A friend of mine shared this with me and I thought it was so funny I watched it twice. Notice how well-thought out and well-written the comments are (a rarity for YouTube).

Video highlights:

• Bart teases the students by telling them that an assistant professorship opened up.
• Bart cuts off the ponytail of a grad student, pretends to wear it, and says “Look at me, I’m a grad student. I’m 30 years old and I made $600 last year.”
• Marge tells Bart not to make fun of grad students, “they just made a terrible life choice.”
• Lisa throws breadcrumbs into the park and 4 grad students swarm in and start eating them off the floor hungrily.
• Their supervisor says, “No food for you grad students til you grade 3,000 papers” and whips them.

While browsing through U of T-related Tweets, I noticed a pattern — people were complaining left and right! Their grievances ranged from people talking in the library to not having cell phone service on campus. If I were part of the U of T admin, these would be enough to keep me awake at night.

(more…)

… is who I currently feel I am. Let me explain my situation.

I have been an undergrad since 2005. I took a year off to do PEY (Professional Experience Year) and also switched my program four times (yes I am indecisive), which is why I have been university for 6 years and counting. Last semester, I took the last course I would ever have to take in university… or so I thought until this afternoon when I received the worst news I have received in a long time:

I went to my registrar’s office immediately after I read that because I could not sit around and wait for that damn letter to come in the mail.

My registrar confirmed that it was not a mistake; I simply did not read the fine print, to to speak. When I heard this I almost started to cry right there. I was so sure that I was able to graduate that I started to plan my life around that assumption.

I know that the same thing has happened to many before me — people who I know personally. It is a devastating experience and also humiliating to have to tell people “whoops I’m not graduating after all,” especially when you’ve already been in university for so long. I don’t want it to happen to anyone in the future, so here is what I want you to learn from me:

1. Before the beginning of what you think is going to be your final year of your undergrad, do two things:

• get all of the departments of each of your POSts to confirm exactly what courses you still have to take to complete your POSt
• get your registrar to confirm that you have all the general degree requirements

2. If anything changes, repeat step 1. For example, if you are not going to be taking the exact credits you were supposed to according to what all of those people said, ask them once again if things are still good to go.

What happened to me is that I got waivers for two courses in my program, which allowed me to substitute two other courses that I already took for them. I didn’t realize that this waiver would affect my general degree requirements.

I’m not sure how other colleges and departments work, but receiving the notification that I got today was pretty last minute, considering that:

• classes for the new semester are already starting on Monday; if I had waited for the letter to come in the mail I would have missed the first week
• a lot of courses have waiting lists
• courses that I might have needed aren’t necessarily offered this semester

Not only that, but I never received any kind of program assessment from the math department.

I don’t know what is up with all of this last-minute business, which is a big WTF, but don’t learn this lesson the hard way. Take initiative to make sure that you don’t get screwed and that your plans play out as you expect.

I have sent and received a lot of emails in my life for work, school, and extracurricular activities (especially for blogUT-related things). Over this time, I have developed many email pet peeves that are not only annoying but waste everybody’s time. These do not only include chain mail type emails with subject lines such as “Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: reply to this or you will die tonight” but other smaller things that a lot people don’t seem to be aware of. I always reply politely of course, but I am grinding my teeth while doing so.

If you are part of a student group, your primary means of communication is probably email. It is less time-consuming than having to constantly meet up, and you don’t have to worry about co-ordinating with each person’s schedule. You also probably use email to communicate with other classmates, say if you are working on an assignment together. Most importantly, you probably email TAs and professors to ask questions about courses or to request letters of recommendation for grad school (you know, if that’s important to you or something). Regardless of who you are trying to contact, you obviously never want to piss people off or waste their time, yet there is a chance that you inadvertently do so. Here is a list of things to watch out for:

Reply to the ENTIRE email. Some people tend to only respond to the last bit of a message, forgetting to address anything in the first bit. This is a huge waste of time for everyone, and incredibly irritating, because the recipient has to then send another email asking them the same questions yet again.

Check your spelling, grammar, and punctuation, dammit. This one is pretty obvious, but there are still people who seem to type up emails as if they were casually IM-ing with a friend. Doing this basically tells the other person that they aren’t important enough to you that you can’t take two minutes (or less) to read over your message before hitting Send. It is actually insulting, especially if the recipient is a professor or someone that you should be a little more respectful towards. On that same note…

For the love of God, check that you spelled the recipient’s name correctly, whether it be an organization or a person. We get messages all the time to “U of T Blog” and my (mental) response is “Do you not know who you’re writing to?”

Use BCC and CC correctly. Don’t hit Reply All if the people CC’ed and BCC’ed don’t need to read what you said. Conversely, make sure that everyone who does need to read your message (but doesn’t need to reply) gets CC’ed or BCC’ed.

