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.

December - another semester crawls to an end

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Another semester is coming to an end.  It’s so strange.  On one hand it feels like some of these days and moments have been the longest in my life, it also feels like it’s going by so fast.

I created a podcast, as another assignment for the Video Production class and was proud to discover how easily I seem to take to video and audio editing.  Since I have two friends, Rose and Graham, who are bibliophiles I decided to make my podcast about the love of books and interview the two of them. 

They were keen on it and in fact it turned out to be an embarrassment of riches where I got 10 minutes worth of recording that I had to edit down to 2.  Also, Graham, who can become extremely enthusiastic when discussing a favourite book kept talking about the subject of the book, the Russian silent film director, Sergei Eisenstein, He was so enthusiastic about Eisenstein I couldn’t get a question in about the author.  This was supposed to be a podcast about books, so some opinion of comparison of authors was important, but no, Graham just went on and on about Sergei.

I realized I did not have a book review story.  So what does a good journalist do when her interview does not fit the focus of the story, and there is no time to get other or more interviews?  Well change the focus of the story of course!!!  To solve the time problem I simply edited out Rose, and changed the name of the podcast from The Ardant Bibliophile to Crazy for Classic Films.  To break up Graham’s long monologues I recorded and edited in suitable questions to make it seem like he was answering my questions instead running on his own steam all that time.  That’s media folks!

My ezine was a mixed success.  I could not get any interviews with anyone in the animation department which meant my original idea of writing on the college’s worldwide reputation for producting world class animators was impossible.  This was an ezine which could have been of interesting not only to everyone in the college but in the town as well because it champions the achievement of a local institution.  I was forced therefore, to find animation stories in the neighbouring big city.  However, there really is no mass consumer market for animation stories.  No one wants to read about the doings of Shrek and his family, or even less, about the doings of Shrek’s animators.  So the only market for an ezine on animation is people who are interested in the technical aspects of animation – usually people inside or thinking of going inside the animation industry. 

But I am a total outsider.  I couldn’t write stories about the technical or production or financial aspects of making animated films.  I write lifestyle features, from a sociological point of view.  That’s what my 4 stories were about.  They would have been fine in the Sunday section of a newspaper that people could read lazily over breakfast in bed, but again, no one would want to do such a thing with an animation publication.  The articles are a fun read, but there is not a drop of useful information for animators in them.  These are people who would subscribe to an animation ezine least because it’s a fun read.

So, the result was, my ezine, Northern Lights, looked good, it was well written, I got an A for it.  But I have absolutely no confidence about being able to sell a subscription for it to someone, should I be required to do that.

As the year would down to a close I realized that once again, I had not received a penny of payment for the Studio Monitor job I did.  For the 3^rd semester, once again, the money was not coming into my account.  Emails flew everywhere, all the papers re-filed again and an inquiry went into progress as the college broke for Christmas.  Also, I noticed that my funds were running really low and I may not be able to live out the last semester on what I had left.

November - New delights and old worries

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For the first time we are now writing online, for The Sheridan Sun Online – and I like it!  We chose from a selection of beats to cover and I got the Arts beat, which is what I love the best.  And no groups.  We do this all on our own.  I felt relieved also because the online publication goes out to the internet world.  Anyone searching for a topic might have the search engine come up with my article and if they’re interested, than I am writing for them.  I do not have to tailor my writing for the interests of 18-20 year-olds from the surrounding suburbs anymore.

We design our own pages on Dreamweaver, search out ideas and sources anywhere we can find them, and write them for almost any length – within reason.  No need for a strict amount of words that have to fit into a fixed space.  There is tons of space on the internet, and I’m loving it.  I wrote articles on our city gallery, a collective of artists, a screenplay readers group, a local film festival and a Meetup group of theatre goers I belong to.  And I did not once have to get quotes from an 18 to 20-year-old I found in the cafeteria.

After an awkward start, the group of 3, (Roman, Alan and Eleanor), I was parachuted into started doing our video productions together.  All 3 were friends from high school and didn’t quite expect me to be their 4^th (who does?) but when they realized I was not going to pull any mother or grandmother trips on them, and they could talk dirty in front of me, they calmed down.  They liked me better when I came up with all the ideas, could write scripts in 5 minutes, had a good idea of how to tell a story visually and was willing to sneak into places they were afraid to go, with a hidden camera. We sort of even, kind of, sort of became friends – almost. 

