The 'victory' in 'victory lap'

Things I have done since the end of classes:

1. Gone to the gym... once.
2. Baked some labour-intensive enchiladas.
3. Planned a trip to Boston.
4. Cancelled a trip to Boston.
5. Gone to trivia at the Pub, without winning a round.
6. Played "Young Players'" Trivial Pursuit at Ducky's; felt better about myself.(Sample question: "What do Invisible Boy's super powers allow him to do?"
7. Worked at Computing Services and Student Services; earned some money for the summer.
8. Felt anxious about the future.
9. Gotten caught up on Girlicious.
10. Had a friend straighten my hair (a now 3-hour process).
11. Been promoted to Captain on the Windows Pinball game.
12. Learned how to cheat at Windows Pinball.
13. Played baseball on the town field.
14. Played catch in the Memorial Park.
15. Eaten a McFlurry.
16. Learned how to make a Long Island iced tea.
17. Made sushi.
18. Bought a couple of novels from Rags of Time.
19. Eaten breakfast at Mel's.
20. Bought two pairs of thrift-store shoes.
21. Helped to organize a friend's birthday party that included 5 cakes.
22. Baked a carrot cake that was supposed to look like a sushi roll, with marginal success. (It tasted good.)
23. Eaten a LOT of cake.
24. Read a book on a blanket by the swan pond.
25. Slept in.
26. Cleaned my laptop keyboard.
27. Paid off my library fines ($13.75).
28. Rehearsed a play to be performed on Convocation Weekend (Noel Coward's "Hayfever").
29. Kept my room clean.

Things I have not done since the end of classes:

1. Laundry

The big picture in a small town

I finally charged my camera batteries and started to carry it around town and campus. As a result, I have some photos of my favourite Sackville graffiti. First, the Ninja Turtle created out of chipped stucco, and second, the "thesis" tag that I have seen around town.


I think the "thesis" tag is particularly funny - some strange combination of academics and delinquency. I hope whoever wrote it has actually written a thesis at some point. (By the way, I haven't. My roommate is currently in the throes of her first draft, to be submitted tomorrow.)

The semester is winding down; I have two more papers to submit, and no final exams. I am looking forward to reading, running, baking, sleeping, and maybe going on a road trip or two.

Since I have some extra time, I have been giving more campus tours. This week I gave a tour to a middle school group on their annual band trip. According to the kids, no festivals coincided with the trip, and so the group was travelling to Fredericton to see some museums and then to tour the Sydney mines. On the way, they stopped at Mt. A - the band teacher is a 1991 alumnus. It was fun to adjust the tour to kids who had no context for university - when I took them into auditoriums, meal hall and the library I could hear a whispers of "Whoa! This is huge!" I took them to see a residence, and all 15 of them piled into some poor girl's room. They took photos of the classrooms and the swan pond - everything was new and exciting. It was nice to be reminded of how bizarre and exciting university really is - I suppose we lose sight of the uniqueness of living and studying and eating together in big rooms on a small campus.

Just before the sun sets, campus looks particularly lovely. Here's a photo taken from the breezeway looking out at the chapel.

Blueberries, policy wonks and Mexican refugees

Yesterday I attended the tenth national Metropolis conference in Halifax. Metropolis is a network of scholars, bureaucrats and advocates who work in the field of immigration. It has chapters in over 20 countries, including one in Canada.


The conference is taking place in Halfax's World Trade and Convention Centre, where I attended an international summit in 2006 on microcredit.

Based on these two events, I have developed a major beef with high-profile conferences. Upon registration ($152.55 for one day - thankfully covered by Mount Allison), I received a one-shoulder backpack full of pamphlets, journals and brochures. While I appreciated the journals and the conference schedule, the rest of the package was mostly irrelevant. The backpack, which reminds me of the fleeting one-shoulder trend in middle school, will likely end up at the Salvation Army.

Right after I arrived, lunch was served. It was an impressive array of fruits (cantaloupe, blueberries, strawberries, honeydew melon, grapefruit), vegetables, sandwich makings and drinks. Dessert was strawberry shortcake.

Somehow I couldn't reconcile the mission of the conference with some of its amenities. I don't need another backpack, and I doubt the mostly middle-aged participants are going to wear the one-shoulder to their office jobs. The food could have been local, or organic; the coffee could have been fair trade. It is possible to adjust large events to run more sustainably - the Hillside Festival in Guelph is a great example. Even to attend the conference, people flew from across the country and even across the world. I was looking for a bit more innovation to make the conference practically sensitive to environmental and social issues.

Onto the sessions. The first session I attended, "Current Research, Dissemination and Mobilization on Refugee Issues," was a small round table featuring a policy analyst from Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the director of the York Centre for Refugee Studies. The main theme of the talk was the tension between civil society, academia and the government when it comes to protecting refugees. The CIC employee discussed the need for "evidence-based research," and the academics talked about the impossibility of gathering enough evidence from such a transient and vulnerable population.

