Life Lessons That I Learned From University

Last week I shared a list of the life lessons that I learned from being a piano teacher. It got me thinking about life lessons that I have learned from other experiences in my life, like university. Maybe this will become a bit of a new blog post series on my blog. I probably won't write these blog posts a whole lot but maybe once in a while. We'll see. They'll all be found under the 'Life Lessons' label. Anyway, back to my university experience. If you have read my 'About' page, then you know that I graduated from Laurentian University in June 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a minor in French (as a second language). I therefore also have my bilingualism certificate for French as a second language. Now, looking back at my experience of doing a four year undergraduate degree in university, especially a Bachelor of Arts, I didn't just learn about the subjects that I was studying. I also learned a lot about life and myself. In the following list, I share what I learned.

1) Question everything: Don't understand something? Ask a question. Get answers. Don't like something or believe something or just have a different opinion? Question it. Challenge it. Let your voice be heard.

2) Think for yourself, you're allowed to have an opinion: This is connected to the life lesson above about questioning everything. You are allowed to think differently. You are allowed to have an opinion. You are allowed to be a free thinker. Open up your mind.

3) We have to figure out for ourselves how we learn best: I learned that classroom learning isn't the best option for me since I am a visual learner (as well as a bit of a kinesthetic learner) rather than an auditory learner. I learn better on my own and through online courses. Everyone is different. You just have to figure out how you learn best and use that to help you in future learning.

4) We are always learning: We start learning from the time that we are born and then for the rest of our lives. There is so much to learn, the world is so big, and we experience so many things. Even if you aren't in school, you still continue to learn and that's a beautiful thing.

5) The world is an amazing and crazy place: University is great for showing us how to look at the world differently. Trust me, you'll never see it the same way ever again.

University is definitely an incredible experience! It opens up your mind to new ideas and prepares you to go out into the world and make your own choices about how you want to live your life and how you want to think.

Cheers,
Kay

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

Happy Halloween! What better way to celebrate Halloween than to read Edgar Allen Poe's famous poem, The Raven! The Raven is a very eerie and suspenseful poem that was published in 1845. The speaker in the poem is remembering his lost love, Lenore, and he hears tapping coming from outside. Once he opens the window, a raven flies in, constantly replying "Nevermore" whenever the speaker speaks to it. This drives the speaker crazy. I definitely recommend reading the poem or listening to a recitation of the poem (go to the end of this post for a video of Vincent Price reciting "The Raven"). If you read it, you should read it aloud and put a lot of expression in your voice. So much fun!

I really like "The Raven" because of how simple the story is! The only characters that are present in the story are the speaker and the raven and Lenore is mentioned. The whole story is about the speaker going crazy thinking about Lenore and hearing the raven saying only one word, "Nevermore." It isn't scary because of monsters but instead because of the descriptions. You don't know what is going to happen next and you can picture the whole story and the setting in your mind. The repetitions really add to the suspension! The poem also just has a general eeriness to it in the way that it is presented.

Want to hear a recitation of "The Raven"? The best person for the job is Vincent Price! Such an amazing performance! Watch it here:

I hope you all have a spooky Halloween!

-Kaylie

Gratitude List: My Gratitude in Photos!

Lately, I've been really busy with school and the weather has been very dreary. Yesterday, I decided to make the day fun and be very positive and the weather actually ended up being pretty nice! I took photos throughout the day to make a sort of photo journal. I guess it could be a gratitude photo journal! Here we go:

I wanted to start the day off right beginning with breakfast so I had some cocoa puff cereal with vanilla almond milk topped with sliced bananas, sliced strawberries, and cut up marshmallows! It makes me think of a sundae!

I also had mint green tea with my breakfast! The bonus is that both green tea and peppermint tea are super healthy!

I went for a walk with this cutie pie (Finnlegh!) in the morning and then again in the evening!

I had leftover pizza for lunch and found out that although I do not like olives when I eat them all by themselves, they aren't too bad on pizza.

I read a chapter of The Great Gatsby while on the city buses to go to school at the university.

Once I arrived at school, I went up to the reading room in our library (it's really nice and super quiet there!) to continue reading Richard III  which I have been reading and have to catch up on for my Shakespeare class.

I love yoga class and was really thankful for it today after receiving my midterm exam back in my French general linguistics class which I didn't do so well on. There were other students who didn't do so well either and we still have other assignments, our presentations, and the final exam for improving our mark in the class so I'm not letting it bother me. It was a tough exam to study for but now I know what to expect for the final exam! I was happy to get to wear one of my new yoga tops to yoga class today and I'm glad that I wore this tank top because I really worked up a sweat!

In the evening, I made yummy rainbow cupcakes! This happened from around 9PM and onward. I know, who bakes at that time?! Obviously, I do...