I say almost because we had a really hard time getting our final assignment together and sometimes they didn’t show up to class, and they had the camera and our assignment.  Roman quit college without telling the other two.  Alan and Eleanor (a couple) were dreadfully behind in other assignments and couldn’t meet to plan the last shoot, and I was all alone.  Prof Cynthia said all of us had to come up with the final assignment somehow or else lose 20% of the marks, just like the rest of the class.  Alan and Eleanor went off and did the assignment without me, so I had no choice but to sign out a video camera on my own and do a video shoot, writing, camera work, interviewing and editing, all by myself.  I did a story on the college’s day care.  It was rough, but all told not bad, seeing the challenges I was up against.  Prof Cynthia was very proud of what I managed to pull together.

But to be honest most of our productions were pretty bad by professional standards.  Basically we were taught to make decent home movies.  We used a Canon HD camcorder, which at $599 is basically a home camcorder.  The pros still have huge black video cameras they have to steady on their shoulders.  Our editing suite was iMovie, a program that comes with an Applie computer.  The pros use  Adobe Premier or Final Cut.  But we didn’t have to be good in the class, all we had to do was show that we understood the concepts of broadcast news and made a brave attempt to make a good one.

However, Life Writing proved to be a disappointment.  Cybernation was so well organized, but for an ADHD person like myself Life Writing was extraordinarily disorganized.  Tests were due on different days of different weeks, and sometimes tests were on subjects we had not yet studied.  It was very stressful for me to have to check and double check to see what was different this week, and what expectations would come out of the blue.  I enjoyed reading the assigned memoirs and even writing some memoirs but the gamesmanship of online posting this program demanded left me confused and dismayed.

We had to a group presentation and was pleased to meet our central organizer, Samantha, a 19-year-old advertising management student who had picked the right profession.  She was promotional and she was organizational.  She took charge immediately and I was so relieved.  However, she too obviously had suffered from group work PTSD because she practically shrieked at us about how we better get our share done on time, and better do our load of the work, because she wasn’t going to do it for us.  I did as instructed, but the other two did not send her their part of the work until the last 2 days before it had to be sent to the instructor and Samantha, who had to streamline it and coordinate it, was so pissed off she was not a person you wanted to communicate with that weekend.

Shock time however.  I was turned down for the bursary to help students in financial need.  My calculations showed that my available funds were about $100 more than my financial needs.  But who can count on $100 over being a finite amount?  On another calculation, or emergency comes up I could easily be $100 under and I would qualify.  I thought insomuch as my personal income was so low, never mind that it was $100 over my stated needs, I thought I would qualify for the bursary.  Why should anyone have to live as frugally as I calculated I could?  Also, I had to include my government loans as income.  But for tax purposes loans are not considered income, they are considered liabilities.  That meant I had to go into greater debt because my personal funds were so low, therefore I was in financial need.  But nope, they considered the high amount of my loans to mean I was living high on the hog and they weren’t going to contribute to such a profligate lifestyle.  I had not accounted for that in my financing.  With my cousin not being able to give me the $1,000 she gave me last year, and now $2,000 down in bursaries, I started feeling a panic I had not had for at least a year and a half.

October - Real Life Halloween with witches and all

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I really enjoy writing editorials.  Basically an editorial is well-written opinionating.  It needs some basis in reality and being able to make sense on something to which readers can relate, but other than that it is merely an opinion, and who can question that?  Someone can question me, and my opinions, but not their validity.  So far I have been able to vent on group work and relay the positive benefits of liberal arts electives - against the opinion of some other teachers and students.

What is perplexing about writing for The Sheridan Sun, is the constant, total non-reaction from the targetted readership.  Group work is universally hated throughout the college, with many people, both instructors and students having few positive experiences with it, and yet, not a single letter to the editor.  Not one person stopped me and said, “boy, you really got it right with that editorial.”   Or even wrong.  I would have loved to have had it wrong if it meant knowing somebody read it.  The same with the electives article.  Apparently in other years the Dean of Liberal Arts always wrote a letter to the editor when someone criticized being forced to take liberal arts electives, but here I wrote some good reasons for them, and no letter came to congratulate me for it.

