Day 46- A Year Later

Receiving an inordinately expensive piece of paper

A year ago today, I convocated at Western with a Bachelor’s degree in English literature. The next day, I submitted my SSHRC application—a 25-page document for a scholarship worth up to $105,000.

Today, I should be crossing the stage with the other members of my cohort to receive my Master of Arts Degree from Western. Instead, I’m sitting in a flat in Scotland, working towards my PhD at the University of St. Andrews, courtesy of a SSHRC scholarship and generous funding from the university.

It’s been a wild ride. I’ve read thousands of pages, written 45,000 words, cried at rejections and jumped with joy at the acceptances that meant everything. The Masters year wasn’t always fun. Nothing about it was easy. But it was so, so worth it.

To be corny and cliché, it was the people that made my Master’s experience enjoyable. I owe so much to everyone I interacted with that year: the family I lived with who were there for me through the string of rejections, the professors who helped me with proposals or wrote references or just listened when I needed to rant about the stresses of grad school, and, most of all, the wonderful MA and PhD students who made classes so enjoyable.

I might not miss the long nights struggling to finish marking, or the mornings waking up at five to read 90 pages of Freud before class, or the 12 hour days writing three papers in a week, but I definitely miss Wednesday evenings at the grad club and Friday mornings grumbling about the uselessness of bibliography class and afternoons in the “bunker” chatting about everything from the definition of “English” literature to the meaning of marriage to Victorian mummy unwrappings.

Final day with the MA cohort

I wish I could be there to convocate with everyone this morning. I’m so proud of everyone who made it through the year, as well as those who had the courage to drop out when they realized that the program wasn’t for them. I’m so thankful for the intellectual discussions and the Doctor Who evenings, for people who love both Shakespeare and David Tennant.

To everyone convocating today, I wish you all the best. Whether you’re heading on to a PhD or running away from academia as fast as you can, know that I’m thinking about you and praying for you.

Enjoy your thirty seconds on the stage this morning—I might be in Scotland, but I’ll definitely be there in spirit… and possibly lurking the video livestream… J

-21 Days: Three Weeks and Counting

In three weeks, I'll be back in St. Andrews. 

I leave Halifax on the 7th and arrive in Glasgow early on the 8th, meaning that by mid afternoon I'll be installed once again in St. Andrews. I'm hoping the jet-lag won't be too severe, as I'm arriving in the middle of Freshers' week and I'll already have missed a number of events, so I'd rather not miss more. It'll be so exciting to do Freshers' week again, this time going to events to see old friends, rather than standing awkwardly at a dozen different 'give it a go' sessions. 

This year will be different. I don't even know how different yet, but I do know that I can't count on it to be all that much like my exchange year. 

For starters, I'm a legit student this time. As in, an honest-to-goodness staying-for-three-years and earning-a-degree student. This isn't a year out, where courses transfer as pass/fail. This time, academics need to be top priority.

On top of that, I'm a legit PhD student. I won't be an undergrad moaning about 9:00am lectures, or madly scrambling to finish a reading, or pretending I'm intelligent because I took a quick look at secondary sources. I'll be heading in to my office every morning setting my own schedule, studiously reading everything I can find in my area, and hopefully contributing articles of my own. My MA gave me a taste of real scholarship, but next year will crank that up a notch.

Most importantly, I'm a legit PhD student at St. Andrews. As in, the third oldest university in the English-speaking world. One of the top universities in the world. 600 years old. The alma matter of royalty. An institute of learning that was already well established by the time Shakespeare wrote the plays I study. Last year, I had the privilege of temporarily belonging to that world-- the next three years will tie me forever to the name of St. Andrews. 

To be honest... I'm terrified. Excited, yes. Exhilarated, that too. But, more than anything, I can't believe my dream is coming true, and I'm both excited and scared for what that means. Getting my PhD from St. Andrews will be both the hardest and the best thing I've ever done. And it all starts in three weeks.

Success and Rejection

Forest near my home

I'm so bewildered right now. My life could not possibly have taken a more dramatic turn in the past few days. 

