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.

December - Full throttle

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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 who may or may not have dropped out of class, or is just skipping a lot of classes.

Like many others who have learned to goof off in high school and be passed anyway, he is not bothering to come into class, return emails, and return phone calls. He certainly is not with Joanne, Dayna and me in the library searching through reference books and image libraries. He is not picking colors or fonts or calculating the number of article inches that can fit on a page. He has not submitted one article or one photo and certainly not one idea.

Joanne has finally run into him somewhere and given him one page of the newspaper to work on, and to write restaurant reviews for the section of our magazine we designed for restaurant reviews. He emails the reviews in and that is one thing he does.

It is time to present the media kit. We have had to design a presentation folder, brochure, business card, letterhead and sales letter for this magazine and newspaper we are publishing. This is for the Adobe Desktop Publishing class and goes toward 30% of our final mark. The other two are for the Design for Newsprint class, where we have also been taught magazine layout. Joanne and I have done maybe 80% of the work, Dayna maybe 19%, and Ross maybe 1% except only .5% has been turned in.

Prof Ellen makes it clear she wants to know who did how much work. Well, Ross did nothing on the media kit - nada, zip - and I say so.

Later on Ross vexes his indignation. He was a part of our group, how come we didn't include him in the group!??! Ellen told him he better have something he designed handed in the next week, or he will lose the marks. Ross just expected us to cover for him. Just like a 10-year-old he was part of our "gang" and the gang was supposed to include him in the rewards even if he didn't come out to play. He thought we would cover for him = and I think the other 2 sould have - but I come from different priorities that does not have peer loyalty as its first rule - so I guess he was wrong.

Now the next step is due. The newspaper needs to be presented to Prof Marshall in the Design for Newsprint class. Except that he hasn't sent in the page he was supposed to design and fill with articles and photos. Again, we email and phone him to send us his page. Marshall wants to see the whole thing. No response, he's mad at us and doesn't want to play with us anymore.

Joanne gives him an ultimatum. He still talks to her, he no longer talks to me - I am too much like a teacher, expecting him to be responsible. Joanne tells him if he does not act like a functioning member of the group, he is out. We will not contact him any longer, we will have to do his page for him, and he will lose another large set of marks. Joanne tells us how tired she is of constantly checking for emails that he never sends. The rest of us are working but part of our energy is drained because we have to keep him in mind and keep wondering where he is all the time.

Ross answers his first email, ever. Yes, he's in. He has worked on his page of the newspaper and sends the attachment. The paper has to be presented in one day and Ross shows up at his first meeting with us, the next morning, to review the whole look. Joanne has taken on the editing duties, and she works until past midnight coordinating our collective effort so that the newspaper looks cohesive.

The next day, the 4 of us present our newspaper and Marshall likes what he sees.

December - Possibility of carpool

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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 back saying I was not the one with the car, I was looking for a person with a car. She texted me saying I should make that clear in my poster because it was very misleading. I texted her back saying that my poster clearly says in big bold letters, "I NEED A RIDE". She texted me back to relax and not be so snippy.

Then I got a third call from someone who sounded ideal. A furniture design student who lived only 2 blocks away from me, had practically the same hours as I did. When we met she turned out to be 27-years-old and good company for the half hour drive. She did want almost as much money as I was paying for the train but she explained that it cost her way more than the cost of the train for gas and parking, so I agreed.

And then a strange series of inexplicalbe, perhaps even unfortunate, events occurred. She told me she could not pick me up the next day because she had to take her mother to the doctor. Okay. I understand. But then she did not show up again the next day. I left messages on her phone, but no reply. I sent her an email, but nothing. This went on for 4 days. I'm thinking, has she been in an accident?

I decided to walk down to the furniture design section and try to see if any of her teachers or classmates knew where she was. Well, she was there, in class. She was surprised to see me, she said lost her cell phone and only got another one yesterday. She said she had not seen my email. I was relieved she was okay and we agreed to continue our journeying the next day.

But then I thought about it. Could she not find another phone to call me from, seeing that I was expecting her for 4 days? If she got her cell phone yesterday why did I have to go to the furniture section to find her? Oh well, not to be paranoid. She was coming by tomorrow again.

Tomorrow she picks me up and says that she won't be able to drive me home because of something or other for several days. The mornings are alright but evenings will now be unpredictable. This means the financial edge I have with this carpool will disappear because I will have to pay for single ride tickets on the train (much more expensive than the monthly pass). But this is going to be a short month so maybe it will be okay.