Anyway, my comfortable feeling of hope that things would be more mature this time round came crashing down this month.  I had mentioned Melanie as being my co-editorial writer.  I had my suspicions about her last year when she volunteered for the 4-person group to create a presentation on the history of travel writing, and I volunteered to join the the group, making us two, and she promptly told me she decided to leave the group and join another group with her friend, Tanya, leaving me the only one in the group.  Her visible discomfort with me, and the eagerness with which she sought another group to join was a bit disorienting, but then everything was disorienting last year.  Later on Joanne and friends joined, and we did do the presentation of the group.

Now that she and I were a team writing editorials, she seemed much friendlier and more willing to tolerate my company.  At the Video Production class, since we were all sitting together, all of us agreed that we would be a group.  That was nicely settled.

The following week I came late into class, Dinah and Melanie were sitting together but a couple of guys were sitting with them.  Since these table desks only have 4 spots I had to sit somewhere else.  Before I came in, everyone had signed their names to a sheet stating who was going to be together on which team.  After the class disbanded, Prof Cynthia brought the list to me, because I had not seen it to sign on, and I noticed, with a loud gasp, that Dinah and Melanie had signed up with the 2 guys who were at the table.  They were still around so I went over and asked what happened because last week we decided we would be on the same team.  Dinah and Melanie just shrugged their shoulders and said they didn’t remember such an agreement.  Okay…okay….disorienting…..but okay.  I was put on the only team who only had 3 members.  These were people I had never met before and so had no idea what it would be like working with them.

I was also with Dina and Melanie, the 3 of us again, in the Law and Ethics class.  Frequently we were asked to work on a problem in class as a team, which we proceeded to do.  I admit I had to lean over to hear Dinah and Melanie a lot, because they had a tendency to talk to each other and noticed me only when I was straining to lean over and struggle to get my opinions in, but I was trying not to be paranoid and suspect I was being rejected.

At the second class Prof Andy gave us an assignment to find a crime or court reporter to interview about his or her professional experiences.  I worked over the weekend researching a list of potential reporters, showed up Monday morning and discovered that Dinah and Melanie were already in class ahead of me, and had chosen the reporter.  I thought they were a bit hasty not waiting for me to show up with my list before they decided, but I thought, hey, I’ve been complaining that everybody was slacking off last year leaving me with all the work, I shouldn’t complain that these people were ahead of me.  At least it showed initiative on their part and that couldn’t be bad.  Melanie then suggested that I design the presentation, which I could do at the next meeting of the group.  Two days later I showed up to work on the presentation and Melanie told me she had already done it.  So far I had contributed nothing to this group work.

Then Melanie corners me and wants to know how and when did I presume I was part of a group with her and Dinah.  My jaw dropped!  I sat at the same table with them, I worked on the same problems with them as a group, why would I not presume I was part of their group for an out-of-class assignment?  Oh no, Melanie told me, I shouldn’t have presumed, I should have asked them if they wanted me to be in their group first.  Well, what group should I have been in?  All the people sitting at the table desks were the groups who worked with their groups.  We were asked to become groups of 2 or 3.  We were 3, I sat at their table, why wouldn’t I think I was part of their group???

Melanie was adamant and quite snarky about it.  Uh-uh.  I should have asked permission to join, I shouldn’t presume to be part of their group.  I think Dinah was embarrassed by this but she and Melanie were now BFF’s and she sided with Melanie.  My stomach sank.  I flashed back to high school.  I was being told I was not wanted in the group, and that I had to ask permission to join.  Oh God, I remember that feeling.  I remember the rejection.  I remember the mean girls exclusion ploy.  My impression of being accepted as an equal were shattered and for a time I had those awful reject, outsider, misfit, weirdo feelings again.  I was now expected to say “please”, “pretty, pretty please” to join a group?

