When drinking water becomes a bad idea...

In my years since starting this blog, I had never gone one calendar month without posting something new. That is, until now....

October just flew by at tornado speed. By the time I had stopped spinning, it was November already and my first term at school was halfway over. Midterms came and midterms went, and with each mark that I received back, I was surprised -- pleasantly or otherwise. My self-concept has diminished, and I'm sure my IQ has dropped twenty points since beginning grad school.

Today, I decided to bring a water bottle to school. It would be nice to stay hydrated throughout the day, since Mondays are unbearably long, with almost eight hours of classes non-stop.

I walked into my first class with a lilt in my step, seeing that my friends had already arrived. I plunked my bag down, opened it up, and fished out my folder of class-notes.

Things didn't feel right. As I laid the folder on my lap, I noticed that my jeans were getting rather wet. I placed a tentative hand into my shoulder bag, and to my dismay, discovered what I already knew by that point: I had accidentally left the cap of my water bottle open, and almost all of the 600mL of liquid had ended up out of the bottle, forming a pool for my notes, pens, and crackers.

First reaction: I laughed. It was good to have a sense of humour about things since there was nothing I could do about it any more.

The first uh-oh: I realized the book I had borrowed from my audiology professor was in there.

Then came the scramble. I quickly snatched all I could out of my bag. My friend to the left ran to grab me paper towels from the bathroom, and my friend to the right proceeded to lay out some of my papers on the front table to air-dry.

As I surveyed the damage, I thought how lucky I was that I had printed everything on a laser printer instead of inkjet. I would have curly crunchy pages after everything dried, but at least I would still be able to make out the text. And it was luckier still that I had left my laptop at home today instead of bringing it to class in my shoulder-bag.

I just spent thirty minutes blow-drying my papers. Now comes the part where I go to buy my professor a gigantic box of chocolates in anticipation of the profuse apologies I will have to give when I return his book.

Week five as a grad student

It's officially Week Five. Here are the various tidbits of wisdom gathered from these past few weeks:

1. It is okay to have a life outside of school. That feeling of guilt while you acknowledge there are classmates who study for six hours each night does eventually melt away.

2. Readings are important, but seem to work best when you use them to confirm what you've learned in lectures, or to look up information you aren't sure of. Trying to do the required 150 pages per night is impossible, so you might just as well resign yourself to never ever accomplishing that feat.

3. Dissecting a sheep brain is very much aided by a stuffy nose. You'd never think a cold could work to your advantage, but there you have it.

4. Speaking of sheep brains: They're incredibly small -- just barely larger than a golf ball. You might marvel that it's so much smaller than a human brain, until you actually see a human brain. Then, you realize the human brain is also smaller than you had imagined.

5. Having a labcoat during a dissection lab is a good idea. I learned it the hard way.

6. A studio apartment is not conducive to any type of schoolwork. Sitting in Starbucks with a chai latte does help.

7. Getting up early enough to pack yourself a decent lunch really is too much of a hassle. Doing it the night before always seems like such a great idea, until you find yourself barely able to crawl into bed.

8. Tell your family you're studying when they call, even if you're not. All that time you confess to spending at the mall or watching movies will worry them more than the image of you burning out from the exhaustion of scholarly pursuits.

9. Bubble baths are wonderful; everything else can wait.

10. You wake up every morning feeling like a bit of an imposter. You go to your lectures, talk about thesis ideas, traipse through the medical sciences labs and university hospital donning your labcoat.... It's the most fantastic feeling in the world.

Out with the mopey

I've been in Edmonton for approximately three weeks now. My apartment has come to feel like home, and I'm starting to get into the routine of school, which began on Tuesday. In these first weeks, I've had two out-of-town visitors, and had run around setting up my apartment and getting ready for school. I had mostly kept myself out of the doldrums that I sometimes fall into -- that is, until today.

