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

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 153: Too Much Stuff

I own so much.

When I walked back into my room after forty days touring Europe, that’s what I was struck with.

The backpack, shoulder bag, and suitcase? Mine.

The five stuffed animals on the bed? Mine.

The ten pairs of shoes, dozen dresses, and twenty sweaters? Mine.

The stacks of paper on the dresser. The books on the floor. The artwork on the walls. Mine.

The stuff hidden in the drawers, or under the bed, or in the kitchen cupboards. All mine.

After spending nearly six weeks living out of a suitcase measuring 25x40x55cm, walking into my room crowded with my stuff was a little shocking. What was more shocking was the realization that what’s here in Scotland isn’t even half of what I own.

There are two huge boxes at home that I packed away when I first moved out. Two more boxes and a filing cabinet at ‘my’ house in Ontario. Another half dozen boxes of stuff that couldn’t come to Scotland abandoned at my parent’s house. Scattered clothing at friends’ houses.

I’m twenty years old—I haven’t had decades to accumulate things. I’m a poor student—I don’t have the money to shop compulsively. Yet, I have so much stuff that it more than fills my car, trunk and backseat and all.

Why? How? What’s the point?

My biggest stress last May, when I was moving out of my Ontario apartment, was trying to pack up everything. I grabbed three armloads of boxes from the local supermarket, yet still needed to go back a few days later for more.

As I packed the boxes that would stay in Ontario, I realized that I wouldn’t see the contents again for a year and a half. Now, nearly nine months after packing those boxes, I can only guess at about five items in them. There’s a craft a friend made for me, a piece of pottery I painted… and a whole bunch of other things that I just can’t remember.

Yet, I stressed over getting that stuff packed. I lugged it to Ontario. I carried it to another house. I let it take up space in my friend’s basement. Finally in September I’ll go back to it and I don’t even know what I’m going to find.

It’s ridiculous. I don’t want to have my life spread across the world in the form of boxes filled with forgotten junk. I don’t want to spend my precious hours caring for stuff that has no purpose whatsoever.

I probably thought it had sentimental value. Yeah, maybe. But how sentimental is it when I can’t even remember what it is?

Maybe it’ll be useful someday. But really, if I haven’t wanted it in nine months, it’s probably not that vital to my existence.

Something has to change.

I don’t know how I’m going to cut down on the stuff in my life. Obviously, there’s not a lot I can do from here, across the ocean from most of my possessions. (And no, Mum, don’t take matters into your own hands and burn my boxes—if you destroy the binder of stories I wrote when I was ten, I will probably throw a shoe through the wall)

What I do know is that I don’t need so much stuff. I can survive with a carry-on sized suitcase. I can return to a room with only a quarter of my stuff and still feel overwhelmed by how much I own.

I have so much more than I will ever need. And I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful that I’ve been given so much.

But all this stuff has become more of a chore than a privilege. I think my time here has shown me than it needs to go.

When I get back to Canada, serious decluttering is happening. Hold me to that, internets. 

Day 97: Kitchen Disaster

So, this happened the other night:

I was calmly making fish and chips (like any good imitation-British person ought to do) and FaceTimeing with my friend Alex. The fish and chips were in the pan, which was in the oven, and all was going as planned. The chips were nice and crispy, the fish was sizzling, and I was hungry.

So I took the pan out of the oven and placed it on the stove top to let it cool off for a second.

Only, it didn't cool off. The fish just started sizzling even louder.

Just as I realized that I had placed the pan on top of the element which lets the heat escape from the oven.... the pan exploded.

Looking back, it's actually quite funny, though I admit it shocked me at the time. I gave a little shriek and Alex was wondering what in the world was wrong and there was smoke rising up from the stove and there was my poor pan split into half a dozen pieces and my fish and chips spread out across the stovetop.

I managed to open a window before the smoke alarms went off, rescued my poor fish and chips, and reassured Alex that I wasn't in the middle of a major catastrophe.

Now I need to go buy a new baking pan. But the lesson has been learned: never place anything on the bottom left stove element when the oven is on!

P. S. I'm almost done going through my London photos, and I've got a good start on my Dublin ones, so I should hopefully have those posts up soon!

Explore Day 9

Shameless selfie: New dress for the wedding

Day 9. One week, two weekends. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been here forever, other times it seems like I just got here.

The second half of this week has been far better than the first half. While certain things haven’t changed—such as my prof’s opinion of me—other aspects of life here have definitely improved. For instance, a bunch of my tea-making friends and I have decided that we’re gonna start cooking together, and sometimes making big dinners with cuisine from different cultures. Is it sad that I’m most excited that a girl from Nova Scotia is planning on making lobster?

Explore kids by this gorgeous lake before the ropes course

Student life here has been great over the past few days, as I’ve participated in some fun activities and made a bunch of new friends. I’ve been shopping (there’s a great mall right next to Laval), had lunch in Old Quebec, and spent the day at a ropes course in Duchesnay. The ropes course was great fun, even though I stupidly decided to take the ‘extreme’ lap. Apparently my friend and I were the only girls who did the extreme section, and my muscles are definitely paying for it today!

Birthday party bonfire

Off-campus, I’ve been getting more involved with the church community. On Friday night I went to a wedding, Saturday night to a birthday party, and two church services today. It’s been lovely getting to know some of the people in the church. Many of them speak English quite well, but I also enjoy talking to the ones who barely know English, because it forces me to speak French. Also, it’s helpful for me to listen to actual Francophones speaking French, since most of the time on campus I just hear Anglophones like me butchering the language… :)  

Throwing rice at the new couple

I think this next week will be a turning point, since I have my first test on Tuesday, and a bunch of other assignments coming up. If I do well on the test, the academic side of life here could improve drastically. Right now, I kind of dread sitting in class for 3-4 hours every morning. Then again, it is just the morning, and I have the rest of the day to enjoy Quebec City.

