Sunday, December 27, 2009 at 7:02 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
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...
Saturday, December 12, 2009 at 5:03 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
Joanne and I have been going like gangbusters on the remaining assignments and left the other two eating our dust. Dayna is eager to learn how to work and participate and is glad to be assigned tasks. Joanne and I designed the look and purpose of the media kit, magazine and newspaper and passed some writing and layout work to Dayna.
However, again we have hit the great divide between the Mature and the Immature. Ross has disappeared. Far fewer students are in class now. Prof Marilyn tells me this is the time they start dropping off and neither the college or the teachers may know about it. The teachers just have to keep a regular roll call going to know who is and is not coming into class. Ross is one of these people...
Monday, December 7, 2009 at 6:00 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
My travel time and cost problems were weighing on me therefore, I had put up posters hoping either students, staff or faculty might want to share a car seat with me. I had also placed ads in online carpool sites and on Craigslist.
I discovered earlier that only 2% of the student body came from my city. This cut down the odds of me finding a carpool considerably.
I did get one call from a member of the staff who lived not that far from me, but far enough for me to have to take public transit to her place, making whatever cost savings I was planning negligible. Anyway, she only left one message and did not return my phone calls.
Another student texted me asking how much I was charging for carpooling. I texted her...
Friday, November 27, 2009 at 5:39 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
The slide presentation on the History of Travel Writing is my first exposure to a learning phenomenon I have not yet personally experienced. Four people work together to produce one assignment. It really is like a 4-legged monster with uneven legs and no sense of direction, but we are all a part of it and we all have to make those 4 legs arrive together on a specific date. If a leg drops off or wanders in a different direction, the other legs have to take up the slack.
I am so grateful that Joanne understands this factoid perfectly. The others say, "oh, it's not fair we shouldn't make decisions until everyone is here." Or, "everybody should have the same vote" meaning we should vote on decisions over and over again...
Friday, November 20, 2009 at 7:08 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
Joanne is my salvation. Yes, she is young, but she has already been through 4 years of university and 2 years of living and working on her own. She knows exactly what I am going through. She invites me into her group because she understands another person who wants to work, who wants to complete the assignments more than socialize, show off to their peers, and feel smart goofing off.
Joanne has studied environmentalism and is now studying journalism as a way of channeling her environmental interests. Two other 18-year-olds are in her group, Dayna and Jason. She tells me they have not contributed much in the way of ideas or enterprise so far, but if given tasks they will do them. Well, that's better than nothing.
Joanne...
Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 9:03 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
This College relies a lot on group work. It's one way to process as many students as possible, and therefore collect more money, while dealing with the problem of how to teach them effectively. The College's theory is that if you make them do lessons and assignments in groups you only have to mark one assignment for every 4 people. The profs have left that fact slip out more than once.
As usual I was having a hard time in the most precise, least philosophical class: Design for Newsprint. And I once imagined being a layout artist. No way. Because I am late with an assignment I have not been able to finish in class, I am not paying attention when Prof Marshall tells the class to form groups of 4 for a major assignment...
Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 11:59 AM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
I am back after spending the last week of "rest" running through several university libraries and long distance calls to Winnipeg and special...
Monday, October 26, 2009 at 10:15 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
The exams were a piffle. I couldn't believe it. I hesitate to say this, but they were mickey mouse.
Forty years ago, in high school, I remember practically having to memorize the textbooks, but on our mid-term exams we were asked true and false questions, we did a test that was similar to one I had to do when registering with a temp agency to find me administrative work, and for the desktop publishing, dear, sweet Prof Ellen hovered around us ready to answer any questions we didn't know how to answer.
Did education change that much in 40 years? People talked among themselves during the exams, possible asking and giving answers to one another. The professors did not seem to mind. They did forbid looking up answers...
Sunday, October 18, 2009 at 9:55 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
My next PowerPoint presentation was for Prof Gerard's class. This had to be with a partner of one's choosing. Two students must select a recent newsmaker, from recent news, to interview further about whatever it is about him or her that is making news. I panicked. My classmates had already formed groups, friends, partnerships and I did not belong to any of those categories. I could think only of Carol, who had not been in class for a week due to court appearances for her divorce.
I called Carol and she assured me she would be available to help me do the thing. Her time and availability was very unstable what with her daughter, ex-husband, finances and travel problems, but she had the fire in her belly and the maturity...
Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 9:49 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
I mentioned that meeting and making friendship and relationships was a very difficult thing here didn't I? No time for social clubs, living in a different city, and totally out of sync with 99% of the student body. As I said, at least I had a purpose and I was busy.
There is not a lot of time for thinking in the journalism program. We are too busy doing things. If I thought college would be a place for contemplative walks that inspire higher thoughts this wasn't that kind of college.
