These are it, friends.

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Me, with cap and gown, through the magic of Photoshop, in a rose garden. 

Me, with cap and gown, through the magic of Photoshop, in a desert garden.

Me, with cap and gown, through the magic of Photoshop, in an English cottage garden.

Me, the original photo, with no cap, in the Hammerson Hall lobby after graduation.  I always wanted to wear a cap and was disappointed that we were not given any.  So, with the magic of Photoshop, I can now have any scenario I want.

Another perspective

My friend Paul and me.  Sharon was taking the photos and refused to pose for the camera.

Me, accepting diploma (and handshake) from the College President.

Me, having my scarf put on my shoulder by Prof Norman.

Prof Carole, talking to one of her students (no one I know).

Prof Ellie, who taught me Photoshop and InDesign, and Photojournalism (although this is not a good example of that).

These are two of my fresh-faced nemeses.  Kaitlin on the left and Nadia on the right.

Epilogue

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So, was it worth it?  I suppose so, although my experience at the College was very stressful.  I did learn a lot and was very productive which was probably more than I could have done just sitting at home.  But I was in a time warp I never managed to get out of.  So many things that make people remember college was not going to be my experience.  Often it has been the turning point of people’s lives – a place where they meet their spouse or best friends, or made invaluable career contacts that then shaped their lives.  None of this happened to me.

I had convinced myself that although I was going to be in an institution and system built for people much younger than me, perhaps these days it would be more mixed.  It was for some classes, but not for mine.  The social club most appropriate for me – The Mature Students Club - never did pan out.  Almost no one showed up to the meetings and eventually it fell apart.  The peer mentor program was not appropriate for me, because the only peers the College had available to mentor me were people 40 years short of understanding what I was going through.  

In some way the quality of the classes was disappointing.  The Introduction to Spanish Culture final semester elective was about on the level of watching stories about the Mayans on the History cable channel.  In fact a lot of my answers on the tests came from my remembering what I saw on TV about the Mayans and the Aztecs.  The class was amazed that I knew the capital of Costa Rica was San Juan.  Well, I have had 40 years of reading magazines and newspapers, and listening to the news and having friends who travelled there to discover that.  The course reminded me of something a travel agency would screen for potential tour customers.

Also the whole Journalism program cost me at least 30% more than I had planned.  Had I known that would happen it would have been a deal breaker.  I would not have gone through with it.

As of this date, I still don’t have a job and am $15,000 in debt.

I do feel more professional though.  I do finally feel I have a profession.  The support and confidence of my teachers was very inspiring.  I did pick up a discipline, a self-driven working rhythm and an understanding of non-fiction writing much more than I had before.  I have become more of a master of the craft and can easily hold my own conversation with any professional in the business.  The ease with which I communicated with the teachers has made that clear.  I am no longer a dilettante or a wannabe.  And it’s probably too soon to tell what the results of this are going to be.  We shall see.

Next post will be the Convocation on June 9th, as soon as I get all the photos of it together I will publish it.

Career Design and Internship

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We were now nearing the end, and my next great worry was the final part of the Career Design course – getting an internship.  We were supposed to do this on our own and my stomach curdled every time I imagined appearing at any interview with an editor and the look on his or her face when I walked in the door.  I was asking to be an intern at a time when people in that office were making retirement plans.  I got quite panicky about it at times.

Prof Norman assured us it would be no problem getting an internship because basically we were offering people free work.  I did find it hard when I researched the major publications however, because most of them had their own internship programs and they did not fit the priorities of the College.  They were offering mostly three-month programs instead of the one month we were supposed to take, with their own time scales and with all sorts of things they wanted or needed to see in writers.  So the only recourse, really, was much of the smaller publications.

I sent emails to about 22 and only received 2 replies in return. Close to April, the month of internship, most of the class got placements but I and a few were still not picked up.  One of the replies I got, again, wanted a 3 month unpaid internship, which I could not afford.  The other one was a stroke of luck.  It was for a magazine called Canadian Cinematographer.  Many, many years ago I wrote regularly for a magazine called Cinema Canada and included a copy of an article I had written for them in 1981.

I received an ecstatic reply from the editor.  He had also written for them even earlier than I had, and wanted to hire me (for the internship) on the spot.  He didn’t even need to see my portfolio.  He said I had him at ‘Cinema Canada’.

So that was my internship.  Good thing was that it was very easy assignments I could do from home, and my age helped in this case because the editor was the same age and worrying about the same things I was worried about – like getting old and not having any money.  The bad thing was there was no hope of being hired for this magazine because he was the only employee and they had a very, very tiny budget.  The readership for Canadian Cinematographer is really quite small.

