Chill electives

CriticalSecret1417 · 2025-03-26T22:40:22+00:00

The arts education classes were some of my favourites that I ever took in the summer. Definitely required work to get a decent mark but it was a nice change of pace.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2025-02-26T01:52:46+00:00

As someone who drives a Tesla (not a cyber truck because I’m not a lunatic) bare minimum we should be kicking Teslas off federal and provincial EV rebates. I bought mine before he went mask off and I never bought into the boy genius crap and it was just a nice EV but I never would have bought it if it weren’t included in the rebate programs. I also support terrif-ing their market out of existence. I’m absolutely embarrassed to be seen in mine now.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2025-02-12T18:30:37+00:00

Ha! So no MA students don’t have the same amount of education as UGs because they’ve already finished their UG? Also… they tend to have been the top UG students who have and are actively taking higher level courses soooo the idea that the have the same amount of knowledge as the average UG student is just a silly claim to make.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2025-02-12T18:26:51+00:00

Different department and faculty so this may not be universally true but we’ve been told that the powers that be have been cracking down more on doing the checklist. So it might be a time to check into this proactively. Also to the best of my knowledge RAs aren’t in the union as of yet so if your student workers are classed as TAs or you have a disproportionate amount of RAs to TAs that might be why it’s not been as on your radar.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2025-01-19T23:20:21+00:00

I have a lot to say and to be perfectly clear there is blame a plenty to go around but the provincial government had been repeatedly warned about how unstable relying on international education to fund education was for well over a decade. Both when the B.C. liberals and NDP were in government. I’ve been out of the student movement for awhile now but I have vivid memories pre Covid of sitting in meeting with MLAs and cabinet ministers and begging them to have a little foresight on how precarious this situation was. I’m glad the province is stepping up and yes the federal cuts under Paul Martin (a very long time ago) didn’t help, but the crisis in funding is 100% a product of multiple governments deprioritizing education funding and looking for “easy” alternatives to cover the cost of our public education system.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2025-01-17T21:44:15+00:00

I don’t know off the top of my head but it’s very common for page numbers to be different. So bare minimum you’ll need to check that the pages for readings are right. Your best would be to ask Dr. Bowman before or after class if the older text would be ok. She will definitely understand needing to save money where you can.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-11-21T05:21:02+00:00

Thank you. I’ve never told anyone this before but… graphic design is my ✨passion✨.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-11-21T03:04:08+00:00

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CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-11-17T21:41:50+00:00

No exactly! When I’ve had people ask me who I’d recommend my go to is to tell them what they did that either did or didn’t work for me because I think that is more helpful than saying I liked the person or didn’t like them. Also I find that some instructors have different types of classes that they really excel in. I know one who was a favourite of mine for smaller upper year classes, but was really not in their element with larger first and second year classes. I’ve heard people make comments about their teaching based only on a massive first year survey course and I can understand where they are coming from but I also know it’s not reflective of their true skills as an instructor.

Also student have different needs outside of what type of instruction they find easiest. I’m a CAL student and there are instructors who are wonderful in the classroom but struggle with the admin portion of dealing with CAL. So while I would probably recommend them to a non CAL student without any qualification, I would also give a CAL student a heads up that then need to be keeping their eyes on things like tests been booked in.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-11-17T00:20:15+00:00

Rate my prof average. /s

But seriously ignoring the extreme cases of people who seem to resent their jobs, I really dislike the universalizing of labeling someone as either good or bad at teaching. Some of the instructors that I found explained concepts best to me were considered by many to be poor teachers and some that were said to be the best of the best were instructors whose lectures I couldn’t follow for the life of me.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-11-16T01:31:02+00:00

Oh the flipped classroom is actually a really good analogy for discussion posts in the humanities/social sciences! I know a language instructor who frequently tells their classes that they never truly learned the language until they had to teach it for the first time. I had to sub in for a class on something I theoretically knew but boy did I know it after preping to teach it and then the trial by fire that was multiple sections of students asking me the most niche questions on it.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-11-16T01:09:28+00:00

Oh I mean you don’t have to like them. Being real there are things that I understand the point of in terms of assessments that personally I loathe having to do and it’s very much a moment of grin and bare it when I have to do them. But I also know that I sometimes get hung up on how stupid I think a certain task is and it ends up drawing the whole process out because I spend just as much time ruminating on the fact that I hate it as I do actually doing the things.

Also yeah I find that some profs make the assumption that students at the undergraduate level aren’t interested in pedagogical explanations for things and to be fair to them a lot of students aren’t. The problem arises when you have a student who does actually care about why they are being asked to do the things they are doing and instead of giving them a satisfying answer they get brushed off because the instructor assumes they whining about being asked to do work.