This is a long weekend, and used to be one of my favourite weekends of the year. I'm hoping it will be one of my favourites again, but it's a challenge. This weekend marks the second anniversary of the loss of a friend under some tragic circumstances. I can't help but think of my friend today, and remember the last time I saw him, just a few days before his death. It seems like a lifetime ago, or feels as though my memories are merely figments of my imagination.

I still remember his voice. I think about all the people who have passed from my life, and thinking about their voices somehow reassures me. If I close my eyes, I can hear them echo, and know with a strange certainty that I would still recognize them if I were to hear them now. I have an irrational fear that one day, I will forget what they sounded like. With that act of forgetting, it would complete their transformation into characters out of a dream, rather than flesh and blood people who had once touched me and influenced me.

This is also my birthday weekend. I have never cared for birthdays much, and wouldn't care if no one celebrated it with me, but being alone in a new city has made me feel a bit sorry for myself. A good friend from Inuvik had sent me a wonderful shoulder-bag made in Fort McPherson, and I've used it these few days. I feel less lost when I can glance down and see the little polar bear patch marking it as made in the Canadian Arctic. Perhaps being reminded of where I have come from assuages the fear of not knowing where I'm going.

I have three days to organize myself and get into the mode of reading my course materials. Graduate studies are about as gruelling as I had imagined, and although I know I should be able to handle all the stress, I need to banish self-despair and embrace confidence and inner peace.

I have a list of thirteen things to do for my classes. I plan to break them up with walks around the neighbourhood, a trip to the mall to window-shop, and cooking up some new dishes. Tonight, I made buckwheat noodles with a peanut and spinach sauce. It was delicious and satisfying.

A birthday meal alone in a new city might not be so bad after all, if it could be organic, healthy, and delicious to boot. Solitude has its own poetic quality....

* I'll save my thoughts about my grad school program for another post.

Heart-attack in a pie shell

Who am I kidding -- I am NOT a cook. I like to tell the oh-so-true story of having a dinner party in Inuvik, calling up my friend K, and having her respond, "Oh, do we have to bring the dinner? You don't cook!" But now, I'm going to be a student in less than a week, and one of my resolutions is to cook more, pack my lunches, and eat out much less.

This has never been a blog where one might go for recipes. However, this is something that I made today and have made on several occasions for various people, and it's always a hit. And that's enough for me to boast about publicly in the blogosphere.

I love eggs. I love cheese. Hence, this is my "no fail" quiche recipe:

Mix together with a fork/spoon/knife in a large mixing bowl: 3-4 eggs, half a block of cream cheese, some spinach (half a block of frozen, one can, or some freshly chopped -- whatever you've got), four handfuls of grated cheese (any kind -- I like a mix of romano, mozza, and parmesan), some minced garlic, half a cup of milk, a bit of salt, and pepper. (If you're a meat-eater, sprinkle in a handful of bacon bits!)

Pour the mixture into a 9-inch deep-dish frozen pie shell. Sprinkle the top with some more cheese if you so desire to ensure a thorough clog of the arteries.

Put it into the oven and bake at 375 F for 40-45 mins. Voila!

By the way, can't you tell that I'm not the most precise cook? I never measure anything. My measuring cup has been rendered an implement for scooping clean kitty-litter....

I just ate a quarter of that quiche all by myself, and am about to go raid the fridge for some more. But, I used light cream cheese, skim milk, and only three eggs. That makes it all right then, doesn't it?

The first six days, in brief

The view from my apartment

Day 1, Monday: Hopped on a plane from Vancouver to Edmonton. My worries about my cat making a run for it at the airport while I took her out of her carrier to go through security proved completely unfounded. Instead, Duncan flatly refused to be taken out of her carrier, so sure was she that I was going to fling her to sudden death. I held up the security line for minutes, trying to wrangle the poor creature out. By the time I had her shivering in my arms, with her back claws digging into me, I felt as though I was the most incompetent pet owner ever. The rest of the trip was quite uneventful. Picked up my rental car (a Dodge Calibre), and had my move-in inspection. Greyhound delivered the boxes I had sent two days earlier, and I went to my auntie’s house for supper. (She’s my mother’s best friend from high school.) Came home, and spent the rest of the evening debating inside my head whether my walls were indeed light pink. (They aren’t, but during certain times of the day, when the sun reflects off the red brick building across the way, my walls have a pinkish sheen.)