However, one of my assignments was to interview the cinematographer, Paul Sarossy, for the international TV series The Borgias, which is an Irish/Canadian/Hungarian co-production.  Part of my working hours counted watching The Borgias.  I got hooked on it anyways.  It was good.  It stars Jeremy Irons.  I was delighted to see that in spite of his being 62, and not really in demand as a leading man for Hollywood blockbusters much anymore, he is still a powerful presence, has that incredible voice and is still very sexy.  His body just knows how to be when making love to a woman.  I wanted to jump in and join them.

I received good marks for my internship and the editor was pleased.  He was not very pleased with the other intern he took on though.  It was someone from my class and he said he got almost no response from her.  She did not get her assignments in on time, she never submitted her reports for him to sign and send back to the College and was basically useless.  He did not tell me who it was but we were both shocked because if she had made it that far she made it through a lot of hurdles, and this was just the last stretch.  To fail the class, and not graduate because of something like this was totally self-destructive.  All I can say is I don’t understand.  But there were so many things like this I did not understand, for my two years, that even though I was shocked, I was not surprised.

The editor said that his daughter was currently on an internship as a social worker and her internship was working in a clinic for the drug-addled and mentally ill.  She completed it though, with more hours than she needed.  But for journalism I have seen the most astonishing inertia.

Anyway I am out now.  I have been kicked out of my protective nest of the last two years and here I am back again, in the non-workforce, with all my funds used up.  Although many of my experiences feel like they would never end, right now I feel like the two years sped by in the twinkling of an eye.  It seems only yesterday I was calling and emailing for work somewhere and here I am doing it again.   

However, by the end of August I will be eligible to receive my government pension and a guaranteed income supplement, which is not much, but it is something.  It may be enough for me to pursue a couple of project ideas I have. In the meantime I must find work in between and it is still so very hard to find a job.  I hope this time speeds by to August just as quickly.

One good thing about the over $10,000 debt I have accumulated for this is that those loans were given to me based on absolutely no collateral.  If I can't pay it back there is nothing they can do to me other than take away my credit cards.  That will be humiliating but the good thing about having nothing is that you have nothing to lose.

However, my next event in this adventure is to attend my convocation, wearing a cap and gown, and it’s nice that I am able to do that at last.  An awful lot that contributed to the high marks I learned in these two years is the self-education I have pursued in the last 30 years.  We shall have to see what happens from here on. 

I tred into the Arena of Muckraking and Possibly Get on the Government's Hitlist

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After finishing our desktop magazine, we switched to writing for the online newspaper as we had done for the previous semester.  I could no longer choose to write for the Arts beat, so I chose the Issues beat.  Interestingly enough, this turned out to carry more responsibility than I bargained for.

Recent events in the news focused on how KAIROS, a local human rights group who had been a distributor of Canada’s foreign aid to several of its overseas partners, was suddenly, after 30 years of loyal service, cut off from receiving this foreign aid.  Our present government is super pro-Israel and in order to impress Jewish voters, accused this human rights group of anti-Semitism because two of their partners dealt with Palestinian refugees.  I thus decided to focus my article on what exactly is the definition of anti-Semitism.  This was my first serious journalistic article in which I was out there, competing with the big guys for media access to government sources (like the Prime Minister). I had decided to challenge the ruling government’s wisdom in declaring this human rights group anti-Semites and now risked getting myself on its enemies’ list.  If the government could cut off funding to this group could they cut off funding to my College?

(The slogan on the t-shirt above says, "KAIROS is not going away.")

The human rights group did volunteer to be interviewed by me and I had hoped it would reveal their outrage.  But the group's answers, provided by a PR person, were so careful, so politically correct, and so circumspect I realized I was not going to get any emotion, or the outrage I had hoped to hear, into her quotes.  I was the one who had to make the leap to the conclusion of what she must be REALLY trying to say by balancing it off against what was already in the media, and the group’s actions in defending itself.

Forget talking to the government.  I realized what a paltry fish in the sea I was when I tried to contact a government spokesperson - nay, what a plankton.  People the media is after do not have to answer the media very quickly.  I knew I was one of thousands competing for the spokesperson's time.  I did leave a message on our Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s voicemail (it was not his greeting on his voicemail) asking for an interview, and surprise, surprise, he did not return my call.  At least I was able to say that my request for an interview got no response.

This time I felt the cold breath of fear coming down on me.  This was the first time I was writing something where I had to absolutely get everything down right.  Quotes had to be perfect, dates and situations had to be perfect or else some awfully important people could get awfully angry with me - and the College.  Big shit could come my way.

