My Canada Includes Street Hockey

Seriously? Ridiculous.

Thanks to Matt Bull for sharing this.

http://www.thepassinglane.ca/2010/04/rcmp-called-in-to-break-up-street-hockey-game.html

A mission...

Dear valued but minimal followers,

I have a mission for you. In trying to find a title for my latest thesis, I wanted to find a quote by Diefenbaker to use. Long story short, I found one, but I was disappointed to learn that there is no relatively new book of great Canadian quotes. I mean, we have a very proud nationalist country and, frankly, some really entertaining politicians. I'd be really happy if I found a quote book with Chretien's "A proof is a proof. What kind of proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it is proven".

I'm sure there are thousands of great Canadian quotes out there. Send me your favourites! It doesn't have to be from a politician, it could be from the Molson ads (Don't worry, Joe wasn't forgotten). I am going to make this a goal of mine - collect a ton of awesome Canadian quotes, and make a book out of them, even if its just pieces of paper put together in a duotang for my own enjoyment.

Thanks!

Things I Will Miss

I never thought this moment would ever actually come. No, it wasn't the season premiere of 'Glee' (although this was very exciting too). Tonight was my last ever undergraduate exam. French. I guess I should be very excited, and in some way I am, but it was sort of anticlimactic. I still have two papers left to edit, after all. And those are kind of a big deal and worth more than the exam. Nevertheless, the time of sitting down in the giant gym and writing for three hours until your entire arm goes numb (makes me miss the days of first year when it was just the hand that went numb) is now behind me. Frankly, at this moment I don't really care how I did, I'm just happy I'm done.

But I had a bit of an identity crisis last night. Once I realized that I'm so close to being done and I don't know whether I'll be in the area or not next year, I started thinking about all the things I'll miss about Nipissing specifically. I've put them in a bit of a list. To anyone who might feel offended, they are in no particular order. It is 1 am after all.

1) Frosh Week - It became so much a part of my life, I can't imagine not being sleep-deprived for a week before school starts. I'll be going through withdrawal for sure.

2) The Wall food - Never one for the club scene, I will truly miss afternoons of hanging out in the Wall eating delicious delicious food and enjoying a beer or two. They are wonderful people there and they will be dearly missed. Most especially, their fries.

3) My profs - Call me a dork all you want, I love my history department and I've become very close friends with some of them. They are all wonderful people and I will genuinely miss not only learning from them but having them as friends as well.

4) Model NATO - I can't believe how much I will miss this group. Spending a weekend with people who became such wonderful friends and meeting so many interesting and fun people while getting a really amazing experience in Ottawa is an opportunity few get to enjoy.

5) Nature - I love everything about our campus. I love that it backs onto a giant forest with bears and wildcats (neither of which I have seen in my four years here, although I made friends with some deer in first year). I love that we have a pond. I even love the groundhogs that live on the hill next to the student centre hallway. Nature is a huge part of my life and I love being surrounded by it.

There are a million other things that I can think of that I will miss, and I may post them later. For now, my OCD has finally calmed down and I can finally stop dusting and organizing my room and just go to bed. Adieu.

I did it!

It finally happened, I defended my giant thesis!

Well, one of them. And this one was actually the smaller of the two, but I was definitely more scared about this one. To be honest, when my prof was talking to the class about my paper while myself and two other students were on the panel, I didn't know whether to smile or cry with what he was saying, but he finished it off with "...and that's the brilliance of Beth's paper."

Yay!

I still have no idea what he was talking about, but I guess that means he liked it??

To celebrate our class finishing our presentations, there was a BBQ with snacks, pie and a copious amount of Guitar Hero. Let me just say that there is little better in life than watching most of your favourite class EVER participate (mostly with singing) in Michael Jackson's "Beat It", especially when it was videotaped so we can relive it over and over again!