Day 2, Tuesday: Woke up with a sore back from sleeping in just my sleeping bag on the bare wood floor. Called Sears delivery services to attempt to confirm that the sofa and bed that I had ordered a week ago were indeed going to be delivered to my apartment that morning. No siree, things were not going to go that smoothly.... I was informed that my order had been cancelled for some strange reason. Another call to Sears customer service and fifteen minutes of not-so-gentle explanation and argument later, I figured my furniture was not coming, might never be coming. Oh, the customer service guy said on the other end, you should have called in your order instead of using the online order form. Well, then, why was online ordering even an option if they weren’t going to follow through with the order?! With that, I resolved never to order or buy anything from Sears ever again. (Yesterday, I read an article in The Globe and Mail commenting on Sears’s unexpected losses the second quarter of this year. Could it have something to do with poor communication with customers and even poorer service? Hmm, something to ponder....) Called up my friend R who had arrived in town the night before, on his way back to Inuvik to start the school year. Went to IKEA and bought all the furniture that I needed, hauling half of it in the Calibre and arranging to have the rest delivered the next day. R was his usual helpful, cheerful self, lugging everything for me, while I was my usual cranky, impatient, and humourless self. Went to West Edmonton Mall and bought some kitchen supplies. Slept better that night, with my new mattress on the floor.

The disarray at the end of Day 2

Day 3, Wednesday: Puttered around the apartment all morning. R came over with groceries for my fridge in the afternoon, and we walked around the neighbourhood, popping into the stores to pick up a few last supplies, including my favourite cheese, a requisite for my fridge. IKEA came through with my furniture delivery (yay!), and R helped me assemble my bed (yay again!). Third night’s sleep was even better, with a proper bed, mattress, and bedding.

Sweet Dreams

Day 4, Thursday: Went to West Edmonton Mall in the morning with R, then back to IKEA in the afternoon to buy a desk. Went home and, after many whines and complaints (from me, while R brandished the tools good-humouredly), managed to put together the rest of the furniture. R took me out for the most scrumptious meal, and then we saw District 9 in the downtown theatre.

Day 5, Friday: Drove R to the airport to catch his plane up to Inuvik. Returned the Calibre, and took the shuttle to a hotel about ten blocks from my apartment. Walked home, following a guy in a car who was stopping at every street corner to empty the change out of the Edmonton Sun newspaper box. After the meeting up with him on the third street corner in a row, we chit-chatted, after he joked that I was his stalker. Attempted to make an omelette à la Julia Child. Walked downtown, picked up knick-knacks from the dollar store, and came home. Cleaned the apartment and relaxed into the evening, thoroughly bored during my first night after the apartment was fully-furnished and cleaned. Tried to take a walk by the river, but hesitated taking the set of creaky wooden steps I found that might or might not have led down to the trails. Strolled along the street overlooking the valley instead.

Day 6, Saturday: Three loads of laundry. Went to the drugstore two blocks from my house to buy more cleaning supplies. Tried hard to get my cat to sit in her new cat-bed instead of my new white couch. No such luck. Trying even harder to steal someone’s unsecured internet signal. If this post gets published today, August 22nd, then it would prove my success, and the day would not be a complete waste.

She stayed like this for a brief minute, at least.

Ha, take that, Sears!

Having faith

Two boys lie in fetal positions on the concrete. The sun is fierce, forcing one of the boys to find shade between a garbage can and a wall. Both have toques on, perhaps because arctic summers can still be cold, or because it's their way of shutting the world out.

