the U of T roster of professors. I can no longer look at someone walking down the street wearing a red scarf without first identifying their mental disorder, recognizing their specific sect and then hypothesizing on the importance of line and volume of the fabric with respect to its anthropomorphic representations of the Christ Pantokrator .


Sam

Coughing, Coffee, Cacaphony

The year is almost over. It is so weird to think that spring is here and in a month's time I will be done with year one of four. I don't understand where all the time went, seems like just yesterday I was heading back over the prairies on a plane.

With the end of the year and the change of seasons comes the usual cough and workload. I am thrilled to say that I am done all of my assignments and now I sit here trying to motivate myself to start preparing for exams, but I think I will wait a few more days before that happens.

I am trying to decide what to do for the summer, and not really getting very far. I think I am too excited that winter is finally gone ( I say this fully aware that it is likely to snow this week) to really get ahead of myself. I am told that this campus really comes to life in the spring and I am looking forward to not having to wear pants. By this I of course means shorts and skirts and not full blown nudity.

Today is a cool, grey, not-so-pretty day, and the week is likely to be a cold one. Still there is so much green grass and a family of Starlings in the Quad, so I guess it ain't all bad .


Sam

Head to blogger actual for a new spring playlist

Walks and Watercolours

A new (old) anxiety has been haunting me lately about the true value of education. In high school I used to have days where I would sit in class and seriously question the benefits of me being there and though I am sure the same sentiment plagues everyone every now and then, I find this feeling in me only grows.

That is not to say that I don't value my current learning whatsoever; I am so deeply grateful for the sheer fact that I am able to have such an education. I love what I am learning, I enjoy my classes, admire my professors and truly believe that four years of this will provide me with an incredible platform of skills and knowledge. But there is something holding me back from working my hardest, and making me hesitate to jump at any opportunity to say "I go to U of T".

Today I had a conversation with my boyfriend about the way people perceive various levels of education. It occurred to me that though I used to doubt the true measure of my growth through academic pursuits I would judge more educated people as somehow superior. This is something I can no longer to believe.

Coming to what is commonly regarded as one of the best schools in the nation, I expected to be on the bottom of the intellectual scale. I anticipated being surrounded by innovation, genius, and brilliance at every turn and was honestly disappointed at ranking at much the same level as I had in high school. What has been consistently proven to me this year is that the vast majority of people who attend this (and other institutions) will never strive to nor actually achieve equal feats as the great men and women that we study. I may hate Freud, I may be tired of learning about Darwin, I may even disagree with most art historical theory but I recognize the genius of such progressions and doubt my own ability to live up to them.

We all want to be doctors, lawyers, architects, accountants. This is what we spend our time doing but this isn't what we are. It is tragic to me that so many of us don't act that way. What our jobs will be in the future, what schools we attend now- is this what defines our generation?

Fight Club puts it best

"I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."


I have nothing to fight for, nothing to rebel against expect myself. I have come to believe that this reality is a major source of the new rash of psychological disorders that are rampant within our society (myself included). I could protest the war, pollution, anorexic models, fundamentalism, but to be honest it would be a projection of internal anger and not true moral objection. Can I protest a war I am not being asked to fight? Can I mandate that another human being care about the earth? Can I spit on a girl who doesn't eat? Can I say that one method of believing is inherently wrong?

And so I come back to education. I am not proud to say that I am a student at The University of Toronto, with a good average and great potential. I have chosen this path for myself and so I take no pleasure in other people's praise of it. So often I have listened to sermons about the age of Human Doings instead of Human Beings and missed the point. We are doing good things by being educated, productive, working members of our society.

Are we being anything good?

It is not only my natural tendency toward pessimism that tells me that we aren't.

Sam

Poor Weather Conditions

Ah the return to the normal Universtiy life.

Last week I had my first experience with University reading week, to be honest I was expecting something a bit like SPRING BREAK MIAMI in ugg boots but I was surprised. In fact, most of the people I know spent reading week at home with their families, writing essays (in which their families had very little involvement). And for those of us that went away, it seemed to be
for more... educational purposes.

My decision to jump a train to Montreal with Tal was a pretty quick one. I was starting to feel overwhelmed by Toronto, oppressed by the campus buildings and generally unhappy with my surroundings. I seemed to have made a very good choice.