Tulips along the walk to church

Also, it could really stand to get warmer. I’m ready to ditch the jeans and sweaters in favour of sundresses. But this is Canada, after all…

Set Your Own Deadlines (and make them early!)

(BTW, this post was actually written about two weeks ago. Now I'm at the point where all the stuff I mention is coming due, and boy, am I glad that I listened to my own advice.)

Anyone who read the title of this blog post may think that I’m crazy. After all, university deadlines are always looming ominously on the horizon. Why would I want to move them closer?

The thing you have to remember is that some storms are bigger than others. Sometimes you’ll get just a little rain shower and other times it’ll be a huge thunderstorm. Still other times you’ll get a little rain shower and then a huge hurricane will blow in followed by an inch or two of snow, and then you’ll just be stuck.

(Before I continue, I’ll take a second to apologize to anyone who thinks I’ve greatly overused the rain analogy)

I hope you get my drift. Assignments tend to pile up. You’ll have assignments due in two different courses on the same day, or three tests within a week. I have that situation right now (which is why I’m writing this blog post). For the next two weeks I have absolutely nothing due, unless you count a one-paragraph outline of an essay that’s not due until February. If you just look at my next two weeks, I’m doing pretty good.

But then the week after that is nasty. I have a 1000 word book review on All Quiet on the Western Front, a 1000 word Sociology paper, a Psychology exam and a poetry exam, all within a week. Now, I know a lot of students can write a paper in one night, but can anyone write two papers and study for two tests all at the same time? If you want a decent mark, then the answer is no.

So I’ve decided that my Sociology paper will be done this weekend, a good two weeks before the deadline. And then next weekend I’ll write the book review, leaving next week (the one before the tests) virtually free for studying. To make sure I achieve these goals, I’m telling myself that my essays are due before they really are. If I allow myself to think ‘oh, it’s three weeks until this is due’ then I’ll put it on the back burner and spend these next two weeks watching Doctor Who.

Now, this doesn’t mean that my essays will be done done. They won’t be amazingly polished totally-ready-to-hand-in finished drafts. I can certainly do some polishing in the last week right before the deadline. Still, I’ll have a first draft, something to fall back on when it gets crazy.

For all you writers out there, this would be a useful skill to have. I’ve heard that a lot of published authors are publicizing their first book while editing their second book while writing their third book. That’s a lot of work! Working with self-imposed deadlines (I need to have ten blog posts written by Monday) and fixed deadlines (your editor wants the second draft in two weeks) can’t be easy, so it’s best to start practicing now.

Now, over to you, University/Highschool students, or general writer-people. Have you ever mentally moved a deadline forward to get something done? Or do you have other strategies? Since I’m just developing my study habits, I’d love to hear any ideas you have!

How I got into University

The new student center

For most people getting into University is pretty straightforward. Homeschoolers, however, find it a little bit more difficult since most of us don’t have marks and we might not have worked through specific courses. Throughout my highschool years I had a specific Science (Apologia) and Math (Singapore) curriculum but everything else was pieced together from various sources. This makes it difficult to convince a University that I had completed highschool.

This is how I ended up in University half a year early. It’s not the traditional way of doing things, but I know more and more homeschoolers who are trying this method and it certainly worked well for me.

UPEI has one of the only vet colleges in Canada

Last fall (September-November 2010) I took one course from UPEI. Getting into one course is relatively easy. I simply met with the Dean of Arts, bringing along a couple samples of my writing. He was a very agreeable man and let me into UPEI as a part time student without even looking at my writing samples! The course I decided to take was a simple Introduction to Literature course taught by a wonderful professor.

During this course I read two books of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. My professor was teaching a third year course on Milton the next semester, and she kindly allowed me to take it despite my age. Since I had been admitted into one course and I had no real plans for homeschooling in the next term, I decided that I might as well try to go to UPEI full time. I don’t actually want to go to UPEI for my full University career, but being a full time student will make it much easier to transfer somewhere else.

Cass Building, where my Dad works

My dad (who is a math professor at UPEI) talked to the registrar several times. I made up a small (four page) portfolio showing the courses I had done in highschool, as well as all the extracurricular activities I am involved in (drama, writing, dance, volunteer work…etc…). The registrar took their time reading this, so when courses started I wasn’t actually enrolled as a student yet. I went to class anyways, just hoping that they’d let me in. Two weeks into the term, on the deadline for registration, the registrar finally got back to me. I was in!

Now I’m in my seventh week (the home stretch!) of full time University, and I love it. I’m taking two English courses and two History. English is my favourite, but I’m thinking of doing a History minor. My midterms are done, which is great, and I didn't do too badly.

The Main Building at UPEI

For all homeschoolers who want to get into University and don’t want to spend forever compiling a transcript and doing SATs, I’d suggest taking a course as a part time student and then getting your status switched to full time. Doing a course is a great way to prove that you’re capable, and you earn a credit at the same time. I admit that I had an easier time getting in since my dad teaches at UPEI, but I believe anyone can do it. I know of at least three other homeschoolers who’ve done the same thing at UPEI in recent years. A University’s registration rules may seem strict but what they really want are students who are capable and willing to work. Any homeschooler who is coming up to graduation and wants to get into University should consider taking a course part time in their grade 12 year.