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Working/out

One of this semester’s challenges was to alternate between working and work out. The challenge stated that we need to read or write for 30 mins, work out for 30 mins and continue our work after the work out for at least 30 mins. I chose to go running in the park write across the street as my workout. I started reading my book on a timer, after having read for the specified time, I left my book went down the street and to the park where I started my workout. I timed myself again, I ran for 40 mins (the time to get to and back to the park and the 30 mins), got back up and continued reading my book. What I learned from this exercise is that it is good to take a break while working. Your body and mind need a pause from all the stress and pressure and working out take that stress and pressure out. After the run, I was able to read twice the page numbers I read before I exercised. It can be said that working out does good for the body and mind. 

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Balcony Writing

Everybody has their own place where they can get work going. For me it’s mostly my living room, where while working I can have the TV running in the background as a noise factor, yet I can easily get distracted where there is no noise at all. I am the weird kind of person who can concentrate when there is a lot going on rather than having a dedicated place to work. One of the challenges this semester was to work somewhere different than the usual, somewhere that is outside of the comfort zone. For me, one of the places that are out of my comfort zone is getting work done while sitting outside on the balcony. The challenge was to try and read or write for a straight hour on the balcony, and I can say I tried and met that challenge. For the first time ever, I changed my work space and took my laptop out with me, to the spot where usually is meant to relax and unwind with a glass of wine. I challenged myself to start and finish writing a paper without having the TV turned on, without having noise factors other than the wind blowing lightly, brushing off some loose leafs and the birds singing. It was a different experience working outside of my comfort zone, yet I can assure you I liked the idea. My paper was done in a bit more than an hour, however the views and the place itself helped in the process. I can now say that sometimes changing habits can be beneficial. 

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Proofreading

What is a good way to get better grades on your essays? In fact there are several ways to improve your writing, yet proofreading your work is one of the best ways to improve the outcome. When you are an English Studies student in university you will be asked to proofread your own essay as assignment, or to proofread your peers essays, or to give your essay to someone so they can proofread it for you. Proofreading can be done in many ways. In my case, I read and re-read everything that I write while writing them. It may sound weird, but when you are writing you can always go back and read what you wrote from the beginning. This will give you a sense of what you are writing and if your writing is consistent. Yet sometimes, reading your own work to correct it may be a hard task because for you what you wrote made sense. It is always a good idea to swap papers with someone you trust to proofread each others works. For me that person is my sister. Ever since we started university, we proofread each others papers. It has become a fun part of writing our essays. While proofreading, we can give each other tips to re-write sentences, to correct mistakes, and to better ourselves. For some, giving their essay to someone to proofread may sound diminishing. For that, while writing on your laptop, there are programs to help with major mistakes. Sometimes, your writing engine can underline your errors, or suggest alternatives. Yet relying only on your device is not the same as when someone is reading your paper before handing it in. My suggestion is that you find that person you trust to proofread your work. This will improve your outcome and help you achieve better grades on your essays.

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Office Hours

When you’re a student in the English Studies programme at UdeM most of your one on one meetings with your professors take place in their office, on their office hour. Briefly, in this post I will be talking about how a meeting with a professor goes. First, it is important to know your professor’s office hours. Usually they will announce it at the beginning of the first class you will attend with them each semester, yet sometimes office hours can be tricky. Office hours are there to facilitate communication between students and professors. Most of the professors who specify their office hours are in their office at those specific hours, students can pass by with questions or worries and talk to them. However, sometimes it is necessary to take appointments to see a specific professor for a specific reason. From my experience, I have passed by several professors on their office hours and discussed courses in the program, writings, books, and sometimes personal opinions. Yet for other courses, we had to take appointments with the professor to go over our essays before handing them in. For example, each student had to check their name on the time slot given by the professor. On the day of the meeting, each student was given a one on one of 30 mins with the professor that consisted of handing in an outline of the final essay. The professor read each student’s outline and gave specific notes and sometimes ideas to improve the outcome of the essays. For this specific course going to the appointed office hour with the essay outline counted towards our final grade. In my experience, office hours are helpful to students when they have difficulties, want some advice of just need someone in the field to listen to them and give back feedback. At UdeM, and specifically in the English Studies programme, professors are really helpful and friendly. They are always glad to help and give an ear to listen to your concerns. 