Heading to Montreal was in a sense the ideal Reading Week experience. I saw old friends (who I consider family), studied my Religions material via theological discussion (and some practical application), I even looked into the psychology of acting training. The food was delicious, the sights were beautiful.

But mostly their was skating.

Since leaving Edmonton (where I had several skating rinks in my school yard each winter) I have found that I have a strange desire to skate more than I ever did in my childhood. Tal and I rented skates at Montreal's old port (a large man made ice surface with fun music attached to a 'natural' trail for the more adventurous). Though he used to be rather unskilled at skating, he seems to have magically surpassed me in ability, perhaps through some deal with the devil.

Skating in Montreal felt alot like working off every anxiety that I had been building up for week. I can't tell you how fun it was (the whole trip was) and how happy I was to be with the people I was with.

In fact it was a week full of the most impressive kind of people. Ones who think, learn and debate. I find I miss being surrounded by such diversity of intellect; so many different kinds of people who befriend eachother based on goodness of character and not favorite TV shows.

And now I am back into the swing of things. Icky frozen rain and snow are making today a mess and a big part of me hopes that classes will be canceled and I can just stay home and watch Battlestar Galactica. I am not sure I am happy to be back to a (rather unproductive) routine but I did miss the city and it is good to be home .

Sam

Poor Weather Conditions

Ah the return to the normal Universtiy life.

Last week I had my first experience with University reading week, to be honest I was expecting something a bit like SPRING BREAK MIAMI in ugg boots but I was surprised. In fact, most of the people I know spent reading week at home with their families, writing essays (in which their families had very little involvement). And for those of us that went away, it seemed to be
for more... educational purposes.

My decision to jump a train to Montreal with Tal was a pretty quick one. I was starting to feel overwhelmed by Toronto, oppressed by the campus buildings and generally unhappy with my surroundings. I seemed to have made a very good choice.

Heading to Montreal was in a sense the ideal Reading Week experience. I saw old friends (who I consider family), studied my Religions material via theological discussion (and some practical application), I even looked into the psychology of acting training. The food was delicious, the sights were beautiful.

But mostly their was skating.

Since leaving Edmonton (where I had several skating rinks in my school yard each winter) I have found that I have a strange desire to skate more than I ever did in my childhood. Tal and I rented skates at Montreal's old port (a large man made ice surface with fun music attached to a 'natural' trail for the more adventurous). Though he used to be rather unskilled at skating, he seems to have magically surpassed me in ability, perhaps through some deal with the devil.

Skating in Montreal felt alot like working off every anxiety that I had been building up for week. I can't tell you how fun it was (the whole trip was) and how happy I was to be with the people I was with.

In fact it was a week full of the most impressive kind of people. Ones who think, learn and debate. I find I miss being surrounded by such diversity of intellect; so many different kinds of people who befriend eachother based on goodness of character and not favorite TV shows.

And now I am back into the swing of things. Icky frozen rain and snow are making today a mess and a big part of me hopes that classes will be canceled and I can just stay home and watch Battlestar Galactica. I am not sure I am happy to be back to a (rather unproductive) routine but I did miss the city and it is good to be home .

Sam

Anger Issues (anger ensues ?)

There is a post that I have been writing nearly three weeks now. This is not it.

I am frustrated. Mostly this is because I have three midterms this week and I think I may divide one good mark between all of them. It is also because I have been feeling abnormally anxious and bizarre ghosts from the past are nagging me.

But it is also because the person upstairs is loud. Only recently, my upstairs neighbour started his tendency to make loud thumping noises (i think these are more likely due to an abnormally jumpy exercise routine and not a erm... nighttime friend). This obtrusive pounding has got me all off my routine. I can't sleep (that may also be because the guy to the right of me has the LOUDEST alarm ever and often leaves it beeping for hours at a time) even if I would have been able to anyway. I also can't focus on studying, nor on important things like knitting and blogging.

On the plus side I have officially taught my first knitting convert (yay for megan!) and it seems I am not such a crap teacher after all.

The long and short of it is: check out my new anger/nostalgia playlist (go to blogger actual if you are facebook reading) it keeps me sane. Sane and bitter.


Sam