The next day I wait for her to pick me up at 8:00 as she is supposed to. 8:20 she is not there. I call her. No answer, I leave a message. I can't wait any longer, I have to get to the train by 8:50 to get to the College on time, and I should have left my home 10 minutes before to get that. I throw on my coat, heave on my backpack and dash out of the house. I have no hope of making the train, so I hail a cab to take me to the train station.

An hour or two later I check my cell phone for messages after class, and there is a message from her. Oops, she forgot to tell me she couldn't pick me up today.

Obviously this is not going to work out. Besides the normal chaos of trying to work out departure and return times, paying almost the same as the train fare, I am really questioning the dependability and sincerity of this person. I made it quite clear that if either she or I decided this was not going to work for us, for whatever reason, we would just say it wasn't going to work. No explanation was necessary. Just tell me if you don't want to do this anymore. She totally agreed.

But I don't know. Some people have a really hard time being direct and the passive/aggressive approach is easier. At any rate, my enthusiasm for this had died out. It appears that unless several people are involved in this carpool idea there is not much cost saving and regularity and dependability are essential.

So scratch the carpool idea.

November - the 4-legged monster

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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 until everyone is there and understands and has had a chance to research what is being voted on. A nice idea, but if we only have two weeks to do this and members of the group don't attend 90% of the meetings, it doesn't work very well.

Prof Marilyn has thundered, "If anyone is not pulling their weight on this project I want to know. I will not have my D students pulling my A students down!"

So, on it went. Only Joanne and I were showed up at each meeting. Dayna and Ashley were either working part-time, partying, sleeping, weren't coming into class that day or somehow never showed up at a meeting even if they had been reminded to an hour earlier.

I had no idea if everyone would be there at the presentation. I had covered travel books, Joanne covered newspaper travel sections, Ashley covered National Geographic Magazine and Dayna the travel magazines post 1900 to the present time. Until Dayna and Ashley started showing up for meetings Joanne and I were prepared to go up and only show our parts of the presentation.

Marilyn had wanted us to spread reading and showing the slides equally timed between all 4 people, but we just never got together enough times to work that out seamlessly. So we agreed to just read our own. Joanne's and my section took 15 minutes of our 20 minute allotment, the other 2 took the other 5 minutes.

November - the pressure builds

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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 is a world traveler and excellent photographer. In the next two hours we work out the foundation for a travel magazine, and a newspaper based on articles we have already written as assignments, which will save us having to write new articles. Thank you, merciful lord.

Joanne also joins my one-person group in the History of Journalism assignment on the history of travel writing. Prof Marilyn, in the History of Journalism class wrote out choices for our next PowerPoint assignments for class, except this time in 4 person groups, on the blackboard with instructions for us to come and sign out names under our topic of preference. I wrote my name under History of Travel Writing and no one else did. Marilyn then wrote Dayna's name under mine because she wasn't in class that day and lost her choice. Joanne wasn't in class either so but volunteered for the History of Travel writing too before Marilyn noticed.

So now, Joanne, Dayna and I were working on the magazine, the newspaper, the media kit for both and on the travel writing presentation. Later we would be joined in travel writing by my previously errant partner Ashley, who decided to come into a class after all and was placed with us.

Carol, who did attend the History of Journalism classes had signed up for History of War Journalism.

All of us bond by bitching about Prof Marilyn's marking habits which too often seem to be based on the mood she's in, or the expectation of us being able to second-guess how she wants her test questions answered even though they may be answered correctly but in other words. I put up with this in high school because arbitrary power plays by teachers were expected, I am no mood to put up with it now.

November - Group work

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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 leading to major marks. The groups form themselves and I am left with 2 other orphans. Not ones I would have chosen if I had first choice.

This is my group:

Ross is an enigma. He is 18 years old and says he has never read a newspaper before coming into this course. He wants to be a sports writer and he only reads stats. He doesn't even read other sports writers and obviously not, Mitch Albom. When I ask him what makes him want to write for newspapers, since he is revolted by the thought of reading them, he says, "I like sports."

Great. He likes sports but does not have what it takes to be an athlete, so what else can he do? Hey, he can be a sports writer. How else to get to see free games. He is one of the most passive, clued-out looking people in the class.

"Not the sharpest tool in the shed," Carol said about him once. Carol has dropped the graphics design classes in an effort to get control over her responsibilities, so I can't get into a group with her.

