La Roommates (Kate, Steph, Leigh and moi)

Me and Ladies from 1st Year

School has been back in full swing for the last few weeks. It is my fourth year, my last and final year....thank goodness! I'm through with Western and their damned administrative policies. Instead of helping along students, these administrative rules have only hindered my time here at Western. They weren't as evident during my first, or even second year, but boy have I ever feel their presence these last two years. I will start with capped classroom sizes. Most students have their potential schedules all ready to go at the beginning of the summer when the timetable of classes goes up. I definitely do. Whenever Western does get around to posting some decent classes, I jump on the opportunity to get into them. But of course, when your registration time does finally come around, you realize that half of the classes that you wanted to take are already full, or in many cases, they're all full! Ok, but seriously Western, you can't put a cap of 25 students on a class entitled Genocide. And shouldn't you be letting all the 150 students who want to learn about this human rights atrocity in a class like this??? This is no ordinary class; it could be the beginning of a revolution! But that aside, shouldn't people be allowed to take the classes they have paid for? Registration period is one of the most stressful times of the year for both students and admin. We could all save headaches and stress if there were no such thing as capped classroom sizes. At Otago University in NZ, there were no such things as capped classes, thus students always got to take the classes they wanted. From my experience, there was never any overloaded classrooms, and if there were more students than chairs, we would simply move rooms. C'mon Western, it's simple math!

My second beef with Western is their add/drop period. Why is it only one week long??? I'm sure almost every student knows that on the first day of class, there is never an official lecture! The first class is reserved for picking up the syllabus and seeing if you have friends in the class! I am not saying that profs should have a lecture that first class, but perhaps they should give a talk about a general topic related to the class so we get a feel for his/her lecture style and also an idea of the content. Or to make it easier on all of us, why doesn't western just extend the add/drop time for another week? I just don't see the logic or reasoning behind such a short add/drop? Because of their useless guidelines, I now have a big black "withdrawn" on my transcript (for life) for a philosophy class I dropped out of in my third year. I think I dropped it after the third class, which was literally 6 days after classes had commenced. Thanks Western for tainting my job potential. I am so glad that you want to make my journey into the real world as smooth as possible.

So those are just two of several grievances that I have with my lovely alma mater. I think it is becoming more apparent to me that academic environment is a big factor for me when choosing grad school. I will admit that I have had some pretty incredible and unforgettable experiences at Western, and I don't regret choosing Western, but I don't think I will ever return for any graduate or professional school.

Besides school, I have been making sure to see as many people as I can and get involved with as much as possible. My roommates' Leigh and Steph's birthdays were last week. As you can see, I have posted some pics from Steph's b-day. We had some good nights out together. Oh, I have to vent about one more thing. This time, it's about London. I have gone out a few times in the last week, and each and every time I have left to come home, I have felt more scared than ever walking along Richmond St. (the main downtown road with bars, stores, etc.). The first night I went out, a friend and I were walking home and this car full of obnoxious young guys driving at least 60km/h throws eggs at us! Seriously, wtf?? Luckily, noone was hurt, but Laura got an egg whipped at her legs which obviously broke all over her. I don't even want to think about the fact that it could have hit her in the face. Another night as Steph and I walked home, the guys who were walking in front of us started whipping their post bar food (aka Sammy's wraps and Wendy's burgers) at cars driving by. Before they could even turn around to see us, I hailed a cab and we just drove it the 4 blocks home. What has the world come to when I don't feel safe walking down one of the most busiest and well-lit streets in London, Ontario?

Ok, so there's my rant/update of the last couple weeks. I am going camping this weekend for one last Summer hurrah. The following weekend is Thanksgiving, thus I will be seeing loads of family, including my bro Jerf!

Until then, thanks for reading!