I fired off an email to Prof Andy telling him what happened and telling him that from now on I was going to do all the out-of-class assignments by my myself.  I was not going to be part of any group.  He concurred that was probably the best strategy.  I did not sit with Dinah and Melanie again.

I must say I felt a little tremor of glee inside me when I heard that Melanie’s last editorial was rejected for publication because it was written so poorly.  Two can play the emotional immaturity game and it’s to learn all over again in college.

September - The Second Year Begins

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Once more I am throwing myself into the second (and final) year of my Journalism – Print program.  The courses this year are, Online Newspaper Practicum, Newspaper Practicum, World History and Politics, Video Production, Law and Ethics, Ezine and as elective, I chose Life Writing, an online course in memoir writing.

The four months of “summer break” were difficult, financially speaking.  The recession is still roaring and students in general have had a hard time finding jobs.  Many employers want students because they are young, with no physical or emotional limits and naïve about labour rights – none of which describes me.  So I only had about six weeks of employment.  Luckily I did manage to stretch my grant money to tide me over until I could borrow more money from the government to continue on.

The first day at college proved the old adage to me that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  I no longer felt the panic I had this time last year.  I did not lose any of my possessions.  Nor did I care if I was stared at.  The college was familiar and the faces were familiar.  At least 30% of the first year’s class did not return either because they failed or found something else they wanted to study more. 

The ones who remained had made a commitment to the course and to the work.  This became obvious with the first publishing of the College Newspaper.  Everyone just went out and got their story in on time as it should be done.  Prof Norman was our Editor/Instructor and he remarked how pleased (and surprised) he was that the stories came in without a hitch.  Nothing worse for an editor than to have an empty space in a newspaper, and a story that is due and does not come in to occupy it.  He reminded us thoroughly that we had better complete our assignments because if we didn’t he would have to do them, and he didn’t like doing them.

For this year I was accepted as an editorialist on the newspaper, which was good because I prefer to opinionate than dig out news college students might want to read.  The students who were in the class with me were the most responsible and hard-working students, and the ones I had so much trouble with last year either had not returned or ended up in the other of two classes that had been split 30 students each.  My standby partner Joanne had ended up in that other class, but I did not panic because the possibilities in my class looked good.

My first editorial for the College Newspaper was, in fact, on group work and the perils thereof.  I was relieved to discover that many people, even the ones with solid friendships and a great deal in common were upset at how little guidance or oversight came from the instructors and how tempers could be frayed if one or more of their friends slacked off.

This year we were going to produce another Ezine, but this time not as a group but as individuals.  Prof Davita, who ran the second year ezine class said she had so much trouble with groups last year that this time she decided we would work on our own.  We could choose our topic and had 10 pages in which to fill it up with feature articles and appropriate images, as well as design the front and back cover. 

I decided the smartest topic I could pick for my ezine was the college’s animation department.  I got the same part-time job again, as Studio Monitor, so I would be there a lot. The college is somewhat famous for the animators it has produced and I could find four articles to write about the program, the directors, the students and students who have gone on to become highly regarded in the animation industry.  All my information and people were right there on the college grounds and I didn’t have to run all over the city hunting them down.  It would be so easy.  Little did I know….

I was further buoyed by the possibilities of group work when I sat at a table desk in the Video Production class and two of the other younger students joined me.  The previous year younger students avoided me like the plague and sat at my table desk only if those were the last places left.  And then they avoided communicating with me whenever they could and either whispered among themselves or leaned over to other younger students at other table desks and chatted with them.

Dinah, who was young (19) but sincere and dedicated sat down automatically beside me, and another young woman, Melanie, joined us.  Our instructor Prof Colette told us that we would need to be in groups of four because we would have to be a news production team in this class.  One video camera would be allowed per group and each of us had to take turns being the writer, interviewer, camera operator and editor on the team.  Dianne and I had already worked in several groups and automatically agreed to be with each other and Melanie, whom I knew to be a responsible participant, agreed to be in our group too.