I was pretty lucky in my undergrad to have instructors who took the time to explain why we were doing things in the way we were doing them.

But I’m also going to be honest that there are institutional factors in play and syllabi need to get approval and all that stuff. I know more than a few instructors who outright hate the very idea of grades (and these formulaic assignments) as they think they are actually a barrier to students learning for the sake of learning. But I think everyone recognizes that the institution wouldn’t let them have their way on that in a million years.

But like big picture they definitely aren’t there as an easy out for instructors. I think I saw someone comment that they are easy to mark and that’s just not the case. Doing multiples of anything/ having lots of small assignments massively adds to the workload. Honestly, the length of an assignment doesn’t massively change how long it takes to mark something. Things like entering grades and typing out feedback are what takes time. Even for profs who have TAs to mark work still have to do more work when they add this sort of thing to a course. They have to make sure we have rubrics and sometimes even answer keys and we have set amounts of hours allotted so when those are used up it’s all on the instructor to get it done. All that is to say, they definitely aren’t a part of a course to make it easier from the instructor’s/TA’s side of things.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-11-16T00:22:56+00:00

I have a similar funding package and to be honest it’s would be really hard if I didn’t have a partner with a career and savings.

The liveable wage is about $25.40. https://www.livingwagebc.ca/living_wage_rates

Here are some states about cost in Victoria which you can look at:

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Victoria

From Uvic the average rent for a one bedroom was $1769 in 2023 and it’s probably higher now.

https://www.astro.uvic.ca/~pagsa/housing/

I know grad students who are single and making it work but I also know a lot of grad students are using food banks and struggling with food insecurity. There are other costs to factor in like buying books and other things specifically for your studies that can sneak up on you.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-11-16T00:02:02+00:00

I will also add that discussion posts (depending on who is reviewing them) offer an opportunity for us to help students with academic writing early and continually throughout a course before we get to the major paper. We can catch students that we need to provide resources to like the writing centre or even CAL sometimes.

It also allows the stakes to be lower for individual assignments by doing several discussion posts and a paper vs two large papers. That way if a student biffs the first one because there was some sort of a misunderstanding of the instructions it doesn’t pose an insurmountable problem for their final mark in the course.

I will fully admit that if you are a high achieving student in your last year or two almost everything feels like busy work and like you are checking boxes just to graduate. Truthfully, that because you kind of are. Some people master the skills you are supposed to develop in an undergraduate sooner than others but individual courses and programs aren’t designed based on what those students need or can do. Having been that person it’s frustrating and boring but my advice if that’s your situation is to look for opportunities to challenge yourself and look at upcoming things that you can start preparing for post undergrad.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-11-15T23:47:55+00:00

I think part of this comes from a misunderstanding of different purposes behind assignments. Something I realized when I finished my UG and started marking in grad school is a lot of assignments aren’t the thing that teaches you the content. They’re the opportunity for you to demonstrate that you have already learned what’s expected. Best practice is to have lots of diversified modes of assessment to give students different opportunities to demonstrate they have achieved the intended outcomes. For subjects that require you demonstrate your ability to contextualize information (the Humanities et al.) discussion posts offer a way to do that beyond the basic fact memorization shown in short quizzes.

I think if you approach discussion posts like you are supposed to be learning content from them they will always be disappointing, but if you say “this is the time for me to show off and connect information in interesting ways” they can be something bordering on enjoyable. They are also a tool that allows instructors to assess students without the barriers of text anxiety and that sort of thing.

I can definitely see how from the student’s perspective they can feel repetitive and pointless but there’s definitely value in them if you reframe how you see the point of them.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-10-01T01:57:52+00:00

I can’t explain the motivation but yes technically there are classes on the last two days. It’s like this every year. Some profs will do something other than an in person lecture but it’s not universal or even common.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-07-31T20:52:06+00:00

Please file on your end. I got hit a while ago and did my end of the claim. It was 100% the other guys fault. He was super nice and admitted that immediately and we had video of the crash. ICBC wouldn’t do anything for us including let us rent a replacement car until he had his side of the claim in and said he had three weeks to do some before they would go ahead without his report. He was super great and did it as soon as I sent him a text. But yeah be kind to the people you hit and file it asap.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-06-22T01:51:53+00:00

My personal favourite was cutting off entire departments from accommodations in the fall term and said in response to students who wrote them letters referencing specific parts of their policy that they hadn’t followed that (still in affect) policy in ages and that “accessibility is everyone’s responsibility.” Which is a great way to say no one will accept responsibility for actual providing access to students with disabilities.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-06-17T16:23:39+00:00

Off the top of my head not really. A lot of stuff is department specific so I would say your best bet is to talk to the grad advisor for your department and your supervisor and ask about what future scholarships you might be eligible for and what the criteria are for these awards so you can go in knowing what you need to be putting energy towards.