I don't really know what to do with myself right now. I have an exam on Tuesday, but I don't want to study the entire time until then, and I do have to revise two of my papers but honestly what I have to do is not that big of a job. If it weren't for the snow (grrr) I'd be outside sipping lemonade and playing with the dog. So until the weather gets above 10 degrees, I think I'll stay inside and enjoying tea while playing with the hamster. That will somehow make it better, I think.

In any case, the countdown is on more than ever now until the end. I both can't wait and never want it to come.

So close!

Anybody else freaking out this time of year?

I have officially finished both DRAFTS of my theses, although I'm really not looking forward to doing the finals of them. My dad asked this weekend, "Is it ever the final draft?" How fitting, dad, how fitting. It seems endless, especially on the inside. PLUS I have my conference dealie for my Genocide seminar on Friday night and Saturday, and my poli sci exam Saturday afternoon, so I don't have that night-before or morning-of cram session available. Reeeeally not looking forward to that exam. I'm good at remembering things that happened (hence the history major) but theories? What the frick is the complex neo-realism theory anyways?

Don't answer that, it was a rhetorical device...

I've got some pretty good support behind me though. Even though my parents are really stressed because our house is up for sale (anybody wanna buy a farm???), they were really good this weekend letting me work and edit papers even though we were trying to watch a family movie. My awesome boyfriend puts up with all my rants, ravings and cranky sessions and even makes me amazing dinners in the process. My room mates generally leave me to my own devices, which is great, but I am getting a little lonely. I told off my one room mate a couple weeks ago because he and a couple of our neighbours and my other room mate all went to see 'Alice in Wonderland' and didn't even ASK me if I wanted to go. Seriously, they just talked amongst themselves like I wasn't even there. Oh, and on the way out the door, he asked me to feed the dog. Um...what? I was hurt. I know I'm busy, but you could at least acknowledge me.

See, now I'm using my blog for rants, ravings and cranky sessions. Forgive me. I'm not here to complain. But in my mind there is an unattainable freedom two weeks from here that exists only in stories. Day by day, I'm getting there...and when that last paper gets handed in, there will be an elation only known by criminals finally reaching the Mexican border. Okay, school isn't that bad, but it's just so close and so far away...

UGRC

This weekend was exceptionally academic for me. It was the Undergraduate Research Conference and I must say that I am blown away at the amount of research our little school has produced! So much of it wasn't even just a long analysis of the stuff that already exists, but brand spanking new research. Those geography and biology kids are nuts at it! Using never-before-seen maps and new growth experiments, they're really making headway in research. History students were I think the largest contingent present and were really good at doing new research with government documents, newspaper articles and other neat sources.

For the most part, everyone was a really good sport about the whole thing. There was no level of competition evident, at least, everyone was fair about it. Except for this one knob who "thought I really had the best paper, but I guess not". Way to be a part of the experience and be happy for others.

I would suggest in future years that others attending the sessions vote for who they thought did the best presentation. There was one I attended that I won't call foul on who won because of the moderator...but I'm going to call foul on who won because of the moderator. Inter-disciplinary sessions are great, but perhaps the value of others' research doesn't come across with certain moderators. I think if there was a vote, this would aid in awards. This is not to say that ONLY the votes would count, but at Model NATO the way it works is that the group nominates their favourite and the committee chair has their favourites and they work it out in some sort of democratic way. I think this would work too. In all fairness, this is probably not the way real conferences work, but I still think this would be a good idea.

All in all, it was a great experience and I'm so much more confident with my class presentation now that I've done it in front of a bunch of professors and other smart students. Now all I have to do is write another 15 pages on it. Huzzah.

It may only 9 degrees outside, but I still want to go outside and play. My brain hurts.

Sleepless in North Bay

I think we all know that writing at 3 am is rarely a good idea. But on a particularly homesick and academically depressed night, as I was going to sleep after feeling totally unproductive, I thought of 'Goodnight Moon'; remember that kids book about going to sleep? My mom used to read it to me when I was really little. I said goodnight to my pets, and it just went from there. Cheesy? Perhaps. But I like it.