I am so grateful for yesterday and I hope you enjoyed looking through my gratitude photo journal! You should try putting together your own! It's super fun!

-Kaylie

University Life: For Literature and Library Lovers

Here are some links for the following people:
-People who love literature
-People who are studying English literature in school (like me!)
-People who love libraries
-Librarians
-People who dream of becoming librarians

Okay, on with the links!

At The Libraries on mental_floss : At The Libraries is a section on mental_floss where Miss Kathleen shares library and book related links.

Literary Traveler : Literary Traveler is a website where the people who run it explore literature and writing as they travel.

Forgotten Bookmarks : Forgotten Bookmarks is a website where a used and rare bookseller shares what he finds in the books that he buys. Examples include: photographs, recipes, letters, and many more fascinating and strange finds.

Poetry Daily : A new poem every day

Book-A-Minute Classics : Classic books are summarized in just a few sentences. So funny!

The History of English

This is a funny video all about the history of the English language. So good!

-Kaylie

University Life: School Goals 2013-2014

For me, school started on wednesday. I had three classes and there was a ton of people on campus. The first day is always like that, though. All of the first year students are exploring the campus, trying to find their classes, and making new friends. I'm a third year student but I still did a lot of walking around campus. I found some of my friends who are in their first year of university so I hung out with them a lot and answered some of the questions that they still had about university. I also got my agenda that the students association gives out every year and I had to find some of my classrooms because I had only found one ahead of time. It was a fun day!
I have decided to write a list of goals for this school year. After having finished half of my undergraduate program, I now know a lot more about the way that I learn so there are changes that I want to make in order to learn in the best way possible for me. There are also some fun changes that I want to make to make my university experience even more enjoyable. I have split this list of goals into two categories: Learning and Fun.


Learning:

-Keep up with class readings: This is a very important goal. I don't like having to catch up on pages and pages of readings so I want to keep up with the readings and really understand what we are covering in class. So far, I'm doing pretty good. I read the pages that I had to read for my 16th and 17th century women's writing class last night and I made some summary notes this morning in order to really understand and remember what I read. I felt so prepared for my class this afternoon! This brings me to my second goal...

-Make summary and/or reflection notes after each reading: If I make my own notes right after reading the texts or pages, I will remember the information better and understand what I read. This will also help me become better at summarizing what I read (I sometimes have trouble with this and end up writing several sentences when all I needed was one).

-Use visual ways of learning: I am a visual learner so just listening to a lecture or just reading information doesn't always help me learn best and remember the information. Videos, images, tables, key words, timelines, etc. are often easy for me to remember information from and help me understand. Sometimes, I just need the information broken down to the main points. I want to use these visual ways of learning to help me understand what I learn in class and to help me remember. I plan on making some visual notes after each class if my class notes are not good enough.

-Finish assignments early: I will admit, I procrastinate and it's not fun! I want to finish assignments early this year so that I am less stressed out and I have time to make them the best that I possibly can.

-Participate in class more: I am very quiet in class. I am also shy and I worry that what I say won't be good enough. I want to get over this and participate more in class (especially since I have to if I want participation marks that are required in some classes).

-Practice French outside of school: Along with my specialization in English Literature, I'm working on a minor in French. I started learning French when I was 4 years old and my parents had entered me in French Immersion (French Immersion is where you have class in both English and French) in Junior Kindergarten. I stayed in French Immersion all the way to the end of high school and then wanted to continue studying French so I decided to minor in it. I love French! Speaking it is so fun! I want to speak French outside of school more so I want to have conversations in French with my younger brother because he knows French too. I also want to read more French books, watch more French TV shows and  movies, and listen to more French music in order to practice French reading and understanding.


Fun:

-Dress up more for school: I have so many interesting accessories but I hardly wear them because I'm a bit afraid of dressing in a way that stands out more. I want to break out of my comfort zone when it comes to clothes and just wear what I want to wear without worrying about it. I have already started doing this and I am very proud of myself. On the first day of school, some of the things that I wore were a black wrap, red sneakers, and my 1920s style cloche chapeau. Today, I wore a magenta long sleeved shirt, black ruffle scarf, blue sneakers, colourful socks with zig zags on them that show because I rolled up my black skinny jeans a bit, and I wore my hair down and put in a few different colours of hair clips.

-Make new friends: This is hard when you're an off campus student because you aren't at the university as much as people who live in residence. I want to chat with people in my classes and get to know them more and maybe even become friends! I might even join a club which will help with friend making!

-Use the gym and swimming pool: This sounds crazy but I am in my third year of university and I haven't even used my student card to go to the gym or pool yet! I really want to use them this year because there is a fee in our tuition which pays for us to be able to use them so I might as well make use of it. Plus, it will be fun and one of my friends wants to use the pool too so maybe I'll go with her!