Ashley is also 18 years old. Sweet, angelic looking, wide-eyed waif. Our assignment is to put 4 pages of a newspaper together: the front page, a news page, and 2 other sections. We must write all the articles and take all the photos or create all art. It must have headlines, a targeted readership and be pleasing to read. It took me 2 hours to finish my unfinished assignment, time which Ross and Ashley had to confer about the subject matter of the newspaper. In that time they did not come up with one idea. I feel that familiar sense of panic again.

The assignment has to be in within 5 weeks (along with similar major assignments coming down, like a magazine and a media kit for both magazine and newspaper). In that time, Ashley is sick for 2 of the 5 weeks and does not return phone calls or emails.

Ross keeps saying, "yeah, yeah, I know" whenever I say we have to get started on this. He tells me Ashley doesn't like some of the classes and isn't coming to them anymore. I discover now is the time when students start dropping out, which is often displayed by just not showing up at class.

We did finally decide to do a newspaper on local music based around a local band who are friends of Ashley's, because neither of them had the slightest idea what I was talking about when I mentioned some of my interests, like the work of human rights' NGO's against the federal government's to cut off their necessary funding.

This band performs only at certain times. Our main article will be about their performance which only Ashley knows when will be happening. But she isn't communicating and not showing up for class way after she is not sick anymore, and Ross looks like a thought will come into his head only if he is connected to an electrical charge. I am in serious panic now because I cannot do this alone. I cannot do all the work and crack the whip over their heads too.

Ross tells me he has no idea when Ashley will come back to class or when she will talk to her band friends. Then he tells me he has been talking to her on the phone almost every evening. And he never thought to ask her these questions!!!

The teachers have told us that if someone in our group is not pulling their share of the load to let them know immediately. I ventilate my panic all over Prof Marshall and he tells me he will find me another group.

All the groups are full so I am placed in the a group of guys I mentioned before. The most guy group in the class. The ones who snark and whistle and snort and make paper airplanes through lectures. The ones interested only in zombies, gaming, hard metal and splatter films. I could deal with sticking only to these subjects. As a sociological writer basically, I can write about the sociology of anything. However, I discover that not only have they also not decided on a subject for the newspaper, they cannot decide.

They are too busy cracking jokes and outwitting each others ideas. They are too busy showing each other what smart guys they are to actually arrive at a final decision. They are too busy competing and showing off and not letting anyone else make a decision either - because every decision is an invitation to another competition and to another round of witty, put-down jokes.

The last thing these guys want is to have their grandma sitting in their tight little group. Two more hours of class are spent in having not one decision made, not even my arbitrary decisions allowed.

The next day, despondent, I pour my heart out to a friendly 25-year-old named Joanne. Luckily, she is my salvation.

November begins

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I am back after spending the last week of "rest" running through several university libraries and long distance calls to Winnipeg and special stores that might have books on the North End of Winnipeg, which is my "neighborhood" even though I haven't seen it in 20, or so, years.


The result is 8 pages of essay and Prof John likes it. John likes all my work. His job is to teach the students to think. He realizes I can think and he is grateful for that. He gives me an A+.

John and I have come to having chats after the History and Politics class. He is also a vagabond, a hobo through life. A square peg surrounded by round holes. He is a creative, philosophical person who has had a difficult time trying to turn those skills into a money-making enterprise. He has been an actor, a poet, an author, an editor, a publisher, film-making crew, construction worker and a bookstore owner. He has taught at the college for 32 years, most of it part-time. Sounds like my life, except I haven't reached the teacher stage yet. Anyway, he is not surprised by my career trajectory.

But he has lost his patience with the young and that slips out too often. He praises their quickness of mind but he decries their interests in loud music and video games. He tries to sound hip but only makes it obvious he is not hip because he is trying so hard. He comes across like an old fuddy-duddy who just wants to sleep in front of the TV and young people are making too much racket.

He meanders through his lessons, which sounds a lot like, "when I was your age...", an instant turn-off, even for me. He tells jokes nobody gets and anecdotes about his life that interest no one. He'll make reference to some movie, "there's that movie that's playing downtown - you know - the one all the kids are seeing. What's its name? You know the one." The young students indicate confusion, and that makes him even more dismissive of them.

I enjoy talking with him though. I too sense the distance between me and the young students, but I hope I am not like him.

