So close…

Hello to my dear robot readers*,

So I have some major updating to do, which should begin to happen some time after next Tuesday which is the day of my last exam. In the mean time I have these anouncements to make:

1.the BF and I have decided where we are going to live next year. University offers have been accepted and declined respectively and funding has been granted and as a result our plans are beginning to take shape.

2.I am just about  finished my last real term as an undergraduate. By Tuesday at 4pm all of the scary parts of my degree will be over (for example, writing my thesis papers, passing Modern Symbolic Logic etc.).** I am currently writing my last ever philosophy paper of my undergraduate life.

3.My dad broke his neck, but is now okay. It was scary, but, miraculously, he is fine and gets to walk around with a lovely neck brace for the next few weeks.

I’ll be back in a few days to kick this blog into gear. Over and out!

*I am pretty sure that almost all of the hits I get to this blog are automatically generated ones by other computers and not by real people. This is actually just  fine: oddly enough I don’t really mind writing for robots.

*okay, so I do have to do one credit this summer to finish my degree, but right now I am ignoring this fact. Also, I am going to do a second year poetry course, so it doesn’t count as scary.

Yippee!

Something really good happened! Like really REALLY good!

I don’t have time now to go into the details, but I will just say that the choice between university towns suddenly got A LOT easier.

Woo!

More on this soon.

Library

I found some informative titles at the library today:

(I should probably read this one)

Then, in the same section was this title:

As well as these two on the far right:

But really, I think that of these titles, this last one best (although trivially) sums up adulthood so far:

Trying to finish Joyce’s Ulysses

A daughter, voluminous manypaged ratherdullcolored skuffcreased book  in hand, attempts to read not one but three segments (Eumaeus, Ithica, Penelope) of wordrattling, soundprattling soundouting Ulysses by that most venerable author JJ. She wades through words, waitingly. Waitingly, she stumps through text, ploddingly. She mouthes the shapes of words never before known to her, soundlessly.

And what was she feeling at the time of the reading?

Sore from exercising yesterday; anxious at the knowledge of impending examinations involving said text; worried that something important has been forgotten; sad about her ill grandfather;  hot from two sweaters; cold from the draft by the window; guilty for letting her mind wander.

A Snowfall, Essays, Monty Python

Toronto woke up to snow this morning! I am so excited for winter!

The view from my window

I like the cold grey weather because it is much more conducive to  spending vast amounts of  time indoors studying than when the weather is fine. I am entering the last two hellish weeks of (my last!) fall term at U of T. No time to contemplate major life changes /my greater purpose in life/ how I will make a living after I graduate.

My brother reminded me of this Monty Python sketch, below, which I quite like. As usual I am writing a paper and I currently feel rather like one of the philosopher football players wandering about, thinking, and not actually kicking the ball. Hopefully my “Eureka” moment will come soon.

 

A Few Photos of U of T St. George Campus

Here are some photos from around campus I have taken lately. I am trying to remember that although school is crazy at the moment, I will miss many aspects of it when I graduate. So here are some of the details from the beautiful U of T campus:

The U of T coat of arms on the top right

On the wall panels in the Great Hall at Hart house

In 1890 my college at U of T, University College, burnt down and was subsequently rebuilt. This owl, now in the UC quad, was salvaged from the fire.

Poor old owl...

Another shot of the UC quad:

On the way to the Junior Common Room

The view across back campus to Trinity College:

Essay Crunch Time

Emmanuel Levinas

I am in the full throws of trying to finish the first draft of my senior essay for this term, so (achem) I shouldn’t even be posting this. However, in my attempt to post five days a week, I thought I would start my week off properly, even if it is with a post about how I am too busy to post a proper post (post doesn’t even sound like a word anymore, I have written it to many times). I leave you instead with a picture of Emmanuel Levinas, a Lithuanian born Jewish French philosopher, whose work is the subject of the paper I am writing.

photo credit: borrowed from here

Hmmm….British Universities

British universities seem to be in trouble these days. According to the BBC (as of a few days ago) government funding for teaching is being slashed by 40%! FORTY PERCENT!!!! Not to mention the fact that funding for the sciences won’t be touched, so the total 40% will come from……the humanities and social sciences! Typical.

A few days ago there were large (mostly peaceful) protests in London because the new coalition government has also raised the cap on tuition fees so that universities can now charge students up to THREE TIMES AS MUCH as they currently do. Considering tuition used to be free in England not that long a go, people are pretty mad.

Go read these articles on the BBC website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11726822

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11728003

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11732787

And solidarity with fellow students in the United Kingdom who are standing up for affordable education!

Photo credit: borrowed from here

Oh the University…

Alright, my goal for five posts a week (still what I am aiming for) was laughable this week. I hang my head in shame and promise that I will be on my best behavior next week.

Yesterday I went to my mother’s graduation ceremony at Convocation Hall where her title as a Doctor of Philosophy was officially conferred. I am really really proud of her! Here is a picture from inside Con Hall during the ceremony.

Inside Convocation Hall

In first year I had a class here (ANT100 – it was terrible!) and I must say, Con Hall looks much nicer when it is filled with well-dressed people and with professors and graduates in colourful robes, than it does when only an eighth full of bored 18 year olds talking to friends, playing solitaire on their laptops and utterly ignoring the poor professor standing tiny on the stage talking to no-one in particular for 2 hours!

Hitting the books (to be taken literally or figuratively…)

life for the next six months...

As I mentioned in my first post, I am a student. I am currently in my last year of my B.A. studying philosophy at the University of Toronto. I took this picture in Kelly Library and I think that it sums up how I am feeling pretty well: vast amounts of material to get through, but, lo and behold, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

For the past three years I have, for the most part, been in love with the University. By the time I started (I took a gap year) I was so ready for the rigorous learning and  intellectual stimulation that high-school had (for the most part) so painfully lacked. This love affair with the academy has grown increasing complicated as I consider the “what next?” questions that are inevitably arising as I finish up my degree. This year (to my dismay) I found myself  resenting the courses I had been so excited to take and the specific kinds of thinking that I knew they would demand of me. I began my term feeling really, really stir-crazy and SO ready to be out of school.

Now that I am back in the swing of things, school – the hectic world of deadlines, evaluations, class and mega-stress – doesn’t seem quite so bad. I am still looking forward to having time to read my own books, think my own thoughts, and go outside (kidding), that the end of school will allow, but knowing that these fall midterms are the last fall midterms of my BA and that my Christmas term-papers will be the last Christmas term-papers that I will write at U of T makes it a bit easier to feel like I am traveling towards the end…and the beginning of a big (scary) adventure.