An Update of Sorts

I am sure that all two of you are waiting with bated breath to hear the results of the e-mail I was writing a while ago.

So far it is optimistic! They sound interested, although understandably cautious. Right now the conversation is on hold until the prof I was talking with returns to York from a trip, which will be later in August.

And until then I have work for one more week and at the same time I prep for my trip to York to visit Eaquae Legit.

And in that time, I am making trilobites from copper wire.

On Succeeding in Life, or Not

Students chart zigzag routes, study finds

The two paragraphs that I found most interesting in this article are these:

"The downside of the findings, Prof. Finnie said, is that the numbers show that many students are not content with the choices they make out of high school. (The Statscan numbers do not take into account enrolment patterns of mature students.)

Some switching is probably healthy, Prof. Finnie figures, but so much movement suggests that a portion of students are either turned off by their campus experience, don't have enough information going in, or are unprepared."

"The downside" is an interesting choice of words. I would not call this situation a downside so much as the inevitable push for students to know by sometime in grade 10 Exactly What They Will Do For The Rest Of Their Lives After University Which They Will Certainly Attend Or Fail And Die Alone In A Gutter Somewhere Forgotten By Everyone. Of course many students are not content with their choices that they make just after high school! What do you expect? I mean, really! We are taught that we have to go to university, and if we take a year off after high school we will never go back. I was told that countless times by numerous people in my final year of high school when I had decided to take a year off to make some money to afford to go to school. Aside from the fact that I would have gone back anyway, I half went back just to spite everyone who said I'd never do it.

If you are going to expect people to jump right in and never get to know what the real world is like, you can't expect them to stay in their first choice right out of high school. How many people stick to their first job? I'd bet that that percentage is lower than the figures given for students who don't change either programmes or schools.

That incessant belief that people have to be students to be really successful and that they should know what they want to do right out of high school is a huge problem. If we would accept that maybe, just maybe there are other options, and maybe not everyone who can be successful -- even a successful academic -- should go to university as soon as they finish high school, maybe we would have a far more successful and happier society. And maybe we wouldn't have so many people who are only in school because their parents are making them and they've been told that if they don't go to school they won't succeed in life.

Prepping for Applying to Grad School

So I'm looking to apply to the Research English and Literature programme at the University of York. I really want to do a research degree instead of a taught degree, and as their Medieval Studies programme only does a taught degree for the MA level (and their course modules are very sparse and uninteresting to me), I will try to look at medieval stuff through the English department. There are a number of profs who are both in English and Medieval Studies (which is multi-disciplinary at York), so that should not be a problem there. What I do need to do, however, is find a topic that I would like to research for a year, that I can research for a year, and that someone will be willing to supervise me for.

I am seriously thinking about studying disability in medieval fables and the roles that disability and the disabled have in medieval fables and in fables in the middle ages. One source I can look at is the Romulus Anglicus version of Aesop's fables, said to be written around late antiquity or the early medieval period, as well as Alexander Neckham's Novus Aesopus, assuming I can find a copy. One thing that cannot be contested is the presence of disability in Aesop, and by these two sources, it is evident that they were used and re-worked in the medieval period. The real question there would be, is there enough to write a thesis? A search of Google, JSTOR and of the UofT library system suggests that at the very least, Aesop and disability has not been deeply examined (which means either I suck at searches, I've found a new and exciting topic and it's mine all mine, or there's not enough to make it worthwhile to write on it). I could also look at other fables from the middle ages, which would take at least a bit of searching.

And now that Greg has shown up and helped me write an e-mail to a prospective supervisor, I wait! *Quakes with FEAR*

Adoration, and Classes, and Wedding! Oh my!

I am going to have a very busy year, this next year. Right now a small group of us at the Newman Centre are planning a weekly Eucharistic adoration service. Many churches have adoration services, including Newman (on Fridays at 1pm), but less common is a service where there is music involved. It's certainly not new, but it's not extremely common, either. We are still sorting out exactly the format and pattern of music and silence, but we are looking to combine those two elements in the adoration service. There was one thing that struck me as interesting. From what I can tell, it was suggested that there might not be a demand for an adoration service, especially as the one that they already have does not have an overwhelming attendance. To that, two things came to my mind: first that 1pm on a weekday is not the most accessible time slot by any stretch of the imagination; and second, that just because there has been no perceived demand does not mean we cannot create a demand. If it is made, they will come.

I also thing this may be a good way for me to keep myself praying in a regular manner. Sure, I go to church every week, but that time is like tithing, in a sense. It is time and prayer given willingly, but it is entirely expected that I give them, because they are not mine to withhold. Other prayer and time are fully free gifts, and they are good gifts to give, and good to spend with God. And I feel I have not done so well at that this past while. So in addition to my looking forward to worshiping in this manner and getting something like this going at Newman, the accountability involved in organising such a time would be good.

The next major thing I have is that I just finished shopping for classes. And it was something like dragging the bottom of the barrel for the degree I'm less enthused about. At the end of the day I am taking The Medieval Tradition, Celtic Spirituality, and The Medieval Child to finish my Medieval Studies degree, and Canadian English, Psychology of Language, Advanced Phonology, Advanced Syntax, and Disorders of Speech and Language to finish my Linguistics degree. The Psychology of Language class is rather a last minute addition. I had planned to take Introduction to Semantics, if only to have another 200-level arts class instead of a 300-level science class, but it conflicted with the time that Eucharistic Adoration is at. So we will see how it goes. The first semester will be five classes and almost entirely Linguistics, save for the year-long The Medieval Tradition (nothing like leaving the intro course until last, right?). And then the second semester will be four classes and almost entirely Medieval Studies, save for Advanced Phonology. I hope that it will all go well. And I am very sad not to have room for a Latin class. Well, technically, I do, but I'd rather relax with only 4 classes. We will see if I decide to drop in a 200-level Latin just so I can read 30 lines a night and it'll all be Caesar, having built bridges, killing Gauls.

And then, to top it all off, I need to start planning a wedding and making phone calls (anxiety!!!) and all that jazz. I should really get on finding a photographer very soon.