Don’t send a new message as a reply to an old one just because you’re too lazy to look for the person’s email address and copy and paste it into a new email. You’re starting a new topic that doesn’t have anything to do with the one in the old email, which doesn’t make sense.

Use a proper email address. You are not sixteen years old anymore (unless you are a child prodigy attending university, but even if you are this applies). x_bubblegum16_x@hotmail.com is NOT a professional-looking email address. Use your @utoronto.ca address if anything.

If you liked this post, check out this rather hilarious webcomic entitled If you do this in an email, I hate you.

blogUT is looking for two Junior Editors to carry on the torch! All of our editors are graduating but we need to make sure that blogUT lives on and continues to produce great content.

For the next few months as a Junior Editor, we will be training you on the awesome and mysterious inner workings of blogUT.

What we’re looking for:

• Someone who is in first, second, or third year
• Ability to write respond to emails quickly and professionally
• Have an understanding of how a good blog should look, in terms of layout, etc.
• Pays attention to detail
• Basic knowledge of how to use WordPress or other web publishing platform
• Excellent spelling and grammar
• Ability to devote 2-3 hours per week to blogUT activities

What your responsibilities will be:

• Editing blogs and comments on a regular basis
• Updating our Twitter feed and Facebook profile
• Responding to emails from various organizations about events that are going on
• Finding out about events that would be of interest to blogUT readers
• Contacting event organizers for press passes
• Helping to make decisions about finances
• Helping to organize meetings
• Doing paperwork for the UTSU (ex. applying for funding)
• Miscellaneous administrative tasks, such as creating new user accounts and helping contributors with problems using WordPress
• Coming up with ideas on how to help the blog run better

To apply, shoot us an email with the following info by NOVEMBER 30th:

• A brief intro about who you are, what you are studying, etc.
• Why you are interested in this position
• Why you think you are qualified for this position
• Something new, fresh, and innovative that you will bring to blogUT
• Constructive criticism on how we are currently operating

Yesterday Maclean’s published an article entitled “Too Asian?” The Toronto Star wrote an article about it as well, slapping on the dramatic headline, “Suffering for Success” on the front page of their paper. How this is even news — let alone headline-worthy news — I do not understand, but let’s not get into that.

Much of the article seems to be comprised of quotes from select individuals making statements that re-enforce existing Asian stereotypes:

“I do have traditional Asian parents. I feel the pressure of finding a good job and raising a good family.”

“As a so-called ‘model minority,’ they are more frequently targeted because of being “too smart” and ‘teachers’ pets.’”

“‘My dad said if you don’t go into engineering, I won’t pay your tuition,’ says Jason Yin, a Taiwanese software engineering student at Waterloo.”

However, the main point that Maclean’s tries to make is that schools have a problem with there being a high proportion of Asian students, causing frustration among non-Asians who find it unfair that they have to struggle to compete… apparently.

“… many white students simply believe that competing with Asians—both Asian Canadians and international students—requires a sacrifice of time and freedom they’re not willing to make. They complain that they can’t compete for spots in the best schools and can’t party as much as they’d like (too bad for them, most will say).”

Another “problem” it states is that Canadian universities are struggling with deciding whether or not they should openly address this phenomenon and that if they don’t, all of the students will basically just stop socializing with each other (WTF):

“… many in the education community worry that universities risk becoming too skewed one way, changing campus life—a debate that’s been more or less out in the open in the U.S. for years but remains muted here. And that puts Canadian universities in a quandary. If they openly address the issue of race they expose themselves to criticisms that they are profiling and committing an injustice. If they don’t, Canada’s universities, far from the cultural mosaics they’re supposed to be—oases of dialogue, mutual understanding and diversity—risk becoming places of many solitudes, deserts of non-communication.”

The U of T president, David Naylor, thinks the opposite:

“This is a non-issue… We’ve never had a student complain about this. In fact, this is a false stereotype, as we know that Asian students are fully engaged in extracurricular activities. So the whole concept is false.”

The article seemed to spark a huge response for reasons that include the perception that it makes racist statements and that it is just bad journalism.

So, is this an actual problem in Canada, or is Maclean’s just making it out to be one for the sake of increasing their readership?

Calling all U of T student hackers, developers and entrepreneurs!

The Web Startup Society and U of T Entrepreneurial Society are looking for students who would like to have the opportunity to deliver a 5 minute demo on personal projects, particularly web & mobile applications and startups at their second annual DemoCamp U of T.

If you are unfamiliar with DemoCamps, they are “unconferences” held monthly in Toronto and other Canadian cities. They offer a great chance to get instant feedback and network with people who are passionate about startups. To get an idea of what you could demo, check out who last year’s presenters were.

If you are interested in showing off your stuff, send an email to democamp@webdev.skule.ca indicating your name, email, tentative topic of presentation, and website URL (if applicable).

The deadline for registration is Nov 3, 2010.