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The following is a reading from Mordecai Richler’s Son of a Smaller Hero. In the passage read in the audio, Richler describes the Jewish ghetto of Montreal. Richler uses specific descriptions in his novel, therefore we are able to re-trace the specs described in Son of a Smaller Hero. The places mentioned are places we walk by everyday in the city, yet somehow reading them while walking the streets of Montreal takes us back in time, back when the ghetto was still the ghetto, back to the summer of 1952. For a moment we can feel how the city has evolved since then. While describing St Lawrence Boulevard readers can visualize how crowded and old the city was in that summer. Walking down the streets we are still able to see the ghetto, however even the ghetto has evolved over time. Somehow Montreal is able to preserve the old within the new. Moreover, reading passages from writers who grew up in Montreal or have lived in the city is somehow fascinating, in a sense that the reader who is living in the city in another time frame can travel in time to the past, visit the same places, streets, schools and retrace the steps of the story line. It is of great pleasure to live in a city that has an enormous volume of literature that can serve a guides for a time travel full of adventures. 

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The Profession

Following the previous blog post on why study English, questioning the profession is something to be prepared for. Many people ask us about why we chose English to be our field of study, hence they will ask us what would we do once graduated. Surprisingly, students who graduate with a degree in English Literature have been found to have similar jobs to the ones who graduated with other degrees. You will find this maybe impossible, and maybe a gimmick, but let me give you an insight to what I discovered after the extended research done within the years of my studies. First, when you are in the English Literature field, you wonder if you made the right choice, and this is when my research started. I found out that once graduated, fields like journalism, media, public speaking, project management and presentation, and many more other than the obvious writer, editor, publisher and teacher were on the list of professions for an English Literature graduate. You will wonder how, let me explain. Once you are in English Literature, you will be formed to read, analyze, and research about a specific subject. All those extensive classes about writing and developing your ideas, debating and arguing, watching and interacting, will lead  you to be the person who can speak in public while delivering the intended ideas in mind, form you to speak clearly and manage your arguments. All these play a role in the adult life, when you are ready to chose what to pursue next. In my case, teaching was on the top of my list after graduation. For that, if I want to pursue my profession in the province of Quebec I need to have a brevet d’enseignemet which will translate to a certificate in teaching if you will. For that, once graduated I need to continue my studies in the field of education to get the necessary training and qualification. I discovered there is more than just one way to get that done. I can either chose to do a second bachelor’s degree in education or have my masters done in teaching and learning to be qualified to teach in Quebec and in any other Canadian province, while doing a graduate certificate might get me a qualification to teach only in Quebec. Other than that, having a masters degree will open the doors to not only being qualified to teach in a primary or high school level but also in the CEGEP level. While most CEGEPs accept a minimum of a masters degree to be able to teach pursuing a PhD in English means that I would be able to teach in not only CEGEP level but also at a university level. 

Teaching might seem easy but let me tell you a secret, it takes not only a baggage of education but also a lot of patience and devotion to the children and young adults. For me it was a choice from day one. I had my research done and prepared myself with finding a substitute teaching job while continuing my English degree. This helped me form myself and be sure of my decision while finishing my degree and soon applying for a masters degree. Every profession has its own sacrifices and if those sacrifices are spending time studying a bit more than planed, I say it is worth it. 

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WHY STUDY LITERATURE?

Why Study Literature? Will studying Literature give a a steady job? What will you do with a Bachelors in Literature ?... These are questions we hear a lot nowadays when people first hear about you studying literature. To be honest, studying literature is as studying any other subject and material. Just because a major in literature requires its students to read an X number of books in order to analyze and write essays about them doesn’t mean that a Bachelors in Literature doesn’t have the same even more workload as any other subject. To study literature is to open up the mind and the soul to new perspectives and new ways of communication that did not exist before doing so. Literature is the food of the soul, the one that is somehow invisible but yet seen by many. To study literature is to widen ones horizon and to see from another perspective. People here may conclude literature as English literature, which is my main topic but this statement is true for any other literature as well. Because studying literature seems such an ancient study to some people, the ones who do so are considered as “the hopeless romantics”, i.e. the ones who fantasies about their lives and their surroundings. However, t is safe to say that that point of view is somehow Cliché and does not describe a literature student. In fact, studying literature demands high focus and the ability to analyze and link ideas together. Moreover, to study literature is to keep the literature alive. This may sound silly and funny to some, but it is important to keep the old writings alive by reading, writing and analyzing them. It is only by those who study literature that the ancient works can survive the generations where decade by decade and century by century technology took over. IT IS IMPORTANT TO STUDY LITERATURE TO THRIVE INTO THE KNOWLEDGE OF OUR ANCESTORS. 