Later on that week, the three of us again sought each other out to share a table desk in the Law & Ethics class and proceeded to work on several in-class projects as a group.  We also sat together in the World History class.  I became relieved that the process of finding responsible group members came so easily this time and thought my group work problems were settled.  My online class this year would need group work but my online class last year, Cybernation, had gone extraordinarily well and it would obviously be a lot better picking participants because no one knew each other and so had no favourites to choose. 

Everything was in order.  What could possibly go wrong?

April - A Merciful Rest (sort of)

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So, the first year has finally ended.  I admit being  proud of myself for some things.  I attacked each task with vigour, giving more than was expected of me..  I had been told that I take the assignments too seriously, that when I take on a writing assignment I take on topics of great importance, great depth, monumental repurcussions on which the fate of mankind teeters precariously.  Everyone else?  They write about the price of gum going up at the corner convenience store, and such. 

For instance, for my Cybernation course we were given an assignment to write an essay on a technology and how it will affect society.  What did I choose?  Biofuels, and how they will reshape the social, economic and geopolitcal landscape, how they have the potential to launch the next Industrial Revolution.  What did others write?  The Kindle and how it will change people from paper book readers into e-book readers.  Or the GPS, on how it will change from the driver having to fiddle with maps to letting the car fiddle with maps.  I just don't know how to think small.  So I end up doing far more work than I need to.

However, it does mean that so far I am sure I got A's in most of the courses, some with an A+, one I think a B.  That's Photojournalism.  Alas the precision and technical expertise are not as easy to fudge as theoretical expertise.  I can be incredibly accurate theoretically, but not so much in concrete calculations.

The first part of the semester was relatively smooth, writing articles for the college newspaper.  The second part was a little more bumpy.  We got into the hated group work again.  I was hoping for a better experience this time because I was able to know the people more, and what their capabilities were like.  I had grown friendly with J and D and knew they were dependable, hard workers, serious about this course.  Also with Sandra and Nadia, who were good friends.  Sandra had always been friendly with me, she was taking an elective called "Aging Matters" about the problems with aging and geriatrics, which I thought a very mature subject for a 20-year-old.

Joanne,  Sandra, Nadia  and I became partners to create an ezine, and Sandra, Nadia and a guy named Charlie became partners to do an essay on Western Europe, each of us taking one country.  Sandra turned out to be a disaster, dragging along Nadia because although Nadia was willing to do more work, she tended to follow her friend when her friend was avoiding doing hers.  That is such a youthful best friend thing to do.  If you have a choice between responsible action and avoiding it if your best friend doesn't want to do it, you avoid doing the responsible action.  Yup.  I remember that.

Although, Joanne as usual, was dependable, her laptop broke down so the brunt of the work in creating the ezine fell on me.  At least the layout of it.  The last weekend before we had to hand it in, I worked almost 72 hours straight on it, with maybe 5 hours of sleep in between there somewhere.  The final stretch was 23 hours, finishing at 4:30 am.  Since I had to wake up for schoolat 5:45 am I just decided not to go to sleep at all because it would be terrible trying to get up.

For the Western Europe group, Charlie was willing to participate, but he was a part-time student and not easily at hand while Sandra and Nadia just avoided any meeting or work at all.  Even the day before we had to hand the work in, when we had to integrate the research on our four countries and get the work in as one essay.  So I warned Prof J about the whole thing and said I was handing my research - on Greece - separately.  He was cool with that. The circumstances did not surprise him.  But I hated the stress the whole thing caused.

Later I discovered several teachers had similar problems with Sandra.  Her attendance was haphazard, and her remarks as to why she did not participate in this and other groups, "well, nobody else was doing anything, so I thought, why should I?".  Great attitude.  I am sure she has a huge career waiting for her with that.

I joined Joanne and Dana on the group website we had to create.  This was a blessed relief because Dana loves creating websites and she just ran with it.  She is 18 years old, but she took the leadership and assigned Joanne and me our roles and it was wonderful not to carry much of a load.  The teacher loved the website.

 (Joanne and Dana surprised at me taking their photo. People here get surprised a lot because the nature of a photojournalist is to be sneaky. )

I have no idea who will be back next year.  First of all it'll have to be the people who passed, and there were many who were in trouble.  Some dropped out or dropped off.  We shall see.