Goodnight hamster, goodnight fish,
Goodnight empty supper dish.
Goodnight laptop, goodnight mouse,
Goodnight thin-walled, drafty house.
Goodnight books, goodnight notes,
Goodnight list of Diefenbaker quotes.
Goodnight flute, goodnight stand,
Goodnight stash of food that's canned.
Goodnight purse, goodnight paper piles,
Goodnight stuff I haven't seen in a while.
Goodnight papers, goodnight folders,
Goodnight tin of oranges that's just getting older.
Goodnight family, goodnight moon,
Tell them all I'll be home soon.

musings

I feel as though I've dropped off the face of the earth! I've never known myself to be this busy. Frankly I'm not surprised, I expected this, but it's such a bizarre feeling. To start off, after that NATO conference, my immune system decided to take a vacation and I got a nasty little cold that wouldn't go away. Trying to be productive with a head cold is like trying to shovel snow with a garden spade. It happens, but really slowly and with a lot of unnecessary effort.

Valuable thing I learned: There are many hard things when you are sick, but trying to write to your French teacher in French, when your language skills are weak at best was by far one of the hardest things I had to do with that cursed cold.

This was the first weekend I stayed fully in town in the last 5 weeks. Five weeks! I had my grandmother's funeral, the beginning of reading week, the end of reading week, the NATO conference, and then another family issue last weekend. I just wanted to stay put and not need to deal with anything, and I finally got my wish. It turned out really productively - I'm on page 23 of my 30 page thesis! Well, one of them. I haven't started the other one yet, but that's beside the point and thinking about doing that one too just makes me sad, so I'm just thinking about the first one.

Has anyone else noticed that late night television sucks? Cuz I sure have. Staying up late, I get lonely and at some point even the dog loses interest in me, so I keep the TV on for company.

That's not lame, right? Right?

History...

It is at night when I become my most philosophical. After a weekend of diplomacy and neighbourliness at the Model NATO conference in Ottawa surrounded by poli sci and international relations students, I have reflected on my own status as a historian.

History in itself and not as it is studied, is a special beast. History does not dwell. It continues on day after day knowing full well what has happened and moving forward nonetheless. History is life itself. History does not judge, it simply continues at a steady pace, never looking behind it. We could all take a lesson from history. But it was not history who lost battles, empires or soldiers. It was us for not knowing enough to understand what we were seeing and to write it down somewhere. On a piece of clay, granite, papyrus, anywhere. It left us the clues and all we had to do was hold onto it.

History as it is studied is not elitist. It is not meant to be placed upon a shelf and used only by those with the privilege. It does not do well there. Eventually, lack of use makes it slowly wilt in memory and eventually dies a sad and invisible death. History is not a sport of kings. It is not polo, played by dukes and princes while their wives drink tea on the sidelines. It throws itself at the feet of the world and begs them to use it. It yearns to be read, found, touched. It does not have the time to stop. It continues on, leaving a trail behind it, daring everyone to chase it.

And do you?

Gold medal in distractions

"Reading" week has never been more literal to me. Not that I expected much differently but wow! I've actually impressed myself with how much work I've done over the last week. My parents are equally as shocked as I keep going to my room and bringing down more and more books to read. I actually killed another highlighter this week from my printed primary sources, so my awesome mom bought me some more, in my preferred colour of marker (orange!)

I'm not normally a multi-tasker as I get distracted if there's something halfways interesting on the TV, but remember how I mentioned video games earlier? I liked my room mate playing them because I could just sit with company for hours and not need to change the channel. Well hello, Olympic Winter Games! Between CTV, Sportsnet, OLN and TSN there's constant coverage of the events during my working hours and since a lot of the events are the same thing over and over again, it's easy not to get distracted. If something interesting is happening, I can look up. Other than that, the running commentary keeps me informed.