It was tense, but all in all my editor-in-chief Prof Norman, and my managing editor Prof Laura were quite impressed with my work.  While I allowed the Prime Minister to maintain a level of dignity I did not believe he deserved in the situation I pointed out succinctly that merely helping Palestinian refugees did not qualify as anti-Semitism by anyone, including those of prominent Jewish citizens (whose quotes I did get to back that up).  I lightly slapped the government’s wrist.  I have no idea if anyone in the government, never mind the PM, ever even got to read my article.  Nobody out there responded to it......which was a big relief.

I will leave a link here to the website where it is published:  http://tinyurl.com/6bxaec9 

We Plod On Fearlessly

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Alas I have been tardy in posting again.  Tardy in finishing this off, and yes it has finished.  I have issues with starting things and issues with finishing.  But since I know so many of you are sitting at the edge of your seats, waiting, unable to continue on with your lives until you know – yes, I have finished, and officially graduated although the marks have not yet been released. 

The reason I know I graduated is that I received an official invitation to the convocation ceremonies, congratulating me on graduating, and that happens only to graduates. 


It will be June 9, 2011 at the Living Arts Centre (large concert hall) in Mississauga.  That is the municipality/city that lies between Toronto and Oakville.

With these last few posts (spread across dates more evenly) I will catch up to the happenings in my fourth – and last - semester.  

One of the reasons I haven’t written much about this semester as yet is because it was substantially less melodramatic than the previous ones.  By this time I have acclimatized and my fellow students (all under 25) have matured and we are not that far apart.  Or at least we are used to each other.  No one stares at me anymore or shuffles uncomfortably if I sit at their table.  They even seem to accept the inevitability that I may be in their group for something.

I have come across several other young students who also have deep wounds from the whole group work business and were quite adamant that they want some kind of rules and discipline imposed on such things.  I have come across born leaders who can instantly take charge, organize and carry great responsibility.

For half the last semester’s online publishing responsibility the instructors decided to divide us into workgroups of 15 each and that worked much better than groups of four.  With 15 people you can deal with slackers much better.  Each group had two students as co-editors and they kept the group pretty much in line and on schedule.

This time the whole class produced 4 magazines (a group of 15 each produced 1 each) with each of us having an appointed position with clearly defined deadlines and responsibilities – you know, like in a real workplace.  I got the position of ‘writer’ (4 available) while others chose editor and design production staff.

Because our group chose technology as its subject I wrote on how activism had changed with the new technologies.  I wrote about Avaaz.com, a petition site and astonishing enough, I discovered CitizenLab.org, a group whose home was the University of Toronto.  Citizen Lab monitors the state of the Internet in various countries and can tell which countries block off the internet and when – and they have software that can find out if your computer has been hacked by various government sources.  They discovered that the government of China is, or was trying to, hack into other government computer systems all over the world.

www.citizenlab.org

It all went well.  Better than the instructors expected mostly because everyone showed up.  Everyone fulfilled his and her obligations and gave it their best.  The cover of "Technophilia" is up there.  I had no part in designing it, but if you had any idea of how little the ones who did design it, were capable of producing it a year ago, you would see it as miraculous.

January

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My, my, it is 2011 already.  I am always surprised when a New Year rolls around.  Here I am coming into my last semester.  Funny how that works.  While I was going through my courses the time often seemed interminable, like it would never end.  And now it seems like has just flown by.

I can remember distinctly wondering if I should take the leap and go to college, it seems, just a short time ago.  Now graduation is in sight.

The marks from the last semester were pretty good – mostly A’s and one B.  Trouble is I find that spoiling me.  Now instead of being afraid of failing I am afraid of getting less than a B.  I will be so disappointed in myself if I get lots of B’s, C’s and D’s now that my standard has been set higher.

I am definitely getting more used to the place and the class is more used to me.  If I had another year or two to go, as would happen in a university program, we might actually bond and blend and see no differences in each other.  This time we returned and first day looked up to see whether our practicum would be writing online for the first 6 weeks or the paper again and then switching.  But this time something new was up.  I, and half of the others, were listed under “Special Online Project”.  Intriguing.  What could that be.

Profs Norman and Martin cooked up a new idea.  While those of us who were not on the list published news online, we would be doing something new.  We would be divided up into 2 teams, 15 in each, and put together a magazine completely on our own, from scratch.  We would decide what it was to be about, we would name it, we would volunteer for all the positions: editor, art director, photographers, illustrators and writers.

This was a brilliant solution to the usual 2, 3 and 4 person group hell.  With 15 in one group someone could slack off without having a devastating effect on the others.