The second session, "The Challenges of Becoming a Welcoming City," was a round table featuring members of the Windsor, Ontario community. The municipality has gone from receiving 16 refugee claimants in 2006 to the current average of 50 claimants a month. The first group of claimants came from Mexico, the second, from Haiti. I went because of a summer project I did on Mexican refugee claimants. (It turned out that the research supervisor of a student I know conducting a similiar project also attended the round table.)

In the evening I attended two documentaries about immigration issues in Canada. The first followed a 100-person march from Montreal to Ottawa in June, 2005. The second was about Francophone-African settlement in the West of Canada. Following the films, a discussion began with the film makers. It was a neat moment - the discussion was almost entirely in French (as were the films), and once again the bilingualism of Canada played out in front of me.

The conference was a nice academic boost, and at the same time, a bit humbling. The issues of homelessness, resource communities, the Alberta tar sands and migration all came up over the course of the session - and are all topics that I have studied this semester. After being at the same school for five years, I feel confident in my classes and able to speak up on most topics. At this conference, however, I felt a bit out of place; I still have a lot to learn about the academic and political context of migration, and tried to be quiet and listen for a while.

The biggest benefit of the conference, for me, was the clear distinction I saw between the four groups dealing with migration issues: the bureaucrats (or "policy wonks"), the academics, the social workers (NGOs) and the lawyers. I realized that I have been thinking about each of these four arenas without laying them out as distinct options. I still haven't figured out where I would be most comfortable and effective.

In terms of my future, I have an internship interview on Friday. I have also been accepted to present my summer research at a conference hosted by York in June. Exciting times.

Frisbee in the frio

I can't get enough ultimate frisbee, it would seem. This weekend I played an outdoor tournament with Mt. A in Halifax. Yes, outdoor. It is called "The Tournament of Fools," and with good reason; when we arrived on Saturday morning, the field was covered in six inches of snow.

Even with cleats, the first few games included a lot of sliding and skidding. By the end of the first game all of us had wet feet - the main downside of playing in the melting snow.


By the end of the day all of us also had sunburns, our feet were still wet, our hands were swollen with the cold and we hadn't won a game. Despite these downsides, we were all still pretty happy.

We had a mascot - Oliver the six-month-old golder retriever - who was wrapped in a hoodie for most of the tournament to keep warm. Our starting cheer featured the team running around in a circle with airplane arms and then 'flying away'.

I stayed with a good friend who's attending King's College. After the Saturday games I went back to her place for a shower, lasagna, a glass of wine and some cake. I was very, very happy when I fell asleep on her couch.

We placed 10th out of 12 teams - not a bad feat for Mt. A. We are a young team, which means our stamina is our strength, but we don't have a lot of strategy.


This was my last tournament with Mt. A - my frisbee career began in first year after I didn't make the cut for the varsity women's soccer team. At a party during frosh week, a mostly drunk guy asked if I wanted to play some frisbee. Not knowing the sport, and assuming he wouldn't remember this conversation the next day, I agreed. The next day he found my residence room and left a note on the door asking me to play in a tournament the following weekend. The team needed girls, and he had been out recruiting.

My first tournament consisted of me standing in the endzone and trying to catch anything that came my way. I have learned a lot about the sport since - it is a neat game, because a lot of the learning happens experientially. Needless to say, I am very grateful to the guy who asked me to play in the first place - the sport has kept me active and a bit more sane during my degree.

Grape! Raisin! Grape!

For two years I have participated in the "Special Populations" music hour. Special Populations is a local programme for intellectually challenged adults run through the Sackville recreation centre.

The group meets for an hour every Friday to sing and do some basic music exercises. It is generally an uplifting time - the group is a good break from studying or talking to other twenty-somethings.

We generally start with a warm up called "Grape Raisin". When the leader calls out "grape," everyone stretches their faces as wide as possible. When the leader calls out "raisin," everyone scrunches their faces as small as possible. Once everyone has the hang of it, the leader speeds up and calls the same word twice until we get too mixed up to continue.

We often do another warm up called "show us how to get down." This is a call-and-answer game that begins:

group: Hey Emily!
me: Hey what?
group: Hey Emily!
me: Hey what?
group: Show us how to get down.
me: No way!
group: Show us how to get down!
me: OK
group: (while I am dancing) D-O-W-N, that's the way to get down (x2).

Every week, without fail, one of the women says "Say what?" instead of "Hey what?" and everyone smiles a bit.

There is also a drama programme for Special Populations run by another student; her programme was actually the inspiration for the music component. Every year the group writes a play and performs it in April. Last year, the play featured the Flintstones, and the year before, some sort of newscast.

It is nice to get off campus every once in a while and realize the diversity of people in Sackville. It is also nice to sit with a guitar for an hour and sing some Shania Twain, Johnny Cash or Elvis Presley (country music is always a big hit with the group.)