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TULIP FEVER

Being part of ANG 1100, we had to watch and read Tulip Fever. The movie is directed by Justin Chadwick and is an adaptation of the book written by Deborah Moggach. Going to the theatre to watch the movie without reading the book from the beginning was kind of helpful to keep that suspense and the heat of the action take place inside my head. However, I have watched the trailers available on the internet before watching the movie and that had given me a whole imagined idea that was not what Chadwick portrayed in his adaptation. I have imagined the movie having a darker plot twist than what was chosen to be portrayed by the director. Furthermore, the actors chosen for the characters seem a good fit, i.e. how Moggach describes Maria in the book is very well interpreted in the movie. For me, after reading the book, the film deviated a bit from the book, however it is noted that movies do tend to deviate from the original writing to adapt to a screen script with more dialogue than description. It is crucial to say that when reading the book the flow of actions seem logical, but when put into a fit production those actions need a more tense way to be described, therefore when Sophia “dies” in the book the scene is taken from a different angle than in the movie,i.e. in the movie Cornelis bursts into the room raging over the doctor and insisting on seeing his wife regardless of the doctors orders he pulls the drapes from her face and aim to kiss her. In the book this part is written differently than the script, however it is to aggravate the death/love scene in the movie that, in my opinion, the director chose to do so.Speaking of changes, in the book it is described that Sophia has in fact a family, a poor one, in the movie Sophia is described as an orphan who was sheltered by the nuns in the orphanage till the day she was given to be wed. these slight deviations from the book give the director the dramatization if you will to ignite the movie with emotions and transverse it into actions. Somehow having slight changes and omissions from the book gives the movie its character and charm. Watching the film with the slight changes has given the novel another point of view of “what ifs”, meaning what if it was that way and not the other? what would have changed in Moggach’s writing if she had to rethink her story line? did Chadwick give the book the best adaptation?             See, there are plenty of questions you can ask yourself, but in this case and in my opinion the film was a good adaptation of the novel and Chadwick did justice to the book. 

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LIBRARY VISIT

The class of ANG 1100 visited the library of Lettres et Sciences Humaines (BLSH) of Université de Montréal on September 19, 2017. The visit compromised of two parts; the first being a workshop on how to search on the online database of the library and the second part was a scavenger hunt of nine specific items located in the library. As I have visited the library before, my expectations were met quiet well, however did not expect a scavenger hunt in the library. With the scavenger hunt we were able to circle the whole library and find the asked items (pictured above). It is to be said that looking for specific handbooks and items is a bit challenging when roaming around the library and figuring out the sections in which the handbooks are located; for example we found where the MLA Handbooks were located but the 2016 print was missing from the shelves. On another note, I personally discovered the media room for the first time, which I have heard about but never got a chance to see it. There you can find all sorts of movies, tv series and documentaries that you can either watch them on the spot or borrow them just like books. With this fun way of discovering the library (again) it is to be said that using the accommodations of the library is slightly more comfortable than before. 

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Book Launch: Dr. Vicken Cheterian’s “Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks, and a Century of Genocide”

The book launch took place on September 5, 2017 at 8:00 pm at Aharonian Armenian Community Centre in Montreal. Dr. Cheterian introduced his book with his personal point of view on the Armenian Genocide and the Armenian, Turk and Kurd inter-relations. He opened his discussion with a big question “why work on a book?” and continued by adding that writing a book is the way/weapon of enlightening the truth. Furthermore, it is the integrity of the book that reveals the realities before, during and after war/genocide. In his book Dr. Cheterian tried to incorporate the Academic with the modern while telling stories of the past and the present. For him traveling is one of the essential ways to write because the land can tell its own stories, thus you need to have the eye to look for and the feelings to uncover the history. With this being said, he started writing about the Armenians, however discovered that others were in the same pathway as the Armenians. OPEN WOUNDS tries to unveil the history of Osmanian Turkey along side the history of the Middle East in order to understand the Armenian History and the Genocide. Dr. Cheterian highlighted the importance of Hrant Dink and the importance of Dink’s work ahead of his assassination as a means to connect the dots between the Ottoman Empire and modern day Turks. All being said Dr. Cheterian’s work focusses on the political aspects from WWI to present days.