There has been a lot of talk in the Canadian media lately over the new H1N1 vaccine; specifically, who should be first in line to receive it and if it is safe. For university students this debate is especially poignant. But what if the debate over getting the vaccination doesn't even end up mattering?
As rumours around campus of just who is suspected to have swine flu and who has officially been diagnosed continue to swirl and gain momentum, students have to think seriously. If they get swine flu, what will they do?
Struck with this reality the other day when I began hearing about H1N1 on campus I realized just how detrimental getting sick could be to me. Aside from the fact that I would obviously not be able to go to class and could be faced with a myriad of symptoms and complications, if I can't work, I can't support myself. If I get sick I really dont know what I will do.
While vaccination clincs are set to get underway tomorrow, Monday October 26, the vaccine still has a 2 week window where the recipiant can contract H1N1. Of course there are many who believe that much of the coverage of this flu is just overreaction and mass panic, but I am as sure.
The Canadian Health Agency's website says that the average age of those hospitalized with H1N1 is currently 18, and with friends and well wishers dropping like flies everywhere I look, I am less then willing to give into conspiracy theories right now. Not working for a week could easily cost me my apartment.
For now, with the halloween season quickly approaching, I have to suck it up and attmept to be vigilant in my pursuit of overall health. This includes the use of copious amounts of hand sanitizer, avoiding anyone who has that zombie like ill look about them and a general use of common sense.
Enter the CooCoo Juice Party. For those of you who dont know what a CooCoo juice party is, picture a giant bucket of juice provided by the host house. Now, picture that bucket of juice full of a bottle of liquor for every person that attends the party. Next, add a plastic cup, assigned to each guest, which is replenised by dunking the cup into the CooCoo Juice. CooCoo indeed.
Some of my friends have told me that I am overreacting in my fear of H1N1 but my concerns are very real. So real that I am now rethinking how I plan on celebrating halloween this year, possibly the most important holiday of the university year. For now all I can do is use my head and hope that by the time I am able to get the flu vaccine I will still be healthy and all my effort will not be for nothing.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Welcome to the OSAP office
Get to know your schools OSAP office! This piece of advice is key to you being able to navigate any problems that may arise with your funding throughout your school career.
The Laurier Brantford OSAP office is located on the ground floor of the Grand River Hall building on Colborne Street. If you find yourself in the dean's office you have gone too far.
This sometimes helpful, often terrifying office is the key to a large amount of students ability to attend university. In a recent article from the main campus' paper The Cord, the need for OSAP from students at Wilfrid Laurier has jumped nearly 20% this year.
So far this has meant a major back log in the offices ability to handle applications. The increase in demand for student loans means that the office staff (which has remained the same size despite the increase in need) is 20% less able to accommodate students.
Further exasperating this problem is the fact that the Laurier Brantford OSAP office is not equipped to handle all OSAP claims. Problems with funding have to be directed to the main campus. As all forms must be signed with original signatures this makes faxing out of the question and further increases the wait for funding while documents are couriered back and forth from Brantford to Waterloo.
While I can only hope that there will not be an even greater increase in the need for OSAP in the future I still wonder about the school's ability to cope with an increased need, specifically in Brantford. As the campus continues to grow it will be interesting to see just how well campus operations will be able to keep up.
The Laurier Brantford OSAP office is located on the ground floor of the Grand River Hall building on Colborne Street. If you find yourself in the dean's office you have gone too far.
This sometimes helpful, often terrifying office is the key to a large amount of students ability to attend university. In a recent article from the main campus' paper The Cord, the need for OSAP from students at Wilfrid Laurier has jumped nearly 20% this year.
So far this has meant a major back log in the offices ability to handle applications. The increase in demand for student loans means that the office staff (which has remained the same size despite the increase in need) is 20% less able to accommodate students.
Further exasperating this problem is the fact that the Laurier Brantford OSAP office is not equipped to handle all OSAP claims. Problems with funding have to be directed to the main campus. As all forms must be signed with original signatures this makes faxing out of the question and further increases the wait for funding while documents are couriered back and forth from Brantford to Waterloo.
While I can only hope that there will not be an even greater increase in the need for OSAP in the future I still wonder about the school's ability to cope with an increased need, specifically in Brantford. As the campus continues to grow it will be interesting to see just how well campus operations will be able to keep up.
About Me
Call me Susan. I am a forth year student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Brantford Ontario. I pay for school all on my own, or, with the help of OSAP, the Ontario Student Assistance Program, and they don't make it easy to be a student in Ontario. Previous blog post not withstanding, this blog is going to deal heavily with the struggles of being a student through the lense of someone living the experience.
Information sites about college life are wholly incapable of telling someone what the studnet experience is going to be like. While major banks such as TD Canada Trust may supply information on how to budget and OSAP's site may give you the tools to apply for loans, no one can ever fully prepare you for the terror of having tuition overdue, your rent coming out, and your Visa maxed out when all of a sudden your computer decides it would like to crash. But I can surely try to tell you what it is like and also, how to survive without having to skip meals to make ends meet.
This blog will be an attempt, based largely off of my own annecdotal experiences, to tell anyone who would care to listen about the difficulty of real student life. How does it feel when your roommate's family gives them everything? Why don't your friends understand when you say that you can't go out to the bar, even if it is dollar beer night? But more then these questions, I will also be taking the time to look at why student life should cost so much. I pay thousands of dollars every year for an education that should one day help me to get a job, but for now I am swimming in debt thanks to what I believe to be a largely unreliable system of lending.
Case and point: when I applied for OSAP funding this year I was told that my parents make too much money for me to qualify. When I applied for a bank loan, I was told that my parents made too little. I have been working extra hours at work to compensate for this lack of funding while I wait for an application to reasses my loan with OSAP to be processed, but the more I work while I wait for funding, the less they will be willing to give me. Have I mentioned that I still have to pay the cable bill?
This is a blog about hard work, and struggle. Hopfully in the end it will also be about sucess. I will be writing about the problems students face as well as the solutions that are out there for them. Welcome to my life, I hope you enjoy your stay.
Information sites about college life are wholly incapable of telling someone what the studnet experience is going to be like. While major banks such as TD Canada Trust may supply information on how to budget and OSAP's site may give you the tools to apply for loans, no one can ever fully prepare you for the terror of having tuition overdue, your rent coming out, and your Visa maxed out when all of a sudden your computer decides it would like to crash. But I can surely try to tell you what it is like and also, how to survive without having to skip meals to make ends meet.
This blog will be an attempt, based largely off of my own annecdotal experiences, to tell anyone who would care to listen about the difficulty of real student life. How does it feel when your roommate's family gives them everything? Why don't your friends understand when you say that you can't go out to the bar, even if it is dollar beer night? But more then these questions, I will also be taking the time to look at why student life should cost so much. I pay thousands of dollars every year for an education that should one day help me to get a job, but for now I am swimming in debt thanks to what I believe to be a largely unreliable system of lending.
Case and point: when I applied for OSAP funding this year I was told that my parents make too much money for me to qualify. When I applied for a bank loan, I was told that my parents made too little. I have been working extra hours at work to compensate for this lack of funding while I wait for an application to reasses my loan with OSAP to be processed, but the more I work while I wait for funding, the less they will be willing to give me. Have I mentioned that I still have to pay the cable bill?
This is a blog about hard work, and struggle. Hopfully in the end it will also be about sucess. I will be writing about the problems students face as well as the solutions that are out there for them. Welcome to my life, I hope you enjoy your stay.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Please Quiet Down
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please, let me be the first to welcome you to your university experience. It promises to be a wonderful time of your life, full of hardwork and memories that you will never forget. That is, if you can make it to graduation without some sort of horrible tragedy befalling you.
Whats that you say? "No tragedies for me", you say? Well, we will see about that my little first year friends. Just keep talking while the prof at the front of the room is talking and we will see what tragedies are happening to who.
Before anyone gets into a huff and starts decrying me for publishing written threats to the internet, I should probably give myself a chance to explain. I hate when other students talk with the professor is talking. It's as simple as that. I am paying thousands of dollars for the priviledge of being in this class room, soaking up the knowledge around me (stewing in it, if you will) and every time you speak out of turn to your friend, you are wasting my time, money and sanity. Your belief that what ever you have to say can not wait another 45 minutes or an hour is completely incorrect, and furthur more, this belief also helps to make you one of the more assinign humans I have ever had the joy of encountering.
It is really amazing the things that you can learn when you pay attention in class. Maybe you should try this. I have never asked you to keep it down before because for some bizarre reason, I will feel rude having to be the one to do it. But you will see me there, pen poised over the page of my notebook, staring intently at the front of the room but not writing anything. Its because after years of attending clubs and concerts I only have on good ear, and you are sitting next to it, going on and on about who is going where this Thursday night and why you dont know if you want to be there but your bf and your bff are going and omg did you see what that slutty girl that lives down the hall was wearing the other night when she was talking to your bf's bff?
I. Dont. Care.
You sound like a blithering idiot and I am pretty sure my profs are all terrifired of me because the more you talk the angrier I become and the more homicidal the look on my face gets.
But seriously guys, please stop talking in class. Or even better, stop sitting next to your friends. Trust me, everyone around you who is trying to pay attention hates you. Plus, for every bad mark that you receive because you are a blithering idiot, you are wasting either OSAP's, daddies or perhaps more importantly, your own hard earned money that you shovel over to the school each semester. Think about it. And if you absolutly must, feel free to discuss this quietly amoungst yourselves.
Whats that you say? "No tragedies for me", you say? Well, we will see about that my little first year friends. Just keep talking while the prof at the front of the room is talking and we will see what tragedies are happening to who.
Before anyone gets into a huff and starts decrying me for publishing written threats to the internet, I should probably give myself a chance to explain. I hate when other students talk with the professor is talking. It's as simple as that. I am paying thousands of dollars for the priviledge of being in this class room, soaking up the knowledge around me (stewing in it, if you will) and every time you speak out of turn to your friend, you are wasting my time, money and sanity. Your belief that what ever you have to say can not wait another 45 minutes or an hour is completely incorrect, and furthur more, this belief also helps to make you one of the more assinign humans I have ever had the joy of encountering.
It is really amazing the things that you can learn when you pay attention in class. Maybe you should try this. I have never asked you to keep it down before because for some bizarre reason, I will feel rude having to be the one to do it. But you will see me there, pen poised over the page of my notebook, staring intently at the front of the room but not writing anything. Its because after years of attending clubs and concerts I only have on good ear, and you are sitting next to it, going on and on about who is going where this Thursday night and why you dont know if you want to be there but your bf and your bff are going and omg did you see what that slutty girl that lives down the hall was wearing the other night when she was talking to your bf's bff?
I. Dont. Care.
You sound like a blithering idiot and I am pretty sure my profs are all terrifired of me because the more you talk the angrier I become and the more homicidal the look on my face gets.
But seriously guys, please stop talking in class. Or even better, stop sitting next to your friends. Trust me, everyone around you who is trying to pay attention hates you. Plus, for every bad mark that you receive because you are a blithering idiot, you are wasting either OSAP's, daddies or perhaps more importantly, your own hard earned money that you shovel over to the school each semester. Think about it. And if you absolutly must, feel free to discuss this quietly amoungst yourselves.
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