October - Mid-term

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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 in notes on the internet, which miffed some students.

Later I talked to Prof Judy about it.

"Oh yes," she said. "It's changed since our day. Kids today are not used to getting strong challenges in school. Some have never written exams. Failure wasn't allowed."

Maybe I was ready for tougher questions, but they sure aren't.

This did not help with my confusion. The gulf is worse than I thought. But it was now a whole week of mid-term break and I planned to catch up on the sleep I had missed in the last 6 weeks, except that I still had an essay to write for Mike's class on History and Politics.

We had to write the history of the neighborhoods in which we grew up, and the part of our forebears played in it. This would have been fine. I love history, except like the progress of my professional life, that was a complete checkerboard in my life as well.

My parents were born in Europe, I moved here when I was 4. I no longer lived where I lived out my childhood and my parents and forebears' contributed virtually nothing to the history or any neighborhood I lived in my life. We had all been gypsies in every metaphofical interpretation of the word. The neighborhood in which I grew up was also in Winnipeg, still another city, and very few records of that neighborhood were kept outside of Winnipeg.

I was to spend my mid-term break researching, via long distance, the history of a place whose history was recorded very scantily and mostly in the memories of people, who were either dead or whom I no longer knew.

October - Partnering

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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 I had not spotted in too many of my other possible partner choices. We set to it, phoned a bunch of people we found in the newspaper. The first one to call back was one of Carol's ideas. Carol talked to him from her home which is two cities away from mine.

Carol got the interview, so the only thing for me to do was to design the presentation. I consider myself fairly talented in the design department and had no problem putting her interview into a visual context. We worked very hard on this assignment and I sent the finished presentation to her about 10 PM Thursday night. Friday morning we had to present it.

Friday morning I was up there while Carol screened the PowerPoint and I was surprised to discover that she had changed my design totally - but totally! Only one slide was recognizable as mine, so I panicked as had become a habit with me by this time. I insisted on talking to Gerard about it.

Carol got all upset and thought I was going to dump on her but that was not what I was planning to do. We had talk and a beer over it and I explained what upset ne was that I had no idea how to keep control of my work in a group work situation. I I wanted to ask Gerard how we were to make sure that our work would stand out in a group's.

The reason I was worried about this was, of course, again, I knew sometime in the future I would have to work with "them", the young ones and being on totally different planets vis-a-vis thinking, planning, studying, experiencing and producing I wanted to know how to keep some kind of control over my own work integrity.

I dreaded having to work with "them". I had already worked on magazines and newspapers and had gone through quite a few trials and tribulations to be a productive individual under trying circumstances. They had not. I didn't want to be like them, acting clued out and jumping into the first joke to avoid dealing with the assignment.

I was afraid I would have to play the role of mommy or teacher, dragging them along after me. In some ways this was not a bad option, but I had to be realistic also, If I was to be an effective mommy or teacher I had to answer the question, "Well, what the hell are you doing here then, with us?" Yeah.

Gerard helped Carol and I resolve our conflict. I had to admit her design was better, but he said next time make it clear ahead of time what your terms within a partnership are. If I want design approval, state that ahead of time. If I want responsibility for one part of the project only than I should make that obvious, and make it clear I would not allow it to be changed behind my back. I felt better after that, but not much.

Mid-term exams were coming up, I was consumed with studying as I had not done in 40 years, and beginning to feel the weight of assignments still to be completed. I was working through all the free periods, any time I had at home, and on weekends. Often I was writing articles late at night that were due the next morning.

I could do this because I had written articles before and could do them quickly according to format, but I could not figure out how anyone who did not have my professional experience and had not read as much as I did could keep up the pace.

October - Studies and Partnership

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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 class we were to make a 5 minute PowerPoint presentation on a famous journalist whose name we would draw out of a plastic bag. The names began with Daniel Defoe in the 17th century, who is considered to be the first journalist. The assignment was to present all the important points and contributions in this person's life. The class had to be aware of who this person and why he was important in the history of journalism.

I pulled the name of Daniel Pearl. This was okay with me because I was aware of his story and quite moved by it. His life and tragic death were the subject of a book, A Mighty Heart, written by his wife, Mariane Pearl, later made into a movie starring Angelina Jolie.