Unless its curling. Some dorky part of me needs to watch curling if it's on. And hockey, but I've been trying not to watch that because I'll get too worked up and I just don't have the time for that! But curling, curling is calm and logical. I can think with them. Which is why it's dangerous - and awesome!

Race on Canada, race on. Win gold if you can, and if you can't, at least you've kept me entertained.

Reasons To Be Glad You're a Full-Time Student in Winter

It's North Bay, and it's cold. It's always cold this time of year. And we've lucked out lately with the sunny weather, but that just means that all the heat is escaping without the clouds. But there is a silver lining to being drowned by books in the middle of February. In fact, there's a couple.

1) It's better to be cooped up inside on a beautiful day in February then it is to be cooped up inside on a beautiful day in June.

2) Since everyone else is cooped up too, it doesn't make you feel like the odd-man-out. Also, it's handy to have others around so that when you're talking constantly about your projects, there's actually someone there to listen.

3) Winter makes it more acceptable to be drinking the typically frightening amount of coffee/tea/hot chocolate/latte/frappe/cider that you would be drinking anyways.

4) There's less of a chance that you're going to be drawn outside by amusing prospects from friends. I.e., it's a lot more tempting to join in on a barbeque with a pitcher of margeritas than it is to join in a game of snow tackle football.

5) Suddenly, the library's tropical thermostat isn't as irritating.

Relax! It's February 11! That means that spring is only...38 days away. For now, the picture of a tropical island as my desktop will have to make do.

I know this is a blog about life in fourth year, but sometimes the real world, including family, has to happen while you're cruising along at breakneck speed.

My grandmother passed away Wednesday night, a total shock to my family. This time last year she was admitted into the hospital and later to a nursing home, where she began to have a comfortable life. I guess her body just couldn't handle it anymore.

While the last couple of years stole away many of her faculties, she was always one for enjoying the moment. She loved the giant fish tank at her nursing home and how colourful the fish inside were. At Christmas, my mom took down a fiber optic colour-changing Christmas tree, which she would watch for ages as the colours sparkled on the tree. In the warmer weather, she and my grandfather would have almost daily picnics in the beautiful garden on the property, where she would literally stop and smell the roses.

Her funeral was lovely. Aside from the traditional hymns and prayers, my extended family's contribution was heartwrenching. My cousin read out a poem that my uncle (her father) had written for grandma when he was 24 years old, in 1981, for Mother's Day. The general theme my family conveyed was that she filled her life and everyone's around her with joy and that we should remember those times.

Take the time to watch the goldfish and the smell the roses, and tell your family that you care about them. It may not mean much at the moment, but these things add up and turn into wonderful memories of each other. I will miss her profusely and I'm still coming to terms with it, but I have a petal from the rose I put on her casket, which will remind me to stop and smell the roses, just like her.

The Worst Nighttime Cravings

One of my goals for this year is to not become as sedentary as I normally do in the cold weather, surrounded by a mound of paperwork. I don't follow New Year's Resolutions because I think the concept is silly because who actually keeps them past March? Nevertheless, it's a good idea for everyone to try to eat a little bit healthier, and it's become something that I've been trying to stick to for the last couple of weeks.

I don't want to become a calorie counter because I'm afraid that I'll become obsessive with it and need to know numbers for everything. Also, I can't pull the "Devil Wears Prada" diet and start exclusively eating cubes of cheese for meals. See, like most humans, I like food. But I really, really like food. I wake up and look forward to the breakfast I'm going to make myself and try and create more meals from ideas in my head than I really should. These don't always work out, but it sure is fun.

I also have a giant sweet tooth. Not necessarily chocolate, but just sweets. I'm a big fan of chewy candies like Fuzzy Peaches or jelly beans. Don't even get me started on Swedish Berries.

Instead of following some rigid plan, I'm following a few key tips given to me in an attempt to not become a library-dwelling troglodyte that feeds on scraps of food from previous animals (aka roomates' leftovers).