Here's hoping that this year is the best school year yet!
-Kaylie

Monday Smiles: September 2, 2013

This post is part of my Monday Smiles series. Most people dislike Mondays. But why? Monday is the start to a new week! Think of it as a fresh start! It's so exciting! To help make everyone see how wonderful Mondays are, I started this Monday Smiles series! In each post, I share a few things that make me smile because there are always tons of reasons to smile on any day of the week!

To see the other posts in this series, you can find them through the Monday Smiles tag or you can find the whole list of them in the Positive Life tab at the top of my blog.

I'm smiling because of...

The Sudoku Code! I bought this sudoku book and I love it so much! It has both normal sudokus and wordokus and each set has a clue so when you have solved all of them, you have to figure out the secret answer! It's so addictive!

I baked sugar cookie cupcakes yesterday using this recipe on tastebook.com! They were amazing and they really did taste like sugar cookies!

It's a new month! A new month is always exciting! Also, September means back to school and it starts again in just a few days! I'm so excited!

Paper! So important for an English Literature student! Both my brother and I needed white printer paper for printing essays and other assignments for school so my family went out and bought this box of 1500 sheets of paper. We probably won't need white printer paper for the next few years.

A lot of libraries have collections of digital magazines that you can download for free on Zinio! I made an account through my library and have been enjoying various magazines. You should check your library website or ask at your library to see if they have a magazine collection available through Zinio.

One of my favourite books, The Book Thief, has been turned into a movie! This is the official trailer! I can't wait to see it when it comes out!

There was a Murdoch Mysteries panel at the Fan Expo Canada 2013 in Toronto. I'm so excited for season 7!

Now I'm going to go have a bonfire with my family as we enjoy the last of summer vacation before school starts again!

-Kaylie

University Life: A Little Bit of Back to School Fun

With 'Back to School' time just around the corner, I thought that I would post some fun educational links here for you to enjoy to make this time a little less stressful. Since I study English Literature in university, all of these links are English, literature, and writing related. Enjoy!

Fridge Poetry : Virtual magnets with words on them which you can arrange to make random poetry. I remember one of my English classrooms in high school had this on the chalkboard.

100 Most Common English Words : A game where you try to guess the 100 most common words in English in 5 minutes

FreeRice : A multiple choice game with a variety of subjects to choose from. Whenever you get a correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated through the World Food Programme to help end hunger. This link will bring you straight to the English vocabulary version.

-Kaylie

My Favourite Web Comic: Girl Genius

Since my brother started reading a web comic, I decided to search for some web comics that I might enjoy reading and I came across one called Girl Genius! It is a web comic written by Phil and Kaja Foglio with drawings by Phil Foglio. They release a new page on the web every few days and they have lots of pages since they’ve been doing this for a while. They have also printed the comics into actual books that you can buy if you so desire. Information on purchasing the books can be found on the Girl Genius website. I really recommend reading their New Reader page before you start reading and if you want to know more information, check out their FAQ page. This web comic is recommended for teens and up because of some of the content. I really recommend that you start reading from the beginning and see if you’ll like it that way instead of me explaining it. If I were to simply describe it, I’m afraid that I might give away what happens. Also, you won’t really know if you like it if you never even see the beautiful illustrations. If you want to be able to follow along the story at all, you’ll have to start at the beginning because there is just so much to it. I will tell you this though: this web comic has a Victorian style steampunk theme and it has adventure, science, heroes and bad guys, mystery, and romance! Yes, it has all of that good stuff! Just read a few pages and you’ll probably get just as hooked on it as I am.

Happy reading!

-Kaylie

"Trifles" by Susan Glaspell

For one of my English Literature classes, I had to read the play Trifles by Susan Glaspell. I really enjoyed reading this play. It was written in 1916 and it gives a voice to women during a crime. In that time, women did not have a voice in court so this play lets you hear the women’s opinions and verdict for a murder that was committed by a woman that they know.

You can read the play on Project Gutenburg here: The Project Gutenburg EBook of Plays, by Susan Glaspell

This is an ebook collection of four plays written by Susan Glaspell. Trifles is the first play in the EBook.

Once you are finished reading the play, I really recommend reading this scholarly article: “Murder, She Wrote”: The Genesis of Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” by Lisa Ben-Zvi

It is a really interesting article in which Lisa Ben-Zvi provides background information about Susan Glaspell’s past and how she based her play on a murder case for which she was a reporter. Lisa Ben-Zvi also explains the message of the play.

And finally, here is a 25 minute Alfred Hitchcock episode based on the play Trifles by Susan Glaspell:

I hope you enjoy this play and learning about the history behind it as much as I did!

-Kaylie