Danny Pearl was an investigative journalist, bureau chief for Asia for The Wall Street Journal who was investigating al-Qaeda connections in January 2002 in Pakistan. For this he was kidnapped by a jihadist group who executed him by beheading him, video-taping his killing and sending the video to the police. His body was cut into 10 pieces and buried in a shallow grave beside a highway outside Karachi, where it was found 3 months later. It was a warning for foreign journalists to stay out of Pakistan.

In researching the story I watched the movie and read the book. I was so emotionally moved by Danny's story and Mariane's love and the awful tragedy of the whole thing. The story consumed my senses all the while I was working on it. I had to design the perfect background for the PowerPoint, I needed the photos and images to be just so and I timed the points in the story to perfection over and over again. I began to wish I had chosen an easier subject, maybe Horace Greeley or Jonathan Swift, people I could never see as contemporaries and potential friends as I could the Pearls.

Prof Marilyn however, docked me marks because I concentrated not on Daniel Pearl's journalistic accomplishments but on the circumstances of his death. Well, he didn't become famous for his journalism. His journalism, although thoroughly professional, was not of world-renown quality all by itself. Had he not been murdered the way he had, he would have been known perhaps to their peers and readers, but not famous. Daniel Pearl's claim to fame is not his writing, but as a martyr to journalism.

But no, that's not what Marilyn wanted. Anyway, I was glad to lose the marks because I could not have done the story the way she wanted, exploring article after article on Wall Street Journal topics while ignoring the elephant in the room which was his death.

Marilyn's next assignment was for us to read at least 3 daily newspapers and select articles that represented certain nine different themes she was covering in her course. Some were common and would be easy to find, but many were obscure like "the purpose of newspapers".

Marilyn is a lover of the physical newspaper and dreads the day it will disappear. I suspect she created this assignment to force us to buy 3 newspapers a day and maybe help save the industry. Ha! In her dreams. I now became a prowler of garbage cans and recycle bins and a cafe thief.

October - One of my worries is settled

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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 rehearsals and check to see that all the equipment and props were in their right places. Each studio has a specific list of equipment that frequently gets borrowed by almost anybody for almost anything and it was up to me to hunt it down if it was missing and to make sure, that by the end of the day everything in the studio looked like it did at the beginning of the day. By the time I applied one sofa and two mattresses had already been missing for awhile.

I wasn't the best choice for the job, but I was the only one who applied. As usual, Patrick, my boss, was surprised when he first saw me. I am almost used to seeing the surprised look on people's faces when I explain that no, I am not staff, no I am not faculty, no I am not a parent, I am a full-time student. However, he was easily prepared to be convinced that at the age of 63 I was willing to move furniture around and mop up 6 studios because it was already October and no one had yet applied for the job. I don't know why not. It was not that hard, a fairly relaxed work ethic when no furniture had been "borrowed" and paid $10 an hour which was as much as anyone could expect to be paid for a student job.

Patrick is a former professional actor who is now Professor of Theatre and Drama Studies on a joint program with this College and a university. He selects all the plays the students will work on and they all need to have the exact number of male and female performers as his classes, which is quite the challenge finding such plays. He hoped to find a resident student because the studios tend to be used until about 10 PM and it works best if the Studio Monitor can come after that time and straighten things up.

However, since I go home to a city two hours commuter travel away, and I was the only one who applied, and he was desperate, we agreed I would be on the job from 5:30 to 7:30. That was when I had to leave to make sure I caught the 8:30 train and had a chance to make it home for 10:00 PM providing I could ride my bike from the train station and it wasn't raining.

There have been occasions when I did not leave on time to catch the train. In that case home would happen an hour later.

The job was the best I could expect under my circumstances. I am almost never supervised and as long as things are okay, no one needs to supervise my work. Most of the time items are not moved around, or if they are they are moved back. Aside from having to pick up an amazing amount of half full water bottles, sweep up Doritos and Goldfish crackers and worm gummies off the floors and re-stack the stacking chairs. The rest of the time I work on my assignments from my laptop and keep one ear open for anything amiss in the studios. Patrick is happy that someone is there and that alone is a deterrent from stuff disappearing.

I get to listen to the students rehearsing their songs from musicals like Oklahoma and do their tap routines. The prop and set design department is part of my jurisdiction. Another time I had to walk through the hallways with my brooms. Students were rehearsing scenes in the hallways and I could only get past by walking through their scenes. They'd be yelling or swearing or threatening to kill each other, or trying to kill each other and I just walk through with, "excuse me, excuse me".

The missing sofa and mattresses were found under the studio theatre stage and returned to their own rooms.