You know, you could just try it by correspondence first and see if it's for you. I did that because as a mature student requirement I had to complete one full credit before I could go part time (last year was my part-time year of three credits). This year will be my first full time year. But you can work and take correspondence courses, like relogged mentioned.

I didn't realize how much my identity was tied to being a student until three years ago, when I suddenly wasn't. After 13 years of elementary and secondary school and 7 years of undergraduate and graduate studies, the one constant in my life (that is, being a student) disappeared. It was an unsettling experience; I suffered a small nervous breakdown, from which it took me a whole year to recover, and I know it was largely due to having to reconsider the things that I thought defined me. I've seen the same thing happen to others when they've left school as well.

At one point, the old dude put up his hand. "I'm sorry sir, but what you just said wasn't quite true. You see, I fought in that battle."

(Also, I'm afraid of having to write a 30 minute sermon every week. I don't think I have that much creativity in me. I'd make a groovy youth group leader though. Dick and fart jokes galore!)

I realize this is a highly prejudicial opinion of Queen's University. I don't care. Maybe I'm just mad because I never got laid when I went bar-hopping there

"Totalitarianism and its roots in syntactic structure; the experience of Brazil and East Timor contrasted. Prof. Jones, Tuesdays and Thursdays".

OR

"Black holes, event horizons, and the poetry of Allan Ginzburg; a phenomenological re-investigation."

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Totalitarianism and its roots in syntactic structure; the experience of Brazil and East Timor contrasted.

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Jared: How can this be? Scholarship?

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Jared, I am not grasping something: how can it be that your textbooks now are not blowing a hole in your budget? Are you now somehow getting free ones?

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Not to bore anyone with my financial situation, but since you inquired here's a quickie synopsis. The three summers previous to this one I lived essentially rent-free (not in Van of course!) and worked a well-paying labour job. Most of this money went into an account intended for school (which is buttressed by a small college fund started by grandparents), and with a couple of exceptions, has been left untouched. The fact that this post-secondary money still exists is a miracle on par with the loaves-and-fishes story, as cash usually burns a king-sized hole in my pocket. Add to this a rotgut-cheap-draft-beer existence while living in the city and Jesus is merely a speck in the rearview mirror (that's why this info is being volunteered willingly to perfect strangers I suppose - it's pure braggadicio! ). Still, this money won't last very long, and I see that ghoul which has devoured so many called "Student Loans" smacking it's lips in anticipation of it's next meal.

No, my textbooks are certainly not free (...I dream I dream...). What I meant was that living on a tight budget, books/zines count as sort of a luxury, and I often, well, overindulge. Textbooks are a different story altogether - they're mandatory with schooling, and ergo a guilt-free, "legitimate" expense. Humblest apologies for not being clearer in the previous garbled, ambiguous word salad masquerading as a post - I was tired.

By the by, CBC radio said that it's over four grand for tuition alone in the Nova Scotian schools. That's insanity. Mind you, Gordon Campbell's ongoing quest to alienate anyone who's not a captain of industry would not be complete without scrapping British Columbia's tuition freeze, so things may become dicier here yet.

Luckily, I have a large scholarship that covers about half of tuition. And I started getting work experience every summer since my first year of university, and thus have made considerable sums (for a student!) in the tech. industry, pre-decline. (And my work experience seems to be enough to ge me more summer jubs--I'm comparatively cheap labour for tech companies even now!)

My books were cheap this semester. I own one already (used in two previous classes), and one of my courses is an independent study course (professor-supervised, of course). That leaves a 40$ linguistics book and a 100$ computer science book.

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I hate to think that Queen's is the best place for a more intellectually-progressive theological college. Most of the United Church ministers went there, it seems. I've considered going into ministry before, but I don't wanna have to go to Queen's. Blech!

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HEY! None of that!

Re: Queen's Theological School - yeah, it's pretty much a United Church school. I really enjoyed my religion course this summer. And you're right, it's a very open-minded school, open to scholarship, thinking, criticism, and all that other good stuff that fundamentalists hate. There are people at my church who consider Queen's Theological School to be anathama, so I figure that's a pretty good recommendation considering the source...

Re: school - I got a nasty shock today about my student loan. Last year my husband and I got a certain amount as a married couple with a child. THIS year they are dividing that amount directly in half, instead of giving us each an amount for single parents. Their reasoning is that we each have half custody of our son. I couldn't believe it. But we still have to BOTH maintain a 2 bedroom apartment, set of toys, set of clothing, etc. The only expense that will actually be cut in half is his food - and 2 year olds don't eat anything anyhow!!

Well, I was shocked to say the least. I told them it was discriminatory that they would give a married couple so much more money. I told the woman that it's pretty sad that women like me are financially punished by OSAP for leaving their husbands...

I'm in a good mood

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Well, I am going back to school, and I'm looking forward to my electives, Business and Italian.