Just over a week ago, I took the bus to university nearly crying. I'd been rejected from two universities and the other two weren't providing me with enough funding to afford to attend. My papers weren't going well. I was looking for jobs, but even with a Masters it seemed like I wasn't qualified for anything.

And then Friday Afternoon happened. 

I can't release details yet, not until everything is finalized, but I now have the opportunity to go do my PhD in the UK next year, which is what I've hoped and prayed and worked for all this past year. 

One big yes began an avalanche of yeses, all happening so fast I could barely keep track. I went from a burnt-out MA student uncertain if I'd ever enter a classroom again to a desirable PhD candidate with grad chairs at prestigious universities casually saying they'd love to have me and graduate financial managers suggesting we meet up for drinks and world experts in my field chatting in my office and offering to help in any way they could. 

It's wonderful. It's crazy. It's utterly beyond what I could have expected.

Moonlight walk the evening I heard the news

It’s also, quite frankly, a tad uncomfortable. I’m exactly the same person I was a week ago, but just with one highly important piece of paper in my hand. And now everyone wants to help me out. I’m the go-to success story that makes my department look good. I’m the rags to riches fairy tale.

I always assumed that people doing PhDs at prestigious universities with sizable scholarships had it all together. They were the best of the best. They were smart. And hardworking. And somehow magical—everything worked out for them. They could sit in their comfy office chairs with all their applications and grant proposals comfortably behind them and smile because they had succeeded at life.

But that’s not how it is. Maybe for some people, but not for me. I was rejected. I was burnt-out. I was so lost and confused. If there’s one thing I know about life, it’s that I most definitely don’t have it all together.

There’s a lot of hard work coming. I may have gotten the PhD position of my dreams, but actually getting the degree won’t be easy. And then there’re postdocs. And adjunct positions. And maybe, sometime in the future, a professor’s chair.

Western

I certainly haven’t written my last application or received my last rejection. Life is not all sunshine and rainbows from here on. I may have gotten accepted where it counted most, and I am beyond thrilled. But I am still the same person who was rejected.

I want to be the person who learns from those rejections rather than the one who pretends it’ll never happen again. I want to remember how hard the road has been so far so I can be more empathetic towards the ones travelling behind me and more respectful of the ones ahead. I want to sincerely thank everyone who has supported me so far and in turn support everyone I can.

I want to grow, yet not become a different person from last week, before everything went right. My worth as a human being does not depend on what one scholarship committee thinks of two pages I’ve written. I want to work hard and trust God and move forward knowing that I am not defined, ultimately, by either my academic failures, or my successes. 

1 Admin vs. 70 Grad Students: Who Really Works at Western?

My convocation, featuring Amit Chakma (left) and the late Chancellor, Joseph Rotman (right)

On Monday morning, Western’s student newspaper informed me that Amit Chakma, Western University’s president, made nearly a million dollars last year. Apparently his salary is capped at $440,000, but he chose to work through a year of paid leave, earning bonuses which brought his salary up to $967,000.

I’m normally not the sort of person to complain about other people making a lot of money, and I feel very blessed to receive nearly $20,000 in research grants and TAships from Western. To me, getting paid $35 an hour to fangirl about The Hobbit makes grad school the ultimate job and I don’t care that my salary is technically under the poverty line, because it’s plenty in my current situation.

So why do I feel the need to write about Chakma’s salary? Not because I think that there’s something inherently wrong with a human being making a million dollars, but because I attend a publically-funded university that’s cutting arts programs and replacing faculty with sessional instructors in order to save money… and that same university just released a list of over 1200 people (admin, faculty, and staff) who earn more than $100,000 every year.

As a grad student, I know money talks. OGS (Ontario Graduate Scholarship- $15,0000 for one year) and SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council- $20,000/35,000 for 3-4 years) carry enormous weight. If I was to win a SSHRC (I won’t know ‘till May) I would be accepted by virtually any university in Canada (potentially even ones which had previously

rejected me) because funding is just that important.