No one still knows what is the future of journalism, of course?  All the teachers talk about the past because that's what they know.  The future is in turmoil.  Otherwise I think I would have a great in with the teachers, who all seem to like me and are impressed with what I can do.  If this industry was in a normal state, I would have no troulbe getting references, recommendations, advice, support and numbers to call.  But nobody really knows what to tell me now.  Most of the teachers here have worked on large consumer newspapers or magazines that are now in trouble, not the little trade or company publications still being published and so have no advice to give.  Two are retiring shortly, two are going into teaching because they can't get work doing.  Teaching always seems to be the refuge when people can't get jobs doing.

While it's evident that the public wants news and information, and that this is some integral human need and has been since the beginning of time, how to make a living at providing it is more shaky since so much of it is being given away for free.  How ironic, that in a world that has been created for capitalism where everything is potentially up for sale, this part of life has suddenly become free.

The actual campus is lovely and it's too bad that I am leaving it in spring and won't be back until fall, because I think summer will be the most beautiful here.  It has a lovely wooded area out back, and lots of places to stroll and commune with nature.  Being this is a small town, in summer, all the foliage will be out and the lake is not too far away.  The countryniess of the place will be refreshing. That I will miss.

 (A student who passed me on a path, in the woods, behind the college.)

Now, all I have to worry about is finding a job for the summer in an economy where no one is hiring.

March - the end of the first year looms near

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I am starting to get over the culture shock.  I still feel out of place here, but I am getting used to the feeling.  I have had some good conversations with some good counsellors and it's nice to know that people understand.  I tried to get an adult learning credit in the Writing for Newspapers 2 course because I know how to do it.  I am well along in that knowledge.

However, besides it costing me $85 to get assessed for an experience-as-knowledge credit I would have to submit three published, paid-for articles for each of the genres of newspaper writing we are being taught in this course.  I could do that for the profile writing, and the feature writing, and the editorial writing, but there is no way I could do that for the sports writing.  There is no way I have ever done sports writing.  I am willing to bet plenty of career journalists have never written a sports story in their lives.  But unless I can produce three professionally-published ones my previously professionally published articles are not enough to make me count as professional enough to not have to take this course.

Prof Kate of the Writing for Newspapers 2 class sympathizes with me.  She thinks my abilities are well beyond what she teaches in the course.  She consistently gives me A's and tells me she hates to stop reading my stories.  However, she's a part-timer and doesn't have much say in how credits are offered.  I feel sad for Prof Kate.  She worked for 25 years for a major newspaper and was laid off last year as newspapers everywhere are tossing employees overboard to survive dwindling readership.  She seems depressed.  She has mentioned that she had no idea she would end up doing this (teaching us) in a "how the hell did I end up here?" tone of voice.

There will be no faculty strike.  The latest vote came in 51% for a strike which is not enough of a mandate for the union to take a chance on actually calling the strike.  Apparently out of 20 colleges, 10 really wanted the strike, 10 didn't.  So would that have meant civil war?  Anyway, it hasn't come to that although I imagine the 10 who did want the strike are not very happy with the outcome.

My newspaper writing work on the college newspaper has ended and now we begin work on an ezine.  The newspaper's editor prof has been trying to encourage me to sell ideas to the local newspapers because he tells me I come up with good ideas.  But I still have too much PTSD from my last memories of trying to sell ideas to newspapers and have not taken him up on his encouragement.

The ezine has to be made by group of four again and this time I am happy to have got in with a good group.  Joanne from last semester is in this group and she is a firecracker of a doer.  Also a nice young woman named Sherry.  Sherry is that rare kind of individual who is just over-all friendly.  She has never seemed to notice my age and has always treated me like a pal and no different from her.  If she has noticed my age she doesn't show it, whereas her good friend Nadia, who is also in the group, has.  Around me Nadia acts like a child who would rather not have her parent standing around talking to her.

We have decided to focus on a food-as-nutrition magazine and came up with the name, Food for Thought, as the ezine's name.  We each take some role of authority on this ezine and I am doing artistic design.  I think it will go well.

Now with only five weeks left in the first year I have to start worrying about finding a job for the four months between the start of next year.

