Bloody hell, I just miss home.

I’ve been in Ireland for a month for university.

It’s been grand. It’s been so grand.

There have been great ups and downs, but for the love of god, it’s thanksgiving at home and I’m fecking sick of explaining to Americans that yes, we have ours in October.

Join me while I wallow in self-pity and wade through corny Canadiana while I further ignore my uni work.

 

The original Wayne’s World:

 

And the voices that were a constant in my childhood home many winter evenings:

I just want some goddamn poutine and no one in this country knows what cheese curds are.

Trials of Pub Crawl

I never really had a real “crazy first year college experience” because…well..let’s not get into that.

Or we can. We totally can. I previously went to a place for school that was like Community but without the laughter, friends, events, sports teams, and will to live.

ANYWAY

So now, at the tender age of almost-21 (oh dear god, really?), I’m trying to do just that. Have a normal university experience.

My awesome school now puts on a bunch of awesome events. This past Thursday was pubcrawl.

I went out, drank on the subway with my friend like two classy 20 year olds, almost got picked up by an accountant, and most likely danced worse than Elaine Benes.

He bought me one of these, because I am a classy but slightly outdated lady.

Things are getting better.

Yeah, no one likes “hey my life is fucking awesome now, cool” posts. I’ll get back to some depressing ones later, don’t you worry.

I’m the wittiest when my life is shitty.

A Lucky Break: University Admissions Edition

As some of you may know, I am a transfer student. I do not recommend this to anyone, because transferring universities in Ontario sucks. Everything is geared towards high school students, including scholarships, time lines, acceptance averages, etc. Luckily, I was accepted by the school I set my hopes on, which was a life saver because I really did not want to have to go and spend a few thousand dollars to re-take and upgrade my university marks.

My problem was that I did one year in a university nursing program. Didn’t like it, wasn’t for me. I wish I did, considering the starting salaries of RNs in this province, but what can you do? I took a year off to figure out what to do and to stop wasting money at the rate of 7 grand a year.

I knew that I was going to have to sacrifice a fair chunk of cash to change schools and programs, since I figured my specific nursing courses wouldn’t transfer. Why would they? Does learning how to give someone a bed bath with a soapy wash cloth translate into skills I’d need in political science? (Insert joke here.)

Today I logged into the little “applicants file” thing my new university has set up, where we can monitor our applications and make advising appointments and all those helpful things. Underneath the word “admitted” (which I had originally bawled over upon finding. Go me.) there was a new “transfer credit” link. I clicked it. This is what I found:

Oh mon dieu (this is a bilingual university I will be attending, after all), is that 39 credits? 39? That’s more than a year (I think)! Granted, in nursing we took 7 classes per semester instead of the standard 5, so I see how this is possible. Either way, this is beautiful! My first year has not completely gone to waste! Take that, other university liaisons who said I’d have to start from scratch! My parents will not behead me after all! Exclamation points everywhere!

I have no idea what this will mean in regards to the amount of freedom I will have in choosing my classes, but we’ll deal with that later.

Sometimes this is all it takes to make my day.

[Note of weirdness: Last year a different university offered me a full year transfer and a $4000 bursary. I applied this year again to the same program, with the same marks, and only received an offer of half a year transfer and no bursary! What in the world?]

Opinion: The University Logo

If you are a resident of Ontario (or Canada even), with an internet connection, this morning you most likely heard about The University of Western Ontario’s rebranding initiative. UWO, colloquially referred to as “Western” by hopeful high school students and undergrads alike, is a pretty well-respected institution with a long history. They recently made the news due to the possible HIV vaccine they’ve been working on being approved for more testing. 

What most people (undergrads I still have on Facebook from high school) were upset with  was the name change. Officially, the university with remain The University of Western Ontario, but otherwise it will be called Western U. Kind of odd, considering it’s located in Ontario (for all of you geography loathers, this is the province with Niagara Falls. Think about it) and not Alberta or BC. In my opinion, the UWO name has a certain amount of prestige to it. It’s a specific name, and Western U is very generic. It’s like that “Central High” that all the kids attended on various short-lived ’90s sitcoms, it’s just not remarkable.

There’s a pretty nifty video that goes along with the re-brand. It details the lengths they went to and the research that was done to make this decision. See it here. 

I like the new logo, though. By all means.

A lot of universities who re-brand lose the original classic elements to their logo, if they ever had any at all. I want to go to a school that has a logo that won’t get old in a few years, that doesn’t look like it’s a school akin to Everest College or something (no offense to Everest.) The logo should punctuate the years of history an institution has, it shouldn’t be some sort of tacky modern thing that will have to be changed in 5 years when Helvetica finally falls to the depths of Comic Sans.

My previous institution, Ryerson University, had a logo that I wouldn’t consider wearing on a sweater, let alone pasting it to the bumper of my car.

Yuck. I hate this “logo” to no end. Look at Western’s. Now back to this. This logo is wimpy, it’s ugly, and it’s weak. It doesn’t say “we are an acclaimed educational institution that our students have great pride in and are proud to attend.*” It says “We’re really bad at emphasizing fonts and we’re playing off laziness for minimalism. You should probably apply at U of T.”

*there isn’t really much school pride at Ryerson, but this crappy logo isn’t helping

Much better.

I am quite thankful that I’m now enrolled in a university that understands that completely modern isn’t always better. (Although we won’t mention the larger campus of this university and their logo. No, we won’t.)

Thank the lord.

I am just a traditionalist, I suppose, who grew up watching all my favourite characters on American sitcoms go off to college* and come home with bumper stickers and hats and pennants emblazoned with their school’s logo. It was always a crest, or some collegiate-like font with huge, menacing letters. Ahh, what dreams are made of.

*A quick American to Canadian translation:
American “college” = Canadian “university”
American “community college” = Canadian “college”
You can’t get a degree from a college, only diplomas or certificates that are usually 2-3 years. (Although some colleges have bridging programs with universities, but that’s a whole ‘nother ball game.)
I don’t know why you guys are so weird, call it what it is!

It may seem like a superficial thing to complain about, but judging by reactions on Twitter today, logos and branding are something students actually care about.
If you’re paying 7 grand a year (15-20 if you’re living away from home), it’s not unreasonable to want a logo you can be proud of.

Oh, and I hope my bias against my former school doesn’t show too much. Yeah, right.

A Weekend in Quebec

This gallery contains 8 photos.

This past weekend, my parents and I went on a mini-road trip to visit a university in Quebec, 8 hours away. We stopped over and spent Saturday in Montreal before continuing onto Sherbrooke, 2 hours east, for Sunday. Although there … Continue reading →