Jonathan @ Carleton: November 2006

Its been a while...

Who ever said it takes me a long time to do things?

Well I hope the last blog free month and a bit was enjoyable for all of you, and hopefully ill be able to motivate myself enough to have more than one post a month.

In summarizing a month I am most definitely going to skip over the bulk of things, but hey that means less reading for you so everyone wins.

In summarizing my month, I guess I'll just list off events worth mention and then explain them. I'll start with the most significant event of the last month which is of course:

MOMMIES VISIT:

What else could be more important???? For those of you who didn’t already know, my mom came to visit me (in Ottawa) for thanksgiving. It was really nice to see a familiar face again, and get out of school to see the sites. MiMi (don’t know how to spell...) is my mom’s good friend and she acted as both a tour guide and a host for turkey dinner. For the grand tour of Ottawa we drove all around and went to the market where among other things we went to a tea shop where I got some ‘real’ tea and something to steep it with. Next we had lunch at a nice restaurant overlooking the American embassy (and the locked down road in front of if, be afraid of the crazy Canadian terrorists!). After lunch we headed back to MiMi’s to get ready for turkey dinner. I was feeling tired from a cold I was suffering from, so I took a nap in MiMi’s basement (In a real Bed!!). After a wonderful nap mom woke me up because MiMi’s family had started to arrive for dinner. After some discussion we all sat down for a delicious turkey dinner. Desert was also very delicious and after that various family members talked amongst each other until they went home. I decided to stay at MiMi’s over night in order to enjoy another sleep in the comfortable bed. The next day I returned to residence with memories of a good meal with family and friends. Unfortunately school work prevented me from seeing mom again before she went back home, but the time I did spend with her was great.

The Care Packages

Lots of awesome stuff from grandma and family. A pair of old shoes I left at the cottage, candy, and a “Courtney Test for Higher Education” (or as its known for most people a coloring book and pencil crayons). Yah, my family is hilarious.

Carleton got Jack’d

Jack Layton and MP Pail Dewar (NDP for Ottawa region) hosted an open forum in Rosters Café at Carleton. It was an excellent event and even though I had essays to write I took some time to be there. Layton is defiantly a good speaker and it was refreshing to see some one of such high political orientation to stop by a University. This is defiantly one of the advantages of being in the capital city!

CUND

The Jack Layton open forum was organized by CUND (Carleton University New Democrats). At the end of the forum the audience was informed of the time and place for the CUND ‘annual meeting’. After being inspired by Layton, I decided to check out this annual meeting. CUND turned out to be a pretty laid back group of people (surprise surprise). We established some goals and talked about some events we would like to be a part of. After a while we gave the people in the group some executive titles in order to give the group more structure. I was appointed as the “New Members Officer” which is basically a position that is responsible for knowing the history of the club and helping members integrate who join the club after the first meeting. It will be interesting to see how much I am involved in this club. In other news, an office for NDP MP Peggy Nash was looking for volunteers to work in her office. I got in contact with her Legislative assistant, Ricardo and set a date (Thursday) to come in and volunteer.

Volunteering in Peggy Nash’s office

It seems one thing has led to another in this NDP thing. First Jack Layton then CUND and now I am walking off the #4 bus into the west block of parliament. It felt strange to be so close to the building were federal governmental decisions are made. Surrounded by suits I walked into the west block building, and after being checked by security I headed up to the third floor to meet with Ricardo. It was fairly easy work, sending responses to letters and filing mainly. Riccardo was a cool guy and it was really exiting to be in the federal building getting more involved in the political process.

Of course the outcome of all of this is that my dad is now officially the most proud father on the face of the earth. I can hear him now, “My son an NDP, I’m so proud.” (Hahahaha). Anyway enough of all this political stuff, onto this thing people keep telling me I’m supposed to be spending my time on; Class.

Class in General

Class has been more or less the same over last the little while as it was when I first explained it to you all. I swear my political scientist teacher is the most monotone man on earth, but other than that I don’t have tooooo many complaints about my teachers. My Econ teacher still has a weird teaching stile and my Phil teachers has the heaviest unidentifiable accent I have ever herd. On the plus side both my PAPM and history teachers are coherent and logical in their lectures. I think I will take this opportunity to talk about my marks (Gasp the suspense!) So far I have completed one assignment for each class I have (yes you herd right, 2 months and only one assignment). The order (in marks) these assignments came in were a surprise to me, and the marks ranged from A+ (my econ test and my philosophy essay) to a C (my history assignment). The good news is that I only need to keep a C to stay in my program, but I would have liked to renew my scholarship (A- average), but seeing what is required to achieve that, I am skeptical of my ability to reach it. Even though I might not reach my scholarship, I am certainly glad I am not failing (as many first years have experienced in the past.)

The History Project

My History Professor has the tendency to treat his first years like they are graduate students. Where other professors would simply ask for an argument on the coarse material or one separate article, our first history essay was a histerographical account of 4 different articles that had a total page length of 80pgs. Not to be outdone, our second assignment is based on the idea of commemoration and requires us to visit the war museum and to take detailed notes on the visiting exhibit on the 7 year war. So on Sunday I went on an adventure with Robbie (a friend of mine who lives on my floor) to the war museum. The winds were devastating and cold, but we eventually made it after a dismal journey. Fortunately we had our spirits lifted by being reminded about people killing one another… I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank my History teacher for the best day ever.

As depressing as that all seems, the trip itself wasn’t all that bad and over all the last month and a bit was fairly enjoyable. That said I do miss everyone back home and I can’t wait for Dec 19^th when I will be flying home. Until next time remember, a month is a long time, but at 0$ an hour you get what you pay me for. (Except for my parents who pay ridiculous amounts of money, but I simply pay them back with love! Harharhar)

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