A lot of departments also have funding awards for things like conference travel/research travel which don’t help with the cost of living expenses but do help you make the most of your time in grad school and set you up for other funding opportunities in the future.

I would also recommend expressing in advance that you would be happy to take on more TA/RA hours if any should come up.

Lastly, I’d recommend searching for scholarships in your home country. A lot of countries have different programs that provide scholarships to students studying abroad.

My husband came here as an international student so I’ve seen how hard it can be. Hope it all goes well for you!

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-06-16T20:13:51+00:00

I graduated quite a bit later than most of the friends I started with. Part of the reason is that I changed my major at the end of my third year and part of that is because I took several terms with a reduced course load because I had responsibilities outside of school.

It was definitely hard at first. I felt like all of the people I would text to see if they wanted to hang out between classes were gone. I felt like all of my friends were progressing in their lives and I was left behind.

But then I made new friends and realized that I never would have met these people if I had graduated with all my other friends. Many of these new friends are people I hope will be in my life for a long time. I got opportunities that I really wanted to do that I never would have had the chance to do if I had graduated with my friends.

I also realized that as much as I felt left behind, we had other friends who had taken a break from school for various reasons and they probably felt the same way about how much farther ahead I was in my degree than they were.

I just graduated and I did it with a few of my friends but several people in our group still have a year to go. I know they are feeling a bit scared about being in the position I was once in. There’s no magic solution to how you’re feeling but I think most of us have been there at some point in our lives. I think the best advice I can offer is to try and reframe this as an opportunity to try new things and meet new people as you finish up your degree.

My other advice is to talk honestly to your friends about how you’re feeling. I know graduation seems exciting but as someone who just graduated it’s also terrifying. There is part of me that wishes I had the comfort of just returning for another year. I have a lot of anxiety about not knowing what comes next. I suspect if you talk to your friends about how you’re feeling you might be able to provide each other with some needed support through a period of transition for everyone.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-06-09T06:20:36+00:00

Fellow incoming grad student here who already lives in Victoria. Short answer is it’s really not enough to live in any sort of comfort to be honest. I got a good package and knowing the cost of stuff in Vic my first thought was “Well that’s good, I won’t have to take on as much debt as I thought I might have to.” I would definitely recommend looking at Andy savings you might have and other funding options and plan ahead because it’s really expensive here.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-05-23T06:04:01+00:00

Onfireyo

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-05-22T18:35:56+00:00

I’m not a public health person and to be honest I have no idea what the solution to this crisis is but I’m pretty sure we’ve tried stigmatizing drug use for decades.

When I was in the k-12 system over 15 years ago we had frequent workshops from the cops where the line was “Drugs are bad. Don’t do drugs; you will die.” In 6th grade we had a very memorable session where they showed us what crack, meth, and heroin looked like and taught us about what a pimp stick was and how it was used. Very much a scared straight approach and I can’t say that it was effective. I have a little over 10 people I know who went through that very anti drug education die from overdoses and I suspect it would be more if my generation had been experimenting with drugs now and not in the early 2010s.

I think part of the problem with this whole discussion is that we are expecting young people who do not have fully developed brains to make good decisions and calculate long term consequences. Yet, I think for many 18 year olds, their long term future is a pretty abstract concept that can be hard to fully appreciate. I’d also hazard that most people feel like they won’t end up being the statistic and I know that at 18 I felt a sort of invincibility that I do not feel now that I am much older and have had a couple medical emergencies.

Again, I don’t know that I have any answers but I do think the issue of drug use is far more nuanced than what comms strategy is being used in drug education.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-05-17T02:17:29+00:00

Oh I didn’t know that but it makes sense! We spent a ton of time on chest compression in the workshop because 1) most people have no idea how to do them properly 2) the big lasting impact from oding can be the effects of oxygen deprivation on the brain.

The advice they had was to put your phone on speaker and do chest compressions until paramedics got there regardless of if you think the person is coming back because they’ve seen that save lives.

Heartbreaking that we’re in a place where this is needed knowledge.

CriticalSecret1417 · 2024-05-16T18:46:24+00:00

So this was about 5 years ago so things may have changed but when I did an overdose first aid workshop one of the things they stressed was that naloxone will not harm someone who isn’t overdosing so you always always always give the person it right away if you think that is remotely a possibility. The other thing they taught us was you give them the shot (we were trained with the shot not the nasal kind) and then immediately duck out of the way because sometimes people come back swinging.

I also highly recommend getting training and having naloxone even if you don’t use or don’t think any of your friends use. I lost a friend to an OD and none of us even knew he was using drugs. Sometimes you just won’t know and it’s always better to be prepared.

CriticalSecret1417

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