Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Doing Mushrooms and the Art of Feeling Important

Phew. That long of a break eh?

So first the mushrooms bit. No I didn't do mushrooms last week. No I didn't drop acid. And I didn't discover the meaning of life.

Now that we got that out of the way, I have been doing the grad school thing. Is it hard? A litte. We are required to have 7 or 8 'projects' ongoing continuously. My strategy has been, I should be chipping away at all of these every night, so I never have to cram or force something.

Interestingly, there is much less emphasis on tests (which we have) and midterms (which we also have) but projects. We are always doing presentations and projects. I've said this before and I'll say it again: get good at talking and thinking on your feet. Whether it means joinging the debating team or just some minimal involvement in student politics, whatever you do, it will benefit you greatly in grad school. A lot of students who don't have that are really stressing out and wasting energy at the last minute and I'm just ..... chilling. What's going through my mind? I know things will be okay. I also know that the worst thing I could do is freak out and ruin what I've built up so far.

At any rate... after all this school you do.. and all these tests.. and all these GPA points youv'e fretted over, what do they tell you? "It's not about being smart. It's about networking." So on top of the school stuff, they come right out and say, "Oh yeah, and...make sure you're funny, interesting and charming, or you won't go anywhere.."

Not that I'm scared, but it's kind of funny.

Doing mushrooms. I do want to mention something about that. I've been to all these networking events, sometimes they're really far away, in some town I've never been. Have you ever been somewhere new and felt... a strange sense of peace? Last week I went to a former prof's house to discuss a project about Future Studies. Her house was way out in Anmore, which is basically a half an hour north of SFU, which is... out there. Being somewhere that seems so disconnected from your 'routine' life seems to give you perspective, which is exactly what mushrooms do.

Anyway, I hope that, if Anmore gives me the chills, Beijing will give me convulsions. ;)

More later, this is starting to get fun. I definitely feel great about this program :)