09.29.06
Posted in Life at 12:37 by krikkert
And I’m saying that on the Friday after Career Fair Wednesday.
To most people, career fairs imply lots of free stuff. I’m not that lucky. In the morning, I was assigned to the loading bay — voluntarily, I’ll add. For a 7:30AM position, I was looking forward to little human interaction. But no, I had to become the team leader for the loading bay. In other words, supervise everyone else and in addition, be Mr. Meet-and-Greet for all the employers visiting the career fair. To be honest, showing a group of people where they’re going is easy. Look like you know what you’re doing, and they’ll follow you like a herd of cows. Three hours of loading employers’ supplies onto carts and running up two floors’ worth of stairs while the carts were going on a comfortable elevator later, the loading bay had no further duties requiring any attention. So I got drafted for hospitality duty, basically making sure that the employers’ needs were met. Including sitting in for the Institute of Charted Accountants of Alberta and the David Thompson Health Region while their representatives were having lunch. I then got fifteen minutes of lunch around 1 o’clock-ish.
At three o’clock, representatives of the corporations present were tearing down quickly — I was back at the loading bay trying to manage things as best as possible, however, it gets rather difficult with only one cargo van and one shuttle bus (and roughly 70 corporations present, most with two or three representatives) At 16:30, however, we were all done and the last employer had been shipped off with all his stuff. Afterwards, well, let’s just say filling out reports is fun. I got home around six o’clock. Nearly an eleven-hour shift.
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09.21.06
Posted in Life at 10:19 by krikkert
Today’s lecture in Political Science was on research method. The lecture was done by the library’s political science specialist, and was a really well-composed one of its kind on how to do research. Amongst other things, she recommended using a research log, logging every search, every result, every quote — so you know what you’ve done and what you haven’t.
Philosophy class saw my being accused of being a stalker, because one of my classmates swore he’d seen me in all his classes. Turned out we only had philosophy in common. I tell you, not only am I stalking this guy, I’m even hiring people who look like me to sign up for his other classes.
We’re well into science in Liberal Education, and it’s all about the dead bodies. When the professor is a PhD in archeology, no wonder. Today’s lecture was dedicated to the topic “How do scientists know?” — appropriately enough, we spent 20 minutes watching clips from CSI. And then another 10 minutes taking CSI apart and making a case for why it isn’t representative.
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09.16.06
Posted in Education, Life at 21:48 by krikkert
A week has passed. And I’m still hanging in there. The first assignments have been received (Philosophy, due on 2. October), 800-1000 words on Plato’s allegory of the cave and how it is related to today’s society.
This morning was the Senate’s Welcoming Committee’s breakfast for the international students. Free food! And good conversation, as well. The Dean of Fine Arts is an interesting guy (and a Newfie). When the VP of the University spoke, he mentioned that a Lot of people within the administration were international students — the VP himself is Irish. And his associate VP is English. I didn’t get to take any pictures, because I forgot my camera. Silly Christer.
I saw Snakes on a Plane last night. I don’t think I’ll be flying anytime soon.
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09.07.06
Posted in Education, Life at 03:57 by krikkert
Yep, Wednesday would be Christer’s official First Day of Classes. On the schedule for Wednesdays are the subjects of Political Science, Philosophy, and Liberal Education. PoliSci promised well for my first university experience — the professor, Dr. Paul Gecelovsky, was there before the students. He opened up by going through the course syllabus, I’ll describe that in another post. I muchly regret that there was only space in the back, because due to the construction work at the university there was quite a lot of noise. Must show up earlier for Friday’s class. The professor further specified that he hated lectures, and that he’d much rather have discussions. This promises well. Sadly, the 50 minutes allotted to this class went all too quickly. As a quick remark, I am deeply disturbed that in a class of 80 students, I was the only one who could answer the professor’s question about how we define an ‘ad hominem’.
Ten minutes later, it was time for Philosophy. According to Dr. Govier, the professor teaching the subject, we will be studying the foundations of western philosophy — from Socrates and Plato through Hume to Kant. The study of philosophy is about the ability to ask questions and dare to face said questions afterwards instead of running away from them. Very promising!
After this, I had allotted myself a nice hour of break. This was spent mostly in line to the Cash Office to ask why my tuition had been registered under the summer semester instead of the fall semester. This was apparently expected and would fix itself. Then I had lunch, a lovely salami and white cheddar sandwich, and proceeded to B660.
Liberal Education has proven to be the most interesting class by FAR. According to the instructor, Dr. MacKay, LibEd is basically a micro-University. It’s basically a ‘how to get the most out of university’. In addition, there is no final exam, and the assignments are all about exploring WebCT, the university’s online course system. I’m thinking ‘easy marks’. I should be able to score at least a 3.8 in this, and I need an average of 3.38 to get into the Faculty of Education (grades are from 1-4). I also got major brownie points for sitting there reading the book when the instructor arrived. His line to that was “Hey, we’re not going to use that book before November. Great of you to come prepared though!”
I’m pondering whether to designate Philosophy as a Credit/Non-Credit class. Basically, if I should against all odds fare badly in that class, it won’t hurt my GPA unless I fail.
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