Today I had an interesting discussion, which led to many interesting discussions (naturally). The first discussion interested me because the topic of a person hitting their prime came up. When does a person hit their prime? In terms of looks, it was said to be 22 or 23. I didn’t quite agree with that. I think that people reach their full beauty in their 20s, but I’ve seen so many beautiful people in their 30s as well. I wasn’t concerned much with beauty anyways. I wanted the meat of it. If we were talking about physical prime, I want to know when people were their strongest. I felt it was in their late 20s, in concurrence with an Edmonton Aging Symposium video I had seen a few years back, along with the common soccer claim that soccer players hit their prime around 28 (yay Thierry Henry, you’re still in your prime for World Cup 2010 ;P.)
I was far more concerned with intellectual prime though, which is ridiculously difficult to narrow down. It would have to be sometime after the teenage years (obviously), but not so old that one’s brain begins to break down with age. The old age comment is difficult in itself.. not all people suffer from breakdowns as they get older. Some continue to nurse their brains, and never really fall into the whole dementia phase of old age. Aside from that, how do you measure when a human brain is at it’s best? Do you talk about scientific figures, and how much data can be stored, as opposed to how much is being forgotten? Do you discuss IQ scores and explicit knowledge? Or do you consider the mind to be the key thing? Do you consider how sharp-witted and intelligent a person is?
The answer seems to be quite complex. Most of the categories being discussed are subjective, such as beauty, intelligence, IQ scores, wit, and even the possession of knowledge (which schools have tried, and failed, to test for centuries). Subjectivity hinders any real accuracy with this conversation, and it’s down to each of us to decide what we feel a person’s prime is. Personally, I don’t see why somebody can’t be in their prime for their entire life, in a fashion.
Blog
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.
One more year left of post-secondary education for me. I’m filled with mixed feelings about that, ranging from unexplainable happiness to to complete indifference.
The though of being in a career has ups and downs, but overall it seems like a giant step forward after already completing four years of post-secondary education. The homework, vacant eyes, and condescension bore me after all these years. While the beautiful women, intellectual conversation (occasionally), and low-stress lifestyle are definite pluses.
I find myself in a situation where I am struggling to make sure I approach this year with motivation and confidence, but without ego and conceit. This task has been a difficult one for a number of reasons.
I am entering a writing program designed for second year college students, when I’ve already completed a four-year History degree with honours. Bill has made it a point to say that direct transfer haven’t exactly been God’s gift to journalism, and I hope to prove him wrong in some regards.
I am treating this last year as a war, hence the quote I used as my title (look it up, it’s Shakespeare). I’m going in to do my job, without wasting time, and lazing through another year of schooling. I am going to try at this course, for once in my life. I will conquer it, and push myself up out of this city hopefully. Destination unknown, but somewhere that isn’t here.
I hope you will all support me in this, my professional year of school.
What Journalism Means to Me
Journalism is not simply a profession. Journalism has a responsibility to the public as an information provider and government/corporate watch-dog.
There are so many journalists whose articles I read, that make me feel pity for them. They are complacent. They are nine-to-fivers, with no hunger for truth. Their passion died long ago, sucked out by the long-growing apathy inflicted to humans in a consumer society, or stomped out by their corporate publishers.
Something stirs inside of me, beckoning me to push forth into journalism, and raise it from the ashes, or at least find a haven where journalism hasn’t died completely. These publications do exist, but they are difficult to come by.
Reality is a factor. Journalists need to eat and live, just like any other human being, and that doesn’t come cheap. With the downsizing in the industry, and the “journalism is dying” fervor sweeping the industry, it becomes even more tempting to settle down with any journalism job you can claw your talons into. Then complacency strikes. Next thing you know, you’re retiring, having worked for the same publication for 30 years. It’s a possibility.
I don’t see this as my future. I see myself learning the finer points of the art from Cambrian’s program (ran by Bill and Erik, two intelligent and talkative journalism veterans), tweaking with my writing as an amateur working for a small to medium sized paper, and eventually moving up to a large paper, potentially in America or Europe.
Truth be told, I would love for my career in journalism to lead me into being an author as well, but that looks to be far over the horizon at the moment. Rest assured, the sunbeams are finding their way over the horizon, faintly, but noticeably.
Journalism is not meant for people without passion. It’s meant for people who want to shoulder the burden of being a truth-teller. Journalism is not just regurgitating facts, it is showing us our own humanity in a mirