The Citizen, 2019-06-27, Page 5Other Views
Jobs and procrastinating at school
It seems we can’t handle the truth Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
So you’ve chosen your school, your
program, your dormitory and figured out
how you’re going to eat for the first year
of school. What comes next? Classes and a job.
Note: This is the finale to a column started
in the June 13 issue of The Citizen.
• Classes:If there’s one thing I learned
about classes, it’s that early-morning classes
can be a really great thing to be enrolled in,
regardless of how healthy a party/study
balance a student may have while at school.
That said, early morning classes should be
subjects a student is either really interested in
or already knows well.
Don’t, for example, make my mistake and
take a philosophy class at 8 a.m. It’s one thing
to talk about this history of communication at
8 a.m. and quite another to contemplate the
biggest questions of life when you’re working
on your first coffee.
Those early morning classes will serve as a
reminder for students that the real world
doesn’t sleep in.
When a roommate knocked on my door near
midnight the day before my 8 a.m philosophy
class asking if I was up for some kind of
adventure or a game of late-night street hockey
in the driveway, I had to make the adult choice
to decline and go to bed early (or the near-
adult choice to set an alarm on my coffee-
maker).
It’s an exercise in the real-world in the safety
of academia.
• Get a job:The key to the perfect
university job (I can’t speak to a job that fits a
college course load, just not an experience I
have) is finding one that follows two rules.
Rule one is finding a job that allows you to
check out from the work and focus on your
studies while you’re there.
I’m not saying slack off, I’m saying pick a
job that lets you study during the downtime.
For me, that was afternoon or night shifts at a
call centre hawking mobile phones and
cellular plans for a certain U.S. carrier.
During the day, there wasn’t much
downtime at the call centre, but, once 7 p.m.
hit, you could bank on a bit of a slowdown as
people sat down for dinner and/or night time
television across most of the country.
Rule number two of the perfect university
job is to find one where you’re just a speck of
sand on a beach: the kind of place where you
can take some time off without worrying about
it hurting the company.
This rule only applies if you had an
upbringing like mine where you were taught
the value of a good day of work, which I’m
assuming goes for most of Huron County. If,
however, you’re one of those heathens that
doesn’t believe in things like work ethic, two
weeks notice or keeping your nose to the
grindstone, I guess you’re golden.
Working at the call centre, for example, gave
me the freedom to reschedule shifts at a
moment’s notice if there was a pop quiz,
illness or another impromptu street hockey
game or party. It also gave me the opportunity
to EO (early out) if things were particularly
dead, giving me a guilt-free way to enjoy those
hockey games and parties.
• Procrastination 101: Unless you’ve
already been granted an extension, there’s
always time to study and finish projects.
This is probably one of those “bad lessons”
I alluded to in last week’s column, but, trust
me, there’s always time to study and write.
When I started school I was pretty tense, and
pretty closed off because I, like so many
others, saw the halls of academia as a place of
“hair pulling out” before big exams and late-
night study sessions, but I was wrong.
The truth of the matter is that, if a student
finds the time to do the readings and
assignments, the exam shouldn’t be much of a
surprise to them.
• Off-Campus Living:This is looking a
little ways down the road, but when it gets
time to leave residence, find roommates who
share the same educational experience values.
As much as I hate buying into stereotypes,
there are a lot of archetypes when you hit post-
secondary, from the party animals at one end
to the academia elite at the other end, and
finding people who share a similar space to
your own on that spectrum is very important.
I was lucky with my assigned dorm
roommates. While we were all different
people, we held education in the same respect
and studied, slacked off and played hockey
together (for the most part).
When it came time to move out of a dorm
room, four of the six of us stayed together (one
of us stayed in residence to become a don,
teaching the next wave of freshmen, and one
switched campuses). Five of those six
roommates are people I still keep in somewhat
regular contact with today.
But like I said, four of us joined two close
friends in a house and it became a place for
people who valued equal parts studying,
relaxing and partying.
We did throw some pretty wild parties (as
anyone should, living in a three-storey house
full of students), but when it came time to
study, we all respected each other’s right and
need to do so.
So, there you have it, some tips to survive
school courtesy of someone who, in his own
mind, did a pretty decent job of it.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 2019. PAGE 5.
L.T.: MoE 2018-2019
They were this close. They almost made
it a year in the cabinet. Sworn in on
June 29, 2018, Ministers Caroline
Mulroney, Vic Fedeli, Lisa MacLeod and our
very own Lisa Thompson, among others, were
demoted on June 20, 2019. Let’s take a look a t
Lisa’s 357 days as Minister of Education.
Days after being sworn in to her new
position, Thompson announced the province
would be reverting to the 1998 sexual
education curriculum. This meant Ontario
schools would fail to address the LGBT
community, gender identity, cyber security,
sexually-transmitted infections and consent.
There was the consultation, which made the
government look rather bad. A fraction of
respondents approved of the sexual education
rollback. It was around this time that
Thompson gave befuddled interviews, further
confusing the issue, citing a non-existent
curriculum update and repeating herself.
There was the snitch line. Parents could call
and rat out teachers who dared to defy
Thompson’s orders by teaching modern
concepts. That too would soon be scrapped.
She gutted Indigenous education. She
cancelled $100 million for needed school
repairs. School boards attributed hundreds of
redundancies to Thompson’s cuts to the
system despite her government’s asinine
insistence that no jobs would be lost despite
facts to the contrary.
Many of these decisions would eventually be
walked back, either after significant public
uproar or “consultation” that showed
Ontarians disagreed with the government’s
direction. Every walkback, many under
Thompson, made the government look worse.
She quickly became the face of an old, white
government that had no time for people of
colour, the LGBT community, Indigenous
communities or those needing social support.
It’s hard to envision more of a “Yes Man” for
Premier Doug Ford than Thompson. She’s an
ardent Tweeter of Ontario News Now, Ford’s
propaganda machine. Through her Twitter
account, she’s supported him at every turn.
Whether it was the notwithstanding clause, his
attacks on the media or protesting the carbon
tax. If Ford did it, she supported it.
She oversaw the creation of a new position
at the Education Quality and Accountability
Office for a failed PC candidate at $140,000 a
year – a position that had previously cost
taxpayers $4,000 per year. She was firmly on
board the gravy train Ford promised to derail.
She carried out class size increases, defying
many experts advising against them, assuring
Ontarians no teachers would lose their jobs.
The problem with this was twofold. On one
hand, it was clearly dishonest as teachers
began to receive pink slips left and right. On
the other hand, if the move won’t save money
through eliminating staff, why make it? It was
another muddy, nonsensical decision with no
basis in research or expertise.
Most upsetting of all, I heard time and again
that Lisa refused to defend her position to her
constituents. During numerous protests, I
spoke to more and more people who said they
had reached out to Lisa with measured,
nuanced e-mails looking for answers, only to
receive boiler-plate, thanks-for-your-interest
answers, or to be ignored altogether.
Thompson’s time as Minister of Education
had no redemptive qualities. I can’t point to a
single thing she did and honestly say it’s better
than it was before she got her hands on it.
Things are unlikely to get better under
Stephen Lecce. I’d say the only way he can go
is up, but under Ford, I fear I’d be wrong.
My parents taught me that honesty was
the best policy. I taught my kids that
honesty was the best policy. What a
crock!
Instead, I’m beginning to think Jack
Nicholson’s character Colonel Nathan R.
Jessup was right when he exploded “You can’t
handle the truth!” while being questioned
during a trial about the murder of a prisoner at
the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in A
Few Good Men.
Poll results released by CBC last week
showed that two-thirds of Canadians think
fighting climate change is a top priority yet
only half were willing to actually do something
about it if it cost them as little at $100 a year
(less than $9 a month).
Given those poll results, is it any wonder
that Premier Doug Ford and other conservative
premiers across Canada think they’re onto a
winning strategy when they fight the federal
government’s carbon tax (of course
conveniently omitting the fact people are
getting a rebate that more than covers the cost
of the tax)?
I’m sure federal Conservative Party leader
Andrew Scheer had his own party’s polling
results at hand when he crafted a climate
change agenda, announced last week, that
basically promised voters climate change could
go away without the ordinary Canadian having
to lift a finger. Instead, in a very NDP-like
move, the big guys would pick up for the costs
of cleanup by paying into a fund to develop
green technologies. These companies would
apparently not pass their costs along to
consumers.
Meanwhile, with an election coming this
fall, and understanding that Canadians don’t
really want to sacrifice even a little to fight
climate change, the governing Liberals last
week distanced themselves from the
conclusions of the Parliamentary Budget
Officer (PBO). He said that while programs the
government has put in place will reduce
Canada’s carbon output by 592 megatonnes by
2030, we’ll still be 79 megatonnes short of
meeting the goal the Conservative government
of Stephen Harper agreed to when he signed
the Paris Accord in 2016. To meet that target,
the PBO said, would require a new carbon tax
starting at $6 a tonne in 2022 and increasing to
$52 per tonne in 2030.
Scheer immediately jumped on this figure
to say the Liberals’ plan won’t work unless
Canadians were charged an extra 25 cents per
litre for gas. His own plan was much more
realistic, of course. Although his penalties on
large emitters wouldn’t meet the Harper target
by 2030, Scheer told CTV’s Evan Solomon on
Question Period, Sunday, if China fitted 100 of
its coal plants with carbon capture and storage
developed in Canada, it would eliminate more
than 300 megatonnes of emissions per year. It’s
a sure thing that they would, of course – the
expression “pie in the sky” comes to mind. And
I’m sure the Chinese won’t bother claiming the
same reductions to show they’re cleaning up
their act on carbon emissions.
Then there are the smug cynics. In her
column in the Globe and Mail on Saturday,
Margaret Wente mocked both Scheer and
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the
ineffectiveness of their climate change policies
(it’s always nice to be able to sneer at people
who are actually trying to do something). Then
she went on to the classic argument that no
matter what Canadians do about climate
change, it will have little effect in the grand
scheme of things because growing economies
in China and India are increasing carbon
emissions far faster than we can reduce them.
This is even better than the anti-carbon-tax
arguments. We might as well not do anything at
all. Let’s keep on enjoying our wasteful lives
like the doomed passengers who kept dancing
as the Titanic sank.
On one hand, we’ve come a long way in the
last 50 years in reducing carbon pollution by
government forcing car companies to create
more efficient engines and by giving people
incentives to make their homes more efficient.
(Personal confession: our family used these
programs to insulate our century-old farm
house and install ground-source heating). On
the other hand we’ve invented whole new ways
of burning carbon such as the explosion of
tourism involving jet travel.
Conservative philosophy often argues that
people should take personal responsibility so
that others don’t have to pay taxes to help them
out. Well when it comes to climate change, that
means we have to take personal responsibility
for reducing the part we play adding to carbon
emissions. Yes, government can force big
polluters to clean up their act. Yes, emerging
economies need to choose clean technologies
or the prosperity they want for their people will
be hollow. But when it comes right down to it,
if we want a liveable world for our children and
grandchildren we have to accept the truth: we
have to pay the cost of cleaning up our own
contribution to the problem.
Keith
Roulston
From the
cluttered desk