We survived the first week of university. We’re desperate, bushed and feeling drained, but at least we’re not alone. All of us are surprised of the amount of workload.
Having attended the three seminars I have to attend to reach the assumed minimum of 9 (Canadian) credit points per term, I have the following things to do before the seminar sessions next week:
- Buy and read the book “Cultures of Cities” (338 pages), which you don’t get in the University Bookshop, you cannot rent for more than two hours at the library, amazon or whoever is not able to ship within three days and which would cost more than 70$ if it were possible to get it somewhere within three days; additionally find a counterpoint text (or book) to this book, which I have to present at class next week. Not to forget the assigned reading commentaries I have to post in moodle every week.
- Read three articles (together 59 pages) for the second seminar
- Read another three articles (46 pages) plus another article fitting to the topic and write an assignment about these texts (which should not summarize but analyze the texts).
- Post a question to moodle concerning the texts that “is interesting, appropriate to the topic, and generates discussion”. It will be measured how successful my questions are in generation a discussion, the “weekly commentaries posted to the online discussion” make up 10% of the grading.
- Purchase a Personal Response System device (clicker, see picture below) – for more than 40$ - which I can use to give answers to the questions the course instructor asks at the beginning of every class (another 10% of the grading and a perfect way of attendance check, long live European date protection laws).
- Read two texts (34 pages) for the third seminar and write a summary of the texts.
If I miss a course or hand in an assignment to late, it will be penalized, i.e. the marks will be rated lower, depending on the course at a rate of up to 10% per day
Crazy, isn’t it?
There were some other lectures I attended this week (at York University and University of Toronto) because I was interested in the topics, but which I can’t get credit points for: Introduction to Canadian Studies; Italian Cinema, Literature and Society; Urban Geography; Transport Planning;
Geographical Colloquium Series; Historical and Geographical Perspectives of Transportation). But I see no chance to read the preparing texts for these classes, most of them I probably have to skip to survive this term without burnout or heart attack…
And, yeah, almost forgot about it: I still have a side job! Should do something for this too.
Social life? Exploring the city? Visiting museums? Sport activities? Watching movies or news? Oh yeah, Laura and I played Squash in a reading break this afternoon, at the moment I’m finally taking time for my blog, and I definitely want to cycle tomorrow, in between the readings. This should be enough social life for this week.
The more I write about it, the worse I’m feeling.
Looking at all the texts I printed and copied at the library in the last days (for almost 50$, 10 cent per copy…), I totally forget about the greatness of Toronto, the people I already met here and the university, which I really like (although it more than overstrains me). As I don’t have time to write about the impressing facts and figures of York University (see above for reasons why I don’t have time for it), please
watch this video.
Before I left Frankfurt, different people told me that the Keele Campus is really ugly and that I should definitely stay downtown and not on campus. The great book “
How to be a Canadian” I read before I left Germany (thank you, Claudi!) introduced the campus I’m living on as the least attractive one in Canada, situated “deep in the remote tundra north of Toronto” (to be academically correct: Ferguson 2007:215). It continues promising: “According to campus myth, York was originally designed to be built in southern California, where the wind-tunnel effect created by the concrete towers would help draw cooling Pacific breezes inland. Now, as you may have noticed, Toronto isn’t exactly situated on the Pacific Ocean. Instead, they ended up with a campus that has a constant wind chill warning in effect, even during the hottest days of summer. York is an example of what happens when architects go bad and concrete is on sale” (ibid.).
In my opinion it isn’t that bad. There are a bunch of new buildings, located on former parking lots. There’s student life. There’s a lot to explore, a small shopping strip, a big book store, sport facilities, cafés, a commuter office, etc., everything you need. Yes, some buildings are brutalistically ugly, but others are absolutely ok. And I like my flat (where the fire alarm started when I was cooking this evening, but that’s another story). Here are some pictures of the campus:
I’m living in one of these towers (5th floor, i.e. 4th floor, because in Canada ground floor counts as 1st floor):
That’s a view out of my flat window:
This is the view out of the City Institute, where I can use the student workplaces (yes, I mostly occupy the one at the huge window):
What is absolutely great about York University is the sport program. For 15$ (= 1,5 camemberts) a year you can use fitness centre, swimming pool, squash and tennis courts and some sport courses. That’s great. Unfortunately there’s no time to use it more often.
It’s more than a week ago, but here are two pictures of the Frosh Week:
One of the funniest things on campus: the queue of the people waiting for the next bus. Whenever I see this (and I see it after almost every lecture or seminar) I’m absolutely happy to live on campus.
This part of the library shows that Karl Marx is very important at York:
In the late evening you can take pictures like this, between 10.30am and 5pm it would be impossible to take this picture without a lot of students on it:
Ok, enough pictures. I have to continue reading the texts (see above). Wish I could drink this one now:
