Confession time: I used to be deathly afraid of my professors (and teachers). What?
I also used to be one of those kids that thought teachers lived at school all the time and didn't do anything else. What a shock it was when 6-year-old me saw a teacher outside of school for the first time and realized that teachers are human beings just like me.
Hello U of T!
I'm Liana and I'm writing for the Community Crew this year as the CTSI (Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation) Blogger. I'm a born and raised Torontonian, a first generation student, and in my third year double majoring in English and Book & Media Studies. You'll come to learn throughout the year that I really love writing and reading..if that weren't obvious from my choice of majors.
Me on a trip to Seattle last year!
September brings out all sorts of feels in the student body. If you’re like me, just the anticipation of the first week of September takes out way more energy than when I’m actually living it. The only thing that can take my mind off of the anxiety/excitement is trying to enjoy my last week of freedom.
Ah, August. You’re the Sunday night of summer; I hate that you’re here but at least I can use you to do the fun, summer things I promised myself I would do this time around. Let’s take a look at how I spent my last full week of August, shall we?
With the passing of reading week, somewhat begrudgingly, this past Monday marked the restart of classes. While the break definitely provided a much-needed period of rest, trying to get back into a school mindset the past couple of days has been quite the challenge. When we were in high school, spring break was the closest equivalent, but the difficulty levels of the courses puts the re-adjustment period on a level of its own.
Last week I wrote about some personal strides I’ve been hoping to make academically. Another thing I want to do this semester, though, is to become more involved in the U of T community. Seeing as how it is still #TryItUofT month, I thought now would be a perfect time to change things up.
Crazy as it may seem, this semester’s almost over! Classes ended this week, and finals season has finally arrived. If it weren’t for my impending doom, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that it’d already been four months since I first touched down in Toronto. Amidst all the hapless cramm — I mean, conscientious studying, in a bout of productive procrastination I thought I’d take a look back at my first semester here at U of T.
So much cool stuff happens on campus all day every day. It breaks my heart that I literally don’t have the time to go do and see and hear everything.
On Tuesday, I went to a free seminar that was held at Hart House called, “The Barbell Prescription”.
You know it’s going to be a good one when you’re already taking notes and salivating over the guest’s credentials.
Dr. J Sullivan joined us from Michigan. A former US marine, 3rd degree black belt in Karate, 3rd level Krav Maga practitioner, doctor, researcher… The guy received a $2 million research grant from the NIH… that’s the National Institutes of Health. It’s a big deal. On top of all that, he owns, manages and trains clients at a gym called Grey Steel, for aging adults.
Dr. Jonathon Sullivan Source: greysteel.org
We started off talking about what we considered an “athlete”, how we’d define the word. I learned a little bit about Greek athletes (the word athlete comes from the Greek “athlos” which means contest or feat). Apparently there was an athletic event in the Greek games, “Hoplitodromos”, which was a race in full battle armour. Competitors in the games had to swear an oath to Zeus that they trained for a minimum of 10 months. Awfully specific for so many years ago!
One thing that’s become particularly evident to me this semester has been the drastic changes needed to my time management methods. I’ve heard from other first years that they too have had to adjust to new work habits, regardless of the discipline. Relating to my own experience, my time budgeting skills in high school were pretty sub-par, which led to me attempting some serious adjustments on the fly in first-year.
We have all been newbies at some point or another. Fresh-faced and naive in comparison to The Wise Ones, a.k.a. the students experienced in the subject or activity. For most of us first-years, we are the literal definition of newbies in the face of the mysterious and ever-intimidating UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO.
Just like how you can spot a Weasley by their red hair and hand-me-down robe (Malfoy’s words, not mine), you can spot a university newbie by their Frosh t-shirt.
Back in September, I was surfing Facebook when I came upon the English Students’ Union’s post advertising their Peer Mentorship program. It caught my interest, but I hesitated to apply for it because I wasn’t sure what the benefits of having an English mentor were. However, after getting a positive, “Take whatever help you can get,” from my English course TA, I decided to go for it.