At the end of my time in Sackville, I sometimes wish I had met a few more people in the community. There are some great groups: TEA (Tantramar Environmental Alliance), MAST (Mount Allison Student Tutors), a drama troupe that works with the middle school, a community garden, etc. University students are great company, but it's refreshing to step outside of the Mt. A bubble within the Sackville bubble every once in a while.

French frisbee, French immersion

Apparently I don't like to play ultimate frisbee in English - the league I have joined in Moncton is about 80% French. Most of the conversations happen in 'Chiac' - a hybrid of French and English with no official rules. A few examples:

"Est-ce que c'est last point?"
"Alors tu vas courir jusqu'au end zone, je vais faire un cut et puis tu peux send un hammer - ok?"

Like in Spanish, a lot of the words from ultimate frisbee are not translated: dump, swing, hammer, huck, deep, cut, etc.

Even though I have a minor in French, I don't really feel comfortable talking to my teammates in anything other than English. This is a strange twist of events; in Mexico, I felt entirely comfortable talking to my Mexican teammates, and even talked to French friends in Spanish. In bilingual Canada, however, I can't muster the courage to speak in the language that I have been learning since grade 3.

On a related note, the province of New Brunswick recently announced the elimination of the Early French Immersion (EFI) programme (which begins in kindergarten). The province cited financial and educational reasons for the decision, including the possibly negative effect of EFI on the resources available to core students.

Many parents and students have been confused and offended by the decision, and have organized to save the programme. According to them, the province's decision contradicted evidence of financial and education benefits, and therefore makes little sense. A large group of Sackville residents turned out for a forum to save EFI, and later participated in a local 'tintamarre,' or protest.

In Canada's only officially bilingual province, I can't quite see the wisdom of the decision. Living in New Brunswick has shown me a new side of Canada where English and French can be mixed without any judgment or tension, and it is essential to preserve this middle ground. 'Chiac' is more than a dialect; it represents some level of integration between Canada's two linguistic groups.

I am writing an article on this province's decision and Sackville's reaction for this week's Argosy. It has been interesting to see how passionately some Sackvillans have been campaigning to keep EFI, and how quickly they organized a response. To read a local blog of this activist, visit http://hamlit2008.blogspot.com/


Photo courtesy the Sackville Tribune-Post

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education"

-- Mark Twain


I have one month left of school. This is not a hopeful exaggeration; today is March 9, the last day of classes is Thursday, April 10. I don't have class on Thursdays, and I don't have any final exams (the luxury of upper-year classes) - so there are 31 days between me and the end of my degree.

This final month is full of events - end-of-semester concerts, speakers, recitals, forums, banquets and fundraisers. It is also full of academic deadlines - term papers, presentations, quizzes and reports.

In this month's battle between 'events' and 'education', I have chosen events. This is my mad dash to try and extract as much as possible from the university environment before I have to move onto big city, big budget culture.

Recently I have attended a good diversity of events, and all of them were worth the time. Just over a week ago I popped into the CCAA National Badminton Championships (held at Mt. A) and watched the men's singles final. It was an intense game; the losing player came back from a 10-point deficit to time the game at 14-14 (although he still lost). I almost teared up watching the game (OK, I teared up), because the players were so good and so passionate about their sport.

On Monday editors from The Dominion came to speak about their five-year plan to increase their presence as the alternative press of Canada. Their talk was interesting, especially given the publication's recent focus on the Alberta tar sands. They are looking for small financial contributions from "sustainers" to help increase their reporting capacity and launch a Canada-wide media co-op programme.

On Thursday I went to a forum hosted by Mt. A's queer issues society, Catalyst. Called "What Do You Mean There's An Elephant in the Room?", the evening featured four speakers who discussed how we can "take the elephant out of the closet" (hah) and be more aware of the discrimination caused by 'heteronormativity', or the assumption that everyone is straight.

Last night I attended two one-act plays performed at Mt. A's Windsor Theatre. The first play, "Wanda's Visit", tells the story of a bored couple whose lives are interrupted by the visit of the husband's insane high school sweetheart. The second was an original, collaborative piece themed around ignorance. The play used abstract scenes to represent the full-circle progression from revolutionary idealism to oppressive conformity.

And there is more to come. Black Tie Productions will be staging "Hair" next weekend. The Society of All Nations has its annual banquet next Saturday, followed by the grad banquet on the 19.

I still go to class, and still enjoy the preparation and discussion. But showing up to events is a bit more exciting, and a bit more spontaneous; after all, when's the next time I'll see a championship badminton match?

Sometimes these events are well attended, other times they are not. It depends on academic deadlines, other events, and the proper planning and advertising. Contrary to some opinions, we are not Mt. Apathy - most students are interested in campus life and want to contribute. Sometimes, as you can see, there is just too much - too many potential commitments. Instead of attending a cancer fundraising concert last night, I stayed home and baked muffins.