The Globe and Mail ran an article about the reactions that cropped up upon the release of a photo of two young boys sleeping outside the local grocery store in Iqaluit. "Outrage" seems to be the universal reaction. Some northerners are outraged that their communities have been depicted in such a negative light, outraged that the photo and the ensuing controversy highlight already ubiquitous and harmful stereotypes. Others are outraged that the government hasn't and isn't doing enough to address the social problems in the North.

The question seems to be whether such bleak depictions merely perpetuate historical prejudices and stereotypes of aboriginal peoples and communities, particularly northern ones, or whether these serve as wake up calls for everyone to take notice and do something. What that something is, no one seems to know.

Cathleen With, a dear writer friend of mine who taught up in Inuvik with me, has written a novel in which the narrator is a troubled northern youth. It is a story of one young girl's struggles, of her challenges and hopes, of her journey to find a self that she can accept and love. That her story is set in the north is not merely extraneous. Readers may ask why someone would choose to write about the north from such a bleak perspective; however, as a teacher who had taught for five years in Inuvik, I must say that even though not all of my students were troubled youth, I had encountered enough heartbreak in my interactions with my students, and theirs were the stories that kept me up at night, that tore me apart, that made me feel helpless. While I shed tears and tossed and turned in vain, Cathleen did something about it: She was compelled to write a fictional account of one girl's shattered life. In no way is young Trista representative of all northern youth, but it is someone's story, someone's truth. And, sadly, there are more someones than there ever should be in the North. (And yes, I realize that there are troubled urban youth living in southern cities as well, and that everything just seems magnified in the North because of its close-knit communities; however, to say that does nothing to assuage the problems.)

So, is the story sad? Definitely so. But is it "too sad to read"? Decidedly not. If reading the book makes you cry, then great. If it draws you into a world of harsh juxtaposition, where the beauty of land and culture clashes with despair and helplessness, then you've learned a bit of what it feels like to live in the north, to be confronted by such a mesh of emotions. Having Faith is a journey, and perhaps it's a start of that something. Faith is about believing in something that cannot be proven. The resilience of youth, of culture, and of traditions is absolutely worth having faith about.

* Visit Cathleen's website, read a review of her book, or buy Having Faith in the Polar Girls' Prison. Cathleen is donating part of the proceeds to the Inuvik Youth Centre.

Conversations

Conversation 1, heard as I was riding the train to see a friend:

Boy: Ask me!

Mother: Ask you what?

Boy: Ask me! Ask me how old are me?

Mother: How old are you?

Boy: Five, but.... six soon!

Mother: Six soon? When?

Boy: December 2nd. You know what's December 2nd?

Mother: It's your --

Boy: B-day!

* He literally said "b-day"!

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Conversation 2, at the hairdresser's:

Me: Hi!

T: Hi! I remember you! You came during Christmas last time!

Me: Actually, it was February....

T: And it looks like you haven't done anything to your hair since.

Me: Well....

T: Your hair doesn't grow much, does it?!

Me: Well... I guess not....

T: Oh, and your mother came two or three times, but she hasn't been here in a while.

Me: Oh really?!

* My mother had failed to tell me that she had come to this hairdresser after liking what he did to my hair in February. I am mortified that I share a hairdresser with my mother, and I don't know why.

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Conversation 3, in my head:

V1: Why is it dark at night?

V2: Because the sun gets tired and goes to sleep.

V1: But why is it dark at night?

V2: Because the Earth rotates on its axis, and the sun, our source of light, dips below the horizon and sets.

V1: But what about other stars? Isn't the sun just a star? So why is it dark at night?

V2: Yes, but the other stars are very far away.

V1: But if the universe is infinite, and there are an infinite number of stars in our universe, then every inch of the night sky has the potential to be as bright as the sun's light as these infinite number of stars overlap each other. Then why is it so dark?

V2: Because the universe is expanding, and the stars are getting farther and farther apart, moving away from us all this time. In effect, every night sky that you witness is darker than the previous night's, and every subsequent night sky is darker still. The universe is literally exploding, in front of us, and around us, and there's nothing we can do about it.