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"Balanca pema" - Portugese for "swing that fish tail." (and we all know how often this comes up in conversation )

I used to know the Russian translation for "keep on rockin' in the free world," but it's slipped my mind.

Yeah well like I said they usually don't know what they're doing so just ignore what I said about statistics.

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Jared, my only advice is, don't take "rocks for jocks" or whatever. If you can, take some intro science courses (for science majors) that you're interested in and think you can maybe do, even if you're not going to get A+ in them. You may be screwing yourself somehow that way, but you'll probably find it more interesting. Actually if you do take some sort of dumbed-down science course, may I suggest a course in statistics?

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Thats all I remember from when I tried to teach myself Spanish. Funny, the things that stick in your head.

Unfortunately, to the chagrin of many professors (especially one of my sociology professors last year), Queen's students aren't exactly known for their activism...I think I mentioned before that this professor in particularly dubbed Queen's as "a place of social rest".

And let us not neglect the dead languages:

haec cena erit bona, dummodo sale utaris.
This dinner will be good, provided that you use salt.

UofT's theologians are largely Catholic (I think, though I've never inquired directly), which is kind of fun if you're in an adjacent discipline: we get some real nutbar philosophy professors. It can be a lot of fun to watch them try to defend beliefs on trivial matters which they hold only because Aquinas held them, and a Pope once said that Aquinas is right about everything. They're probably doing something more subtle to pervert and skew my thinking, but I don't mind. It's all in good fun.

Just under $5000 + texts for a math & philosophy program. & some of the math texts are getting to a few dollars a page.

Meades, York is considered fairly left wing.

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Aside from WLU, what are some good "left-leaning" Universities in Canada? I don't know if anyone can make a generalization about it or not, but I'm a little curious.

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You could do worse than University of Victoria, meades, where I worked before doing my MA. Considerable student activism as well.

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Ich bin nicht eine lame Ente. (I am not a lame duck)

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Expect a mangled "English" version of this from Governor Bush sometime not long after the New Year.

And Andrean:

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"Ac dixit Corvus, 'Numquam postea!" (And quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore!')

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In India, in different parts, a white person can be called goraa/gorii (pale skin!), angrez (Englishman, but now foreigner in general) or firang(i) (foreign, from "Frank(ish)", going back to the crusades!), or just plain "phoran kaa" (for a man) or "phoran kii" (for a woman)(that p-h is pronounced separately, like in top-heavy)= from foreign. Yes, "foreign" is a noun in Hindi. You are not foreign, you are from foreign. Children or rude people are liable to call you a bandar = monkey because of the red skin; or manDuuk which is a frog, because white people's skin looks like the underbelly of a frog to them.

Polite terms exist, like "vilaayatii" in Urdu: for some weird reason England is called "Vilaayat", though the word now refers to abroad in general; from "vilaayatii" for English comes the English word "blighty" for England. Are you from blighty? And are you still with me?

Speaking of clever, Andrean, too clever by half.

Term 1 Term 2
Semester 1 - semester 2 /=\ semester 1 - semester 2

Carrières - Citoyenneté /=\ Histoire - Histoire
Mathématique - Mathématiques /=\ English - English
Sciences - Sciences /=\ Italian - Italian
Business - Business /=\ Français - Français

Carrières is Career studies, Citoyenneté is civics, and Histoire is History.

I don't like having math in the morning

Math was never my strong point. I did get something like a 90-94 going into the exam last year, though I'm not good with math exams, so I came out of the exam with an 84. I'm still pretty strong in math, but what can I say, gotta love those humanities!

I like the Civics/Career studies course, I'm iffy on business, and I'm really looking forward to next term, three languages and history! WOO HOO!!!.

Not that my teachers this term are bad, they're actually quite great. i have the same math teacher this year as last year, and he's really good. My science teacher is good too, and my science teacher from last year is teaching career studies, and one of my sisters favorite French teachers is teaching the Civics unit. I don't know anything about my business teacher. From what I hear, she's not popular with the students in my grade. But then again, the drinking age isn't popular with the students in my grade, either. That as well as non-conformists, and people with ethics.

Okay, so thats a bit of an exageration...

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Math was never my strong point. I did get something like a 90-94 going into the exam last year, though I'm not good with math exams, so I came out of the exam with an 84.

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Good god man, I'd hate to see your strengths . Math was never my strong point either, but that meant scraping through math 11 with a low "C" and rejoicing that I'd never have to come into contact with the vile numbers (*shuddering in disgust*) again.

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But then again, the drinking age isn't popular with the students in my grade, either. That as well as non-conformists

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Well, at least things haven't changed much since 1997 (especially the conformity thing)

Our instructor is an oddball. She's a M.Sc (Math) but can actually teach the course in a way people understand, is the feeling I get. However I get kind of weirded out when she starts making it more like a group chat session than a traditional class.