February - Observations on the teachers

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This divide between young and old is becoming more and more layered.  I think one of my great shock points is how obvious it would be in an environment like this that I am old, and the reflection of the value it has in society.  We simply do not live in a time where those who have experience with the past are much valued anymore.  We are heading into the future and the past is somewhat irrelevant.

The teachers are having a rough time, not only because they are part of a changing, possibly irrelevant past, but because of the general turmoil in the newspaper print industry.  A couple have been laid off from their newspaper jobs and took up teaching as one of their few options..

I guess I hoped too much that the teachers here would have some vision of the future towards which they were guiding us.  But things have been so bad in the business, so many layoffs, people sent on their way being too old to find similar work and too young to retire.  This is a frightening and confusing time.  The teachers also don't feel rewarded by the interest of the young, the young do not have much interest in them.

I sense an unhappiness.  The teachers feel unneeded by their "disciples", and undervalued by the department. That's one of the underlying reasons behind the strike that really, nobody wants.  It seems the department does not value their input or understand their needs.  Their needs mostly are to have a student body that values what they are teaching.  The only way that can happen is to select students the way students are selected for the arts courses - on a competitive level.  Those students who would have to work to get in are more than likely to really want to learn and to value the knowledge of those who teach them..

Instead teachers have to face apathy every day and on top of the upheaval in their chosen field they are dealing with much the same crisis as I am.

January - the new semester begins

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The 3 weeks of Christmas were quiet with the precious rest I needed so much.  I slept until noon many days.

Originally I dreaded the idea of 3 classes a week starting at 8:00 AM but I have been happily informed that was an illusion.  The times beginning at 8:00 would mean the Sheridan Sun room would be open and can be used at that time, but it would not necessarily be for lectures.  We simply had that time frame to do our work, if we wanted to.  Friday does have a class again starting at 8:00 AM, so there I have not been spared.

The classes this time are:

The College Globe Lab (production of the College's weekly newspaper)
Photojournalism
Writing for Newspapers 2
Electronic Publishing
A general elective
Globalization and the Post Modern World
Editing for Print and Internet

Originally I chose Classic Mythology for my elective but was dismayed by the 40 or so raucous students in the class which the teacher seemed unwilling or unable to contain.  I changed to an online elective, Aging Matters - I figured I should be on top of that subject - but found the teacher and course so confusing which is deadly if it happens online.  So now I am happily settled in CyberNation, about the impact of changing technology on society and am happy there.  It is also an online course, but very organized and well-laid out and quite interesting.  I discovered I am a postmodernist.  It's good to have a clan.  I always wanted to belong to a clan.

The newspaper lab is fun.  We replicate a real newspaper and publish a real newspaper weekly, the Globe.  No group work here, thank heavens.  The Globe is supposed to be the newspaper of the College and students could be mistaken it is their organ of information.  It is sort of, but their communication needs do not drive it as the purchasers and subscribers' needs drive real, professional newspaper.  It exists to provide the journalism students a lesson in writing, layout, photojournalism and publishing, using the College and campus as a focus for our lessons.  It may or may not contain useful news for college and staff, but if it doesn't no one on the paper worries too much.  Anyone who sends the Globe a media release hoping something important to them will be published often finds themselves disappointed because often what is important to them is not in our lesson plan.

Being a reporter on the paper at least has provided me with an outlet to go our there and talk to people and take pictures of them and I must say, it is quite pleasant.  So far I have written on the joys and problems of being a mature student.  I spoke with six mature students and it was good to share some stories.  As I suspected most are in social work, health and business.  Also everyone, except the higher brass, hates group work.  Some are in the majority of their classes.  Alas, Carol has not returned this semester and I fear she has fallen away.  Just couldn't manage all the adult responsibilities and fulltime schooling.  That leaves me the only person over 25 in the class.   The class is thinner as at least nine others have also fallen by the wayside either by quitting or changing courses.

I have also written an article on awareness of learning disabilities being a hidden disorder that is often mistaken for weakness of character, and now I am pursuing interviewing a local hero of human rights activism.  The editor/teacher likes my stories.  He told he wished other people would come up with as many story ideas as I do.  It's good to be praised by someone for doing a good job.  It's been so long in my life that someone has done that.  It's what keeps me in this program and in this place.