V1: Oh. How oddly and fascinatingly comforting.

* Inspired by a late-night radio show I heard about a week ago and that has been on my mind since.

Träumerei

Träumerei is the seventh of thirteen pieces in Robert Schumann's piano collection Kinderszenen ("Scenes from Childhood"). I had once performed the whole collection. I was already an "advanced" player, but somehow, these short and supposedly easy pieces eluded me. I could hit all the notes precisely, but failed at conveying the gentleness of Schumann's scenes. Träumerei is perhaps the best-known, and was the most difficult for me on account of a non-musical technicality. Träumerei means "dreaming," but the linguist in me kept staring at the title of the piece and seeing it associated with "trauma."

Today, I dug out my violin and found the piece transcribed for the string instrument. I shoved aside the linguist in me and harkened the dreamer. To me, Schumann's collection is like Renoir's paintings, and I tried to draw my bow across the strings as Renoir would have swept his brush across the canvas, with lively flourish wrapped around a core of calm reflection.

In the end, I must admit that my violinist's fingers and arms have not grown up enough to play the piece satisfactorily. Music requires maturity of the heart as well as of the requisite muscles. I dare to think that my heart has grown enough; however, my muscles required for violin still need some time and experience, some gruelling and battering.

Tomorrow, I will try my hand at the piano. Perhaps my piano fingers can channel enough experience and wisdom to paint a picture of gentle innocence.

* Please visit the Wikipedia entry for Kinderszenen and listen to the thirteen different scenes played beautifully by Donald Betts.

What do you do?

Why is it that one of the first questions that pops up upon meeting a new acquaintance is "What do you do?" Yes, a person's occupation is undoubtedly an important part of his/her life; however, since when does it tell you what that person is really all about?

What do you do?

The expected response: I was a teacher; I am soon-to-be a student; I hope to be a speech pathologist.

The real response: I read fiction voraciously, and dabble in poetry. I play and occasionally write music. I love my friends and family, but regret that I don't tell them enough. I like to watch people and the world. I worry a lot, but hopefully dream even more. I cry easily, but also laugh at unexpected things. I love to eat, but rarely cook. I dance when no one is watching. I am afraid of the dark, except when camping out under the stars. I blog and journal, and was flattered when a stranger once commented that s/he had read every single post on my blog. I am learning to need external validation less, and to cherish myself more. I struggle with many insecurities, but am an optimist despite everything. I do what I do partly because I have to, but mostly because I want to. And I'll always question everything: It's not just something I do, but something I am.

Last teacherly act

I've officially moved out of the teaching profession (for now anyway). A couple of days ago, I performed my last teacherly act by logging on to check my Grade 12 students' Social Studies exam scores. In Alberta, all students need to pass Social Studies in order to graduate, and their final marks hinge on a standardized provincial exam worth 50% of their course grade. I've always been against such standardized tests; they seem counter-intuitive to me, and teach students mostly to regurgitate rather than analyze, particularly when it comes to Social Studies. But, I do understand the need for standardized tests as a way of "objectively" gauging students' skill levels, especially for post-secondary entrance. Still, that provincial exam is brutal in its heftiness, and can make or break a student's chance of graduating or going on to pursue studies at college or university.

I was pleased to see that all but one of my students had passed. The one student who didn't pass had gone into the exam with a rather low grade to begin with, and the provincial exam was mostly a practice-test for her. She'll have to return to school in the fall to upgrade. Part of me wishes I could have done more for her; she's actually quite a bright young woman, and the semester had started well for her. In the last month before the end, however, I saw her giving up. Her personal life had spiralled and overwhelmed her, and school had fallen by the wayside. Still, any failure on a student's part haunts the teacher, no matter how seasoned and otherwise successful the teacher is.

It is bittersweet to think that in the fall, I will not be embarking on another school year at the front of the classroom. It's a strange feeling not to set up my classroom, not to look up curriculum documents, not to prepare to meet students old and new.

My first-day jitters will be from behind a student's desk this time....