On the 16th of November 2006 I had a letter to the editor published in “The Gateway”. The Gateway is the student newspaper at the University of Alberta. While this can easily be found by Googleing my name like this I’ve decided to post the “Paper Version” here on my website. You’re going to have to find a printer if you want the paper version but here it is: (click to enlarge)

Feel free to read the online version at: gateway.ualberta.ca

As quoted in a news release by the VP external of the University of Alberta Students’ Union.

• (Edmonton, AB) – Totals from the University of Alberta Students’ Union Wall of Debt campaign suggests that many students are being excessively overburdened with loans. Approximately 800 students wrote their anticipated student debt load upon graduation on paper bricks. The total amount of debt on the Wall was $20,293,100. That is an average of $37,000 per student.

Now I can understand that it’s possible to run into trouble coughing up $6000 per year on tuition on top of raising funds to pay for rent, utilities and food throughout the year. I have a hard time believing that the average person signing a brick for the “Wall of Debt” needs to take out a loan big enough to pay 6 years tuition. Come on people, have you no idea how much money you are spending that doesn’t need to be spent?

If you drive a $25 000 car to school, pay $400 per month to park it on campus. Wear $200 pairs of jeans and carry around a $2500 laptop with you while you spend $800 per month on rent. Eat most of your meals at a restaurant and spend $80/night to go clubbing/drinking 3 times per week. Spending $2500 each reading week to take a trip to Mexico or Vegas. Those are the big expenses, just think about one of the small ones, if you stop at Starbucks for a $5 cup of coffee every morning you’re investing enough money to buy a new bike every year.

Our society has things worked out so that people who want to spend way more than they should are just allowed to do so. If you want to take society up on that offer you by all means have the right to do so. I don’t think you have to right to do so and then attribute your financial situation to being a student.

27 outs in a baseball game, 27 days to mark a test…

So the waiting has finally come to an end, a mere 1 day short of the four week mark I was beginning to expect. Some people pointed out that our Statics mark in first year didn’t come until the Thursday of the first week of school, that may be the case but it was the last exam written on the last day of exams, they also had full lecture halls of students. And 27 days (Hiebert’s record) still has a significant margin over the 22 days record set by Hrudey and company.

Discussions amongst the other guys seems to suggest that things must have been tied up in the physics office

So I wasn’t completely out to lunch with my previous entry, Hiebert is still rewriting the record books for being the slowest marker on the face of the planet but Drs Dai and Gortel did get their grades onto beartracks today.

I’m a bit choked with my Stat Phys mark =( I guess I had pretty high expectations of myself after pulling out a 106% grade on the midterm and seeing how bad everyone else felt after the final exam. I guess I really did poorly on the “Ice in a Jar” problem, I only managed to do the easy first part and had to leave the bit with V / Vquantum out because I couldn’t remember. That can’t be the sole explanation for loosing so much ground to everyone else in the class so I must have really screwed up another problem that I’m unaware of.

I can’t really complain about missing a 4.0 from Complex calculus because my complete lack of interest in the teaching style and content did hinder my ability to show up for class on time and pay attention once there. I mean, I can evaluate any integral the guy wants to throw at me but when it comes down to stupid tricks and proofs I’m just a few steps behind. I certainly hope that the USRI feedback will step things up for future EnPhys. The other kids in the class seemed to be content with the garbage but I think that covering some real course content would have been a good idea.

I knew that the ridiculously high marks by everyone else in the class weren’t to my advantage. 1.5 marks off on the midterm, a sprinkling of half mark-deductions on homeworks and a single sign error on the final exam could all legitimately add up to an A- when the class average is a whopping 85% or higher. I’d like to hear how some of my friends did, if they’ve all got 4.0 and 4.3 then I’ll be pretty sad.

High class averages (MATH311) are certainly not my style of education but stinking hard courses (PHYS311) aren’t reaping me great grades either. I guess I’m best suited to trivial material (EE280 and EE338) with tricky exams, I certainly collected the trophies there!.

So, It’s three weeks since I wrote my optics test and I still don’t have a mark… Guess my emotion, you’re likely correct.

I’m also not completely happy with Gortel and Dai for not getting those marks done but I’ll admit Gortel had a big class where almost everyone wrote 2 full books. What’s going on up there in Edmonton? I mean I leave for a week and no-one in that city can manage to get any work done?