The winter here is very cold and getting up at 4:45 AM for my Friday class to stand on a train platform while the wind whips about in the morning dark, is truly a pain.  But then I think of the people of Haiti to put it into perspective.  It would be nice to step out of the college building and get some fresh air but the College being in such a open, rural spot the cold is particularly intense and not fun here.

The vote to strike was 57% in favour.  It does give the Union a mandate to strike on a week's notice, but at 57% the faculty is divided and is not willing to suffer much deprivation.  It was generally thought that the Union would never call a strike with such a weak mandate, but today we learned that the Union rejected the Colleges' final offer.  Oh-oh.  A strike would be devastating to my finances.

Marks and the Next Challenge Begins

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Woo hoo, the western world has turned a New Year and I got my marks. The news was better than I thought it would be.

History and Politics =A+
Research Techniques =A
Writing for Newspapers 1 = B+
Desktop Publishing with InDesign =A
Designing for Print =B
History of Journalism =A

Okay, let's face it, this was the easy part.  Most of that was theory. and based on knowledge of news, current events and some history.  These were studies where being 63 gave me a much better advantage, although frankly, I am surprised at the B in Designing for Print, because I barely made it over D on most assignments.

This semester, starting January 11, will be putting these theories into competitive action and building the social networks that will enhance that competition so as to uncover news happening in the College.  My disconnect with the social environment of the college places me at a disadvantage for this and we shall see how this turns out.

Monday my first class begins at 8:00 AM.  I must rise at 4:45 to make the subway by 6:15, to make the train station by 6:50, to arrive fresh, crisp and organized in class by 8:00 AM.  Yikes!

First semester ends

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Unbelievably I finished the first semester.

Final exams were as mickey mouse as the mid-terms. The major workload on which the marks will depend will be the big assignments, like the PowerPoint presentations, the 2-man groupwork, the 4-man groupwork. Our job is to present visible results that look like we can put what we have been taught into action and concrete results, and that we can work with others. Somehow I have managed to work with others, although this is still the greatest challenge I will have to overcome next semester and next year.

I think I passed everything although we won't get our marks until Jan 6. Now we have 3 blessed weeks of rest with classes starting again on Jan. 11.

I discovered that working with my fellow students is not so much just the difference in years (I am older than the President of the college) it's a difference in life experience, hormonal direction and life purpose.

The young, normal-aged students are not just here to learn a profession. Unbeknownst to them they are also seeking out life partners, both lovers and friends, who will be the basis for their future social lives. They are required to choose people to work with in groups, but their first priority is not accomplishing the assignment, it is being in fun company who is totally on their wavelength. Somehow with fun company they will accomplish the assignments.

There is nowhere on earth that I have a hope of being chosen as fun company. I think my last chance with them was around the age of 5. That's the time when kids with that many years between us think people my age are fun company. In spite of the fact that I have shown I am "cool", and pretty much on board with their culture and interests, I am exactly the kind of person they now want to avoid.

They don't want an adult hanging around them, they want to be free, naughty and bad. They want to break rules. They want to be responsible on their terms and to their rhythm. They want to be horny to their heart's content. No matter how "cool" I am, no matter that baby boomers invented adolescent rebellion, there is no way they can be that with anyone who reminds them of their teachers, parents or grandparents. Nor do I want to deal with their issues with these people, I have my own issues with these people too.

I had hoped to join one of the 35 social clubs the Students' Union has going but what with the part-time and our extreme 6 course semesters there just isn't time.

Next term I realize that we will have 3 classes starting at 8:00 AM. Oh, the horror.

Prof Gerard's idea for solving the groupwork problem was picking the brightest and best to partner with. Yeah, but everyone now, for the reasons above, has their permanent groups. Their pals, their lovers, or their wanna-be lovers. I can't depend just on Joanne for the next year and a half. I have no idea if Carol will be there. So more challenges ahead.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the college association and faculty union's contract talks have broken down. The faculty union has a strike vote scheduled for Jan. 13.