Basically we were told to think of ourselves as being hired to apprentice journalism. Every assignment was the job we were supposed to perform in order to keep the job.
At the beginning it was quite simple. In the History of Journalism...
Monday, October 5, 2009 at 7:38 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
I managed to raise all the money I hoped to raise for this academic year, but I had factored in a part-time job and for all of September I did not find one.
I had hoped to be hired by the office or the library at the college but applied too late. Plan B was to get a job at nearby malls or industrial parks, or frankly anywhere, doing anything I can get. I did shudder at those possibilities since part-time student jobs could be pretty gruesome, jobs were scarce and likely I would have to take anything that I was offered.
Well, lucky for me, I saw an ad on a bulletin board at the school for a Studio Monitor. The Theatre and Drama Studies program needed someone to go into the studios their students used for classes and/or...
Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 4:53 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
As I have made obvious in an earlier post, the students are young. I had hoped however, that since they chose the profession of journalism to study they would be, at least, curious and as well-informed as their years would allow. They are informed about music, movies, TV, games, the internet, ipods, fashion and everything else that caters to their age. They are very little informed about anything else. My hope of finding at least an intellectual bond with them has been....disillusioned.
Most hate reading newspapers and avoided it whenever possible. This baffles both me and the profs who never know why people like these enroll in journalism classes. Unlike the other programs in the School of Arts the journalism enrollees...
Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 12:00 AM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
I am starting to panic. I feel like a ghost. I notice the Students' Union is avoiding people like me. Everything on their briefs and bulletins and schemes for making students feel at home and more involved amounts to pub parties, beer pong tournaments and wet t-shirts contests. Why do I feel I won't fit in?
At least I have registered with the Disabilities office and got letters to pass on to my teachers telling them they should excuse my ditziness, confusion, lack of coordination, losses, forgetting of time and place and teachers now don't mind me coming in an hour late, or leaving my assignments in my locker, or misplacing textbooks that this radical change in my lifestyle has only accelerated. I lost 2 more cell...
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 10:00 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
Month one. My whole life is sooooo different. There are 30 people in my class. One woman, Carol, is 48 years old. Everyone else is 18, 20, 23 and one 25-year-old. No one has been rude enough to stare at me or says anything but I can't help being aware of the divide.
The profs are friendly enough although only one is older than I am: a retired former book publisher who teaches the History and Politics class.
The commuting is really hard getting used to. Classes start at different times each day and I have to calculate getting to the commuter train at 2 hours before I am scheduled to arrive at the college. I can walk to the commuter station closes to me which arrives two minutes too late for me to transfer to another...
Friday, September 4, 2009 at 11:30 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
Okay. It is Sept 3 11:01 pm by my clock and I just arrived home from Orientation 15 minutes ago. Whatta day, whatta day.
The actual orientation was anti-climactic. They herded us to and fro then sent us in different directions depending on what we applied for or needed. No opportunity to talk to anyone really. I signed up for the "mature students networking club". I managed to get a good locker, close to my class, in the Oklahoma Land Rush they foisted on us in selecting our lockers.
Upon cursory examination none of my profs had a glint of psychosis about their body language, which put me at ease. They all seemed like regular folks. None of them guaranteed they would make us men by the end of the year, thank God. I will...
Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 10:30 AM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
The stress has worked. My financing has been approved. I just might make it. I am 63 years old and about to go to college with 18 to 20-year-olds. Orientation is the first step. I wish I had another fool like me to lean on. I am told lots of mature stuents are in higher education these days, I won't be alone. But I am so nervous.
Orientation will be Set 3. I am both excited and very nervous. My entire world is about to chan...
Saturday, August 15, 2009 at 2:14 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
I spent the summer calculating my finances over and over again. My entire wealth amounted to $800. Yeah, right, really. At 63 this is what it comes to. I could only do this if I could get the necessary government loans, and just keep applying for grants and bursaries.
This was stress but a different kind of stress. Waking up each day wondering when I would get a job again was hell because beyond some simple acts like looking for jobs, applying for jobs, keeping up with contacts there was nothing more I could do. I could do everything needed to do, everything I could do and it would not guarantee me employment.
Going to college was stress where progress was possible. If I did certain things, other things would happen,...
Monday, July 27, 2009 at 6:56 PM
Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
In February, 2009 I found myself unable to get a job. The recession was in full blast and my work sources had dried up. I was unemployable. I was 63 years old.
For the last 20 years I had been trying to do the "right", "sensible", employable thing. I had shelved my dreams, squashed my gifts and talents and decided to "get a job" in the corporate world. I hated it, but jobs there could be counted on. I had been taught that if a woman could type she could always get a job and I certainly could type. So type I did. Until February I realized it was the 2009 recession and the demand for typing had passed with the analog age.
I am divorced with no children, so luckily I have no responsibilities other than myself. ...
