WEEK THREE: Day 3

Well I am coming to realize what a huge task it is blogging 5 days a week while coinciding with going to school 5 days a week too. So I guess you could say that my job title is: University student by day, Blogger extraordinaire by night. It is a double full time job 16 hours a day and that’s not even including studying time.

Today we started of the day with Learning Strategies. It started off interestingly. We were given 6 pieces of paper and asked to break up into 3 teams and to make the tallest paper tower. My team came in third. But it’s all good. The second activity we did was to Identify our strengths and weaknesses, it was all printed up on the white boards and we each got a marker and went around putting our name under STRONG or WORK. Example would be: Writing Skills, Public Speaking, Leadership skills and so forth. If we put down our name under WORK we would look in the other column and find someone who was STRONG in that category, and we would ask him or her how they became good at that particular task/skill and if they had a tip for us. So these two activities take us up to our first break.

We were all asked to meet in the computer lab in 10 minutes. I went early with a fellow classmate cause I didn’t want to be late. Unfortunately when we got there you had to scan your student I.D’s to get into the lab. Which NONE of our cards worked! Some random student was kind enough to let us into the lab, and were all asked to grab a computer and to log in with our student I.D’s. Yet again my account needed to be reset twice, and the I.T guys were using their I.T “lingo” and then looked at me weird when I didn’t know what the heck they were talking about. I’m grateful that they helped me out, but I could have done without the little I.T jargon. One I.T guy talking to another I.T guy asking me something that could be simple, but they have to complicate it by reassuring us that YES they are very advanced within this particular department. I consider myself tech savvy. More so then the laymen, I don’t know anyone else who knows how to edit 1000’s of lines of HTML codes. Now maybe HTML is becoming archaic but I can still do it, I run my own blog, I excel in literacy, and I know how to deal with people, such as the general public, I am relatable and friendly. Anyways I want to end this on a positive note, my account was reset along with my password, and about 10 minutes later I was able to log in via the SFU computer labs. So all ended well.

On a secondary note I want to add that I have noticed that some departments within SFU regard Continuing Ed students as less than a regular SFU student. What does my tuition money not matter? I am a paying student like the rest. I expect to be treated with the same respect that I show anyone that I encounter on campus.

I just think its ridiculous. OK enough of that.

Onto the next part in my class, this pretty much brings us up to the computer lab; we were given assignments to write about what the word “Community” and what it means to us. Everyone wrote something nice and sweet. Being the resident class writer I could barely think of anything to say. Which is kind of unexpected, cause I usually have something to say about everything. I was able to construct A sentence!!! Really wow that’s um hitting a low for me, but don’t worry I didn’t beat myself up about it. In fact I thought it was amusing and couldn’t stop laughing.

So we all emailed it to our instructor after we were finished and then they would be anonymously brought up on the projector and each student would read one out loud to the rest of the class. After we were all done, we logged off and broke for lunch.

I mostly just chilled in class with some other students and had a snack and a coffee. Before you know it class was back in session and we began our next course FNST 101. We had much to cover in a few hours, which was good, we began by forming the tables into a circle shape, well as much as you can make 6 rectangle tables look like a circle.

We began our first talking circle, went all around the class and each person talked about something positive that happened within this week so far. I felt like a “Debbie Downer” when it came to my turn to say something. The only thing that is good is that after all the (pardon my French) sh*t that went down recently I am still here kickin and moving forward. Heck that’s all any of us can do. It’s not easy to deal with all that life has to hand you, and go to school, and do homework, and still be motivated. I’ll admit I did a lot of reaching out to my support network these last few day as I felt that I was going to loose it. But I didn’t for the most part. But hey I’m human, and I don’t have to act all strong and together all the time, and lets face it now a days I am not that good at lying about where I am emotionally. I know this about myself.

So after we were done the talking circle we had a classmate present a presentation on chapter 2 in our textbooks. We were all very much looking forward to hearing it. What a great presentation, very personable, easy to understand and well composed. I look forward to hearing what the other classmates do for their projects.

After that was done we went over some YouTube video’s about native policy, residential schools and other material. I must admit that I am settling into this course with ease, more than I thought that I would be. In the very beginning I felt nervous, and a bit uncomfortable. Though I still feel that way when I hear native drumming and singing and dancing. Honestly it’s a little to ethnic for me but I do enjoy hearing the elders share there wisdom. After the video’s we had some class discussion. Which brings us to the end of class and of this blog post. I’m sorry but I must abruptly end this post, due to the fact that it's past 12am and this post is waaay over 1100 words.

I hope you all have a sound sleep and we will be chatting at the end of this day –Cheers mate: P