SSHRC applications work in two stages: you apply to your university, and they forward the best applications to the Canada-wide competition. I discovered in January that I had been forwarded, but I’ve yet to hear of anyone else from my 60-person department who was. Through the grapevine, I know that there can only have been one or two other applications sent on. This means that, absolute best case scenario, the English department at Western could receive three new SSHRCs, totalling $105,000 next year. Worst case, we’ll receive nothing.  

Western currently offers 278 OGS scholarships every year (heavily government subsidized), which amounts to approximately $4,000,000 in funding. That sounds like a big number, until you realize it’s only four times what Chakma made last year. Chakma’s salary alone could fund almost 70 graduate students. In fact, since these scholarships are so highly government subsidized, UWO only spends $1,400,000 on OGS’s, or approximately Chakma’s salary plus the next top earner, Michael Strong (Dean of the school of Medicine and Dentistry, $462,125). Are these two men doing more for the university than nearly three hundred grad students?

Full disclosure: I was just rejected from UBC (University of British Columbia-- known for being one of the best and biggest English grad programs in Canada) because they only had enough money to offer four funded spots this year. Funding for graduate programs is obviously in crisis.

I don’t care that Amit Chakma makes at least fifty times what I do (100 times, if you count the fact that half my salary goes towards my tuition). He’s got a lot more experience than I do. I’m perfectly happy with my current salary.

But I do care that arts programs are in a funding crisis, unable to offer spots to graduate students, overworking underpaid TAs and sessional instructors, increasing class sizes, and ultimately hurting students at all levels. And while instructors and programs are being cut, lowering the quality of education students are paying for and our government is subsidizing, the top dog is making a million dollars.

Seventy graduate students leading tutorials. Thirty sessional instructors giving dynamic lectures. Ten full-time faculty conducting ground-breaking research.

Or one head-honcho speaking at convocation about how valuable our Western degree is.

This isn’t about Chakma. This isn’t about him making too much or me too little. This is about my university, which, when money was tight, chose to more than double the salary of an overpaid administrator rather than hiring the teachers and researchers who form the backbone of the university. And that is a decision which I cannot agree with.  

Day 365: I'm going... Home?

My flight leaves in two hours. I've all but left Scotland- Edinburgh airport doesn't really count as part of the country I've called home for the past year. I've said goodbye to England, to Scotland, to my friends, to St. Andrews... All that's left is to board the plane, sit back, and let it take me across the ocean. 

Am I excited to go back to Canada? Yes, of course. I do miss my country, my friends, my university, my family... I'm looking forward to seeing everything again and it'll be great to start my MA at Western. 

Still, I don't want to go. Over the past year Britain has truly captured my heart. St. Andrews has become my home, the town I know and love best in all the world. When I'm there I truly feel alive, like I belong. 

Going back to Canada doesn't feel like going home- it feels like travelling. Maybe it would be different if I was heading back to PEI, to be with my family, but flying straight back to Ontario, which I'm not particularly attached to, feels almost a little alienating. 

I'm not trying to downplay Ontario, or Western, or my friends there, or Canada as a whole. God has blessed me with twenty wonderful years in that country and I have so much to be thankful for. To all Canadians reading this, I'm not trying to imply that there's anything negative or lacking about our country. I'm proud to be Canadian.

It's just that travelling complicates the idea of home. After living in Britain, gaining the accent, and travelling Europe, I cannot be solely Canadian anymore. When I've lived in more than one place for so long, finding just one place to call home becomes pretty much impossible.

Maybe I'll go back and discover that Canada really is where I belong. Maybe I'll want to settle down there and content myself with occasional visits to Europe. 

But maybe I'll return to find that it's really not my country anymore. Maybe going 'home' will cement my sense that actually Britain is where I want to live long-term. Maybe Canada will be just as amazing as it always was, but I'll want something different. 

At this point I really don't know. I've got my one year MA ahead of me, but then my PhD could be anywhere. Canada, the US, Britain, Australia? Who knows? At this point I'm up for adventure, trusting that God will eventually show me a place I can call home. 

Day 278: Update from the Continent

(Urquhart Castle on the shores of Loch Ness)

Apparently I haven't blogged in a few weeks, not since exams. Whoops... So much has happened since then that I could have blogged a dozen times, but I've been so busy living through all this exciting stuff that I haven't had time to blog.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to write more detailed posts about some of the travelling I've been doing recently, but in case I don't, here's a brief look at everything that's happened in the past few weeks. 

1-  I finished exams! My own exams went decently, I had fun soaking my friends after their finals, and when I got my marks back just yesterday I found I passed all my modules with quite a decent average. Perhaps my marks were a tad lower than they would have been in Canada, but I'm still happy, considering how busy I was, and how I had to get used to a new academic system. 

(MUM IS HERE!!!)

2- Mum came! A few days after my last exam, mum flew out from Canada for a visit. She's here for a full four weeks, which means we're just a tad over half way right now. I loved showing her St. Andrews and introducing her to my friends, and she's a great travelling companion.

3- I moved out of St. Andrews. :( While I haven't said goodbye for the last time (I'm back for a bit in June, then for the last weekend in August before finally flying home September 1st) I have moved out of my flat and said goodbye to many of my friends. This, not surprisingly, was really hard, but having mum here definitely made things easier, since she helped me pack up my stuff, and travelling with her has helped take my mind of what I'm leaving behind.

4- I've visited four countries: Scotland (up north, so basically completely different from St. Andrews), England (Durham), the Netherlands (Friesland, Gouda) and now Germany (I'm writing this on the train just over the border from Holland, but we plan to visit Cologne, Manheim, and Heidelberg). It's cool to add a new country to my list (Germany makes 15), and I've really enjoyed seeing new places in countries I've already visited. 

(The house in the Netherlands where my great-grandparents lived)

That's life now. Another week of travelling, then a week in St. Andrews performing in The Mikado (a Gilbert and Sullivan, what else?) and then I'm off to Romania for a month! I have the feeling this summer is really going to fly by, since I'm constantly busy. The month in Romania will probably be the quietest time I get, since August will be spent dashing across the UK. 

As I mentioned in number 3, I do have a flight home now on September 1st. I'm flying Edinburgh to Toronto, which means that I'll leave from St. Andrews, which I think is fitting. Unfortunately, flying straight to Toronto means I won't have any time home in PEI this summer, so I won't get to see my family, friends, or the beautiful Island. On the other hand, I do get to spend the maximum time here in Europe, and I'll still be here when my BFF, Sharon, comes out for her exchange next year. Then, when I finally do leave, orientation for my MA program starts the very next day. It'll be busy, but I won't have time to miss Scotland if I throw myself right in to life back in Canada. 

Day 240: Endings

To employ an overly bookish metaphor: a chapter of my life is coming to a close. However, instead of quickly moving on to a new chapter, I feel like the page is being curled over slowly, leaving me waiting half way between chapters.

I hadn’t realized how many half-endings there would be here. A year ago I completed my last classes and exams at King’s, which was certainly bitter sweet. This year, it’s my entire undergraduate career that’s over. Two weeks ago I dropped off my last essay. A week was my last official performance in St. Andrew’s. Last week was the last CU meeting. Yesterday was my last class. In three weeks it’s my last exam. In a month I leave St. Andrew’s.

The problem with all these endings is that they’re constantly negated by other events. After handing in my last essays, I still had another presentation. After the last CU meeting, we still had a ball and a BBQ. After my official last show, I’m still doing two more Gilbert and Sullivan performances. After my last exams, I’ll already be thinking about my MA. After leaving St. Andrew’s, I’ll be returning at least two or three times during the summer.

It’s hard to say goodbye when there are so many endings. There’s no definitive moment when I can hug everyone and cry and really let go of this town and my life as an undergraduate. Everything sort of flows together in an unending stream of last times. I’m never really sure when something really is the last time and when it’s just a sort of rehearsal for the real goodbye.

And that’s okay. If there was some sort of big moment when everything was done and I had to give up this year and switch into my life next year, that would only make things so much harder. It’s easier this way, to give things up slowly and to ease into all the exciting things happening next year.

Right now it’s looking like I might not fly back to Canada until September 1^st, the day before my MA orientation. Maybe it’s a stupid idea to start my time back ‘home’ with a bad case of jetlag (although apparently it’s not as bad going east to west as west to east) but I want to stay here as long as possible. Plus, there’s a sort of poetic justice in returning to Canada on September 1^st, since last fall I left on September 2^nd. It would be a lovely way to round out a year of travel.

I don’t want to leave this town, this country, this life. But, at the same time, I’m so very excited for next year. I’m excited to start my MA and work on a thesis. I’m excited to live with a family again. I’m excited to act in Marlow’s Doctor Faustus. I’m excited to see my country again, and to finally see my family. As much as I’m sad to leave this chapter of my life behind, I’m definitely looking forward to the next one. 

Day 202: Summer Plans

(I visited Stonehenge the other day-- so cool! Blog with more pics coming soon)

I was planning a big post on day 200, but since I was rather busy that day and I had just made a big deal of the halfway mark on day 187, there was really no need to go on again about how it feels like I've been here forever and how I've changed so much and yada yada yada... 

Instead, as I sit in the Southampton airport waiting for my flight to Belfast, I'll briefly describe my plans for the summer.

My exams end the second last week of May, leaving me a few days to pack up and start saying goodbye to friends before my mum comes out, hopefully in the last week of May. We'll then travel around Scotland, Germany, and the Netherlands together (my mum's side of the family is Dutch, and mum did an exchange in Germany) for a few weeks.

I'll be back in St. Andrews for a few weeks mid June, possibly doing some acting, watching my friends graduate, or climbing mountains (I'd love to climb Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the UK-- anyone up for it?)

At the very end of June I head off to Romania, where I'll spend a month teaching English in the city of Suceava. Suceava is right in the northeast corner of Romania, putting it only about half an hour drive from the Ukraine border... so let's pray that the situation doesn't escalate while I'm out there.

After Romania, I have a week before I can return to the UK, since my visa expires on my birthday, July 31st. After that date I'll re-enter the UK as a visitor, but before then I'll probably travel around a bit, possibly spending my birthday in Rome (which is one of my top places in the world to visit.)

August will find me in Harrogate, a city in northern England which hosts (this year) the International Gilbert and Sullivan festival. St. Andrews will be sending our production of The Sorcerer down, and I hope to get involved with a couple other shows as a chorus member.  I also plan to travel a bit during August, maybe finally making my long-warranted trip down to Wales. 

As of yet, I don't know when I'm going back to Canada. What I'd absolutely love is if I could stay until the second week of September and meet up with my friend Sharon, my former roommate and BFF who is coming to St. Andrews on exchange next year. I also might spend a day or two at St. Andrews during fresher's week, which would be so much fun. All this depends on when my MA program starts, however, so it's a bit up in the air. 

And that's my summer! A lot of fun things planned, a lot more possibilities... It's really fun to look forward and see how many things I could do. Obviously many of my plans won't work out-- I don't have time to do everything I want to do, sadly-- but whatever happens, this summer will be full of new and exciting experiences. My time at St. Andrews may be drawing to a close, but the adventure is nowhere near over. 

Day 193: I'm Going to Be a Master's Student!

I’ve been accepted to the MA in English Literature program at Western University!

For those of you who don’t know me IRL (or who haven’t taken the time to memorize every detail of my endlessly fascinating existence) Western is the university that I attend back in Canada when I’m not gallivanting off to different continents on exchange. Though I attend King’s College (a smaller campus about ten minutes’ walk from Western) I’m still a Western student, and it’ll be nice to return to a familiar university for my first graduate degree.

One condition of doing my exchange in my fourth year (rather than my third, like most sensible people) was that I have to return to Western next year and do either a fifth year of undergrad or my MA. I really don’t want to do a fifth year, since I feel like I’ve learned pretty much all I can at the undergrad level. However, Western has a great MA program and I’d have wanted to do grad work there anyways, even if I hadn’t been ‘forced’ to because of my exchange.