The thing that pisses me right off is that the course Mathematics for Finance that I'm taking, the instructor insists that we students blow the EXTRA $50 on an HP financial calculator. I can't afford that shit!

However the Canadian Domestic and International Issues economics course I'm taking appears to have a teacher who is relatively non-orthodox, or at least may be willing to (when we hit Macro theory) be more of a Keynesian.

We are all Keynesians

Regarding crowded classes, my sociology class last year (a first year course) had about 500 people crammed into the lecture theatre. At the beginning of the year, some were standing. And as the year progressed, not very many people dropped the course, so while there weren't people standing a little later, it was still crowded. Not exactly a close personal atmosphere. I think there were about 10 TA's with about 3 classes each. Man.

My philosophy class had about 150 in a much smaller classroom. Again, enough room for everyone but still a bit squashed. We had 3 TA's with 2 classes each.

Women's Studies had room for a couple of hundred, but only about 100 or less signed up. Not terribly surprising. Again, 3 TA's with 2 classes each.

All by myself I selected text, cut, pasted....

Now here's the question- Who needs math class more? me, or the Harris government?

But wait -- you need to know math and science first. And since the universities are going to be privatized and converted to business/engineering schools and won't be turning out any more namby-pamby teachers, even of maths and science... hmmm. Queen's Park, I think we have a problem.

Good math texts demystify terminology and explain ideas. Bad math texts obscure the ideas with too many oversimplified examples OR they don't explain anything at all. If you talk to a mathematician about math, they can explain it extremely clearly if they're any good. As you start moving towards high school teachers, I find that often they themselves do not understand or care about the ideas behind the math.

Update:

I have powered my way through differential, integral, and now multivariable calculus with a sidebar of linear algebra.

I have finished the first half of organic chemistry, blown through analytical, instrumental and inorganic chemistry and barely squeaked out of my electromagnetism and optics.

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I have powered my way through differential, integral, and now multivariable calculus with a sidebar of linear algebra.

I have finished the first half of organic chemistry

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maybe if you sort of give an ambiguous yelp....

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Hey, you can take Persian at the U of T?
I wonder if people can sign up to take it for general interest?

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I'm not sure whether to shout with excitement or weep from terror.

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... does it have to be either-or?

People might scroll up to see where this thread broke off the first time -- ah, the days of wine and roses, eh, splendour in the grass and all that.

Anyway. Guess what! I got a new notebook. It is very beautiful, an "artist's journal," made of 12 different colours of acid-free lightfast paper -- as in, an artist could draw or paint in it. I am not an artist, but it inspires me to do ... something. I'm sure I shall do something with it. And it feels like a very September thing.

Grandma is "dyscalculiac". (can't even pronounce it). It is to numbers what "dyslexic" is to words.

I have memorized some things (five times five is twentyfive) (nine times nine is maybe eightyone). I'm pretty certain ten times ten is one hundred.

But DO math?
I just do not "believe" it. When you get to geography and algebra I go totally blank. I have wasted entire hours, days, even weeks of my life trying to "remember" and...all I have to do is go for a drink of water and when I come back there we are, back at "start" and it's still a mystery.

And since you can't "go to school" without math, I indulge myself with at home reading. I'm trying, with little sucess, to wade through Jared Diamonds book on why and how civilizations "choose" to fail... I don't think I'll finish this book. Last night at about ten I put it down, turned on the tube, saw some of the horror of New Orleans and thought Hey, Jared.. your book is in living colour on the screen right now...

The home stretch is coming up. This semester I'm doing the organic synthesis and identification course, quantum chemistry and particle physics.

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i believe we ontarians (ontarions, ontarioans, ONSCARIONITES) have it the worst of all. or am i wrong? our tuition is nuts. a basic arts degree is nearly 5000$ plus hefty book prices, and a humanities degree is well over 5000$ with unbelievably high (very, very hard to imagine if you've never been there firsthand) bookk costs. blargh. maybe my human rights and law books will be less expensive than the humanities ones were....
i dare to dream...

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I'm starting my second year of political studies so I'm pretty excited to actually get into the nuts and bolts of the stuff. I'm sort of leaning towards a Canadian public administration and policy degree for my undergraduate; I will more than likely go on to grad school or possibly into law school. The end goal is to work in the Leg in Regina. I have a friend who started a job (career?) as a ministerial aide a few months ago (as well as several friends who were summer students there), and from what I hear that is exactly where I want to be.

I'm in fourth year, and I decided my major late, but my university's designed around doing that, so it wasn't a big deal, really. I do, though, have about 17,000 in debt. (aaaack) The good news is that this summmer is the first of four secured summers of working at a pulp mill. Before this, I had minimum wage summer jobs. Also, 4 months of industry has left me ready for school, in a major way.