1) Give up the midnight snacks.
This is probably the hardest one for me because I love to graze throughout the day. It keeps me entertained while I work late into the night. Also, the really liking food thing comes into play.

2) Go for low-fat items that taste the same.
I'm the first person to say that if the "healthy choice" of whatever you're eating tastes bad, stick with the original. It's not worth the torture. But things like salad dressing or yogurt taste the same (sometimes better) to me, so I go for those.

3) Eat more produce.
This doesn't count the carrots and beans in the canned chunky stew that you had for lunch today. Combine real veggies with those low-fat dressings and you have a delicious afternoon snack.

4) Chocolate granola bars!
This is a new discovery of mine! Chocolate cravings are the worst to get rid of, and constantly popping Lindors isn't wise (although tasty). But I found these Nature Valley chocolate granola bars, and while they're still drenched in honey and not entirely healthy, they have some chocolate bits in them which can kill the cravings for a lot less calories than a Kit Kat.

Curses, now I want a Kit Kat.

I'm not going to make this blog about my healthy eating, but many students this time of year find themselves too busy to take care of their bodies, which in turn affects how we think and feel.

Bad eating+less sleep+stress=angry, moody students. And nobody wants that.

It's That Time of Year Again...

Every year, in the unenthusiastic, exhausted month of January, there is unleashed upon Nipissing an event that breaks friendships and steals dignity. It comes in brightly coloured paper and occasionally candy bars. It grips students from every clique and friendship circle with a fervour seen only in mating season on the Safari. Plastic smiles are painted on while everyone is secretly cursing each other in their heads, no matter how good of friends they are, or will inevitably continue to be after all is said and done.

Election Season.

Don't get me wrong, I love that our students can get so involved with our student government and that it means so much to some of these people. But as a Frosh Leader, it's a very difficult time for me. Most of the elections that I've experienced have had many of my friends running against each other. In my second year, I knew every single person running. How am I expected to be impartial to that? It's really hard to concentrate on someone's platform when you have mental images of them dancing on a table in bar with no shirt on.

That being said, I encourgage, no I insist that every Nipissing student take the brief amount of time away from playing Tetris or Minesweeper and read the candidates' platforms or talk to them in the hallway from their campaign table. Sometimes they give you snacks.

When it comes right down to it, the killing of neon coloured trees for campaign flyers does actually mean a lot to many students in the school. Remember, each NUSU Executive is in charge of welcoming the new Frosh the next September and that will set the tone for their next four years. I just wish friendships weren't so stressed and allegiances questioned for that oh-so-brief week of campaigning.

Moral of the story: I don't care if you hate politics. Vote anyways.

update

I'd like to amend the previous entry. I do not have twelve microfilm rolls. Twelve is only round one, since I can only have that many at a time. Which means that once I finish these ones, I get to wait for more. Huzzah.

paper, paper and more paper

As a historian, my lord and almighty master (as any of my co-history majors will tell you) is documents. There is nothing more essential than getting those elusive facts, numbers, statistics or images. Good history students by the end of university will have the e-resources completely figured out and all the backdoors to get into any of them.

For those massive final papers - you know, the ones where you see your history major friend huddled in a library in a fort made out of books and emerging from their rooms only at mealtimes, in which case all they talk about is their paper anyways - these documents are of the utmost importance. Students become a cyber bank robber of sorts; they will scheme and secretly try to coerce the librarians into ordering a book in that the library technically already has, but some second year who clearly has no grasp of the desperation that you are feeling has already signed out. The only difference is that bank robbers end up with pieces of paper that everyone thinks has value, whereas historians end up with copies of documents that have sat in some state department basement for decades and can mean absolutely nothing to 95% of the world population.

