Back to School

Ahh... the hot humid days of summer have yielded to the crisp cool days of autumn, so I have, in my infinite wisdom, decided to go back to school! Just part time, one course, one evening a week and it started tonight! It was very exciting! I was very early (I had to go to the bookstore to pick up my text and wasn't sure whether or not there would be line ups), so I had lots of time to ponder.

The first thing I noticed was how young everyone was!!! Wait, maybe they're not really that much younger, maybe I'm just that much older... no, that can't be it. They really are younger now that grade 13 has been abolished here in Ontario. That explains it. Right? So, aside from the fact that I probably was the oldest person in the room (including the instructor) the single biggest change I think would have to be the use of the internet. Our text is not a text at all, it is a collection of readings which the instructor could not find online so had to have printed and bound. The rest of the course readings are all online and in order for us to access them, we must have valid student IDs and UofT email addresses. (I'm still working on both of those; the UofT in its infinite wisdom is not making either easy for me since I work essentially 9-5.) When I was last registered as a student at the UofT, we did not need to access readings online; they were always available hardcopy. Of course, back then, I was a full-time student and had a valid ID card and email address, plus the time to sort out the details if need be.

So, despite the technological differences (and my age), has being an undergrad changed all that much? It's been 11 years since I first went back to school. Was tonight's class any different from what I remember? Not really. There was still roughly the same distribution of people showing up before class, right on time and late. Some even had the temerity to show up an hour late (why bother in a first class? They never last the whole three hours) and were surprised that there were no syllabi left for them. This has not changed. Their look has changed slightly, although surprisingly little in the past decade, and there were more people with laptops, but there were the usual suspects: the electricity stealers (people who plugged their laptops in to the outlets at the front of the room), the keeners, the late-comers, those who like to talk just to hear themselves speak, those who think that everyone wants to hear them, and those who clearly would rather be elsewhere. Some people were texting (this is new), but most seemed to be able to pay relatively quiet attention for an hour and a half.

I would like to point out that I noticed, with some displeasure, that more than one person did not smell clean. I was in a large lecture hall and the class size was 300, so there were probably about 300 people there (there didn't seem to be many empty seats). The smells were not just different cooking or spice smells, nor were they unpleasant perfume smells. There was definitely body odour. And more than one body had odour. This is relatively new to me. I have, in the past, had to sit near someone who did not smell nice, but I don't think I've ever had more than one person near me with body odour. Did someone forget to teach these kids to bathe? Today was not a hot day, these people were not wearing athletic clothing nor did they look particularly sporty, so what the heck? Are they just flexing their newfound freedom from their parents and exercising their rights to not wash, or are they trying to conserve water or something? Whatever the reason, I'm not terribly supportive of it and am only thankful that I have developed allergies, so that the aromas were not as pungent as they could have been.

All in all, despite the generally accepted theory that the youth of today is going to hell in a handbasket, I don't think that my experience today in class is a good indicator of that. Sure, the ones who had their iPods on before class were listening to them at such a loud volume that I could hear the music from more than five feet away, but that, in itself, doesn't make them bad people, it makes them short-sighted (or rather, it will make them deaf in the near future). And of course, there were people who either didn't pay attention and answered questions incorrectly or asked the same question right after someone else asked it, but there is always someone who does this, and there probably always will be. I find it somewhat reassuring that school, despite the surface changes, remains essentially the same.

I will endeavour to keep you posted on my progress or on anything exciting which may happen there! Wish me luck.

Peace out,