Receiving the acceptance email completely made my day. While I’m not surprised I was accepted, it’s still a huge relief to actually receive the offer. It’s one thing to be confident that you meet the standards of the program, and quite another to have the acceptance letter from the application committee!

Perhaps the most significant thing to me about this acceptance is that it’s confirmation that I’m on the right path. I didn’t plan on going into academia when I started university—I intended to get a college degree in journalism, get a day job, and write books.

Then I started studying English literature, expecting to hate essays and to find Beowulf and Paradise Lost boring. But I didn’t. I absolutely loved studying literature, even the endless readings, and the rewrites of papers, and the research in the library…

I just loved academics so much, and sometime early in my third year I realized that I didn’t want to stop. The idea that after fourth year I’d be done with readings and writing essays and discussing books in class wasn’t a relief; it sounded awful! I didn’t want to get out of university and enter ‘the real world.’ To me, university was (and is) a big part of the ‘real world.’

Now, as a mere four weeks of class (plus two weeks of break and three of exams) separate me from my undergraduate degree, I still feel the same way. The idea of being a graduate student, of continuing to engage with texts but at a higher level and helping undergrads to do the same, makes me so excited. I’m dreading leaving St. Andrew’s at the end of this year, but having an MA program waiting for me back in Canada makes me so much more enthusiastic about the future.

To those curious few wondering about the program: the MA at Western is composed of two sessions of coursework followed by another semester (the summer) of writing a thesis (at least, this is my plan for the year; there are a number of options.) I plan to take a variety of courses in different areas, but my thesis will likely concentrate on Milton’s court masque Comus and how the masque form serves to both reflect and create reality. This will allow me to read a lot of Renaissance literature, dramatic and otherwise, which is a favourite literary period of mine.

In short, I’m thrilled to be accepted into Western’s MA program, and I almost can’t wait to start… but I still plan to savour my last few weeks of undergrad. 

Day 152: Back in St. A!

 I’m back “home” in St. Andrew’s. Back at classes. Back walking the familiar three streets. Back to seeing friends everywhere and back to looking forward to hanging out at G&S and CU events.

The John Lennon wall in Prague

I’m loving it. The first few hours felt so deliciously fresh and new—I could see the familiar town with new eyes, appreciate the cobbled streets and the stone buildings. I could walk around without constantly checking a map, but the town still felt just a tad untouched after I had been away for so long.

It feels normal now, after I’ve been back for about three days. I've seen almost everyone, restocked my cupboards, and done most of my unpacking. The initial strangeness has past and normal life has begun.

Now comes the time to blog properly about my trip. I’ve been writing blog posts as I went along, so I actually only have two more posts to complete before I have a whole 11-post series to share with you.

The major holdup will be the photos. I took nearly 2000 pictures over the forty days, so I’m a little swamped with sorting and editing. Right now I don’t even know where to begin. Kayla already has her photos and blog posts up- no idea how she did it!

To be fair, she didn’t have a large scholarship application to complete the weekend after getting back. I’ve just finalized my application for the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, worth $15,000 for a year. If I get it, then that’ll give me enough to be financially worry-free next year. If not, well, I’ll still have enough to survive, but I may not be able to afford a car, or going to see plays, or travelling to see my family, or going out to dinner, or youth conferences… all those ‘extra’ things. Strange, how an academic scholarship will finance all the non-academic aspects of my life! I guess all the academic things are sort of non-negotiable, so I’ll be paying for them no matter what.

At any rate, I’ve submitted my application, so I can now stop thinking about my MA next year and concentrate on my modules this semester: Scottish Literature and T. S. Eliot. Both my professors seem friendly, knowledgeable, and comfortable in front of a class, and both have fantastic Scottish accents. It seems it’ll be an intense semester (T. S. Eliot is going to require so much work!) but I’m looking forward to it.

On that note, time for me to stop blogging and start reading T. S. Eliot’s biography… fun times…

And maybe tomorrow... York!