This entry comes at the time when my respect for the Inter-Library Loan office has grown in their ability to find me something I didn't think existed, but at the same time hatred for my addiction to documents. My fourth year essay is an examination of news coverage of the Rwandan genocide, which I thought was a neat idea. This was before I started acquiring all of the articles. The New York Times gave me 244 Word pages of articles that I not only have to read (which isn't a big deal, I'm used to reading a book and a half a week), but I now need to try and figure out the cheapest way to print them off. I've already spent $30 at Print Plus on my other major paper, and this essay doesn't end at the New York Times.

Waiting for me right now at the ILL office is microfilm of the Washington Post. I'm not sure if anyone else has used microfilm, but it's the kind way of saying "Haha, you chose something that isn't digital!" Silly me, I expected a reel or two of the stuff for what I'm looking for. NO, my order came in a BOX. With TWELVE reels. Remind me again why I took history?


Oh, right. I liked documents.

Nerd Alert

Being a full-time student means that the time you allot yourself for completely unproductive activities gets exponentially smaller as the year goes on. Those carefree weekends of actually reading a textbook are replaced by weekends where you have to skim that textbook, just so you have time to read the other five that are due for the next week. Plus research for papers. Fun?

My television habits have changed, too. Even with all this work, everyone needs a mindless TV break in between books the size of my desk that are due back in Windsor in less than 24 hours (what would we do without the Inter-Library Loan office???). Rather than tune in to the latest primetime dramas or comedies, my entertainment choice as of late has shifted to my roommate's XBox games.

Yes, you heard me, I'm addicted to plot lines and characters that are animated and get points for looting treasure boxes. Lame? Hardly! I'm greatly entertained by the fact that I can identify the setting of his video games simply by looking at the architecture in the background. Yes, I am a nerd, thank you for silently thinking that in your head. (Side note: Assassin's Creed 2? Great game!)

The great thing about the games, though, from a student's point of view, is that they can be played for hours, so there's no need to waste time changing the channels. Also, it's easy to get some reading done at the same time. Just look up when exciting things are happening. I'm not particularly intriugued by the five minutes of running around looking for things. Secondly, that means there's company in the room! Having separate things on the go in the same room means you can spend time with your roommates (or at least escape the maddenning solitude of your room or the library) and you can still both be doing things you want/need to do.

Somehow, this arrangement seems to work. Sometimes there's snacks involved.


I'd still rather be watching Glee.

Shifting Gears

How many of you can say that you have pieces of journals lying around, filled with thoughts, emotions and best intentions? Everyone wants to keep a journal or diary - or blog. I can think of at least three cute notebooks that have the first twenty pages or so filled with detailed descriptions of my trials and tribulations as a high school student, a university freshman, and so on and so forth. All of them spiraled pretty badly into oblivion once things got busy. So this blog is a goal for me: can I actually keep it going for the rest of the school year?

I have thoughts, everyone has thoughts. I'm usually pretty vocal about my thoughts, sometimes too much so and my professors have to stop me from arguing about some obscure fact with another member of the class. So let's just see how far I can take this.

I'm sure my notebooks are cursing me from their dust-covered final resting places around my room. I have always preferred the traditional pen and paper to typing, perhaps since typing usually means work and essays and I get enough of those in my life without trying to record my opinions on the newest season of Battlestar: Galactica. Nevertheless, since I am an honours student and I am always in front of a computer screen, having an electronic journal might just make things easier.

As a history student, I am compelled to have a thesis for anything I write, online journals included. As the title suggests, the last semester of my university career has seen me shift into an academic gear not experienced since my uncle finished law school with a family of six girls waiting for him at home - and he was a doctor at the same time. Okay, it's not quite the same thing, but it sure is a level of intensity I have never experienced before.

Fourth year history major.
English minor.
Research assistant.
Model NATO team.
Frosh leader.
Musician.


Oh, and I have friends and family in there somewhere, too.

Therefore, this blog has the very general purpose of explaining a very busy life of a fourth year university student, on and off the playing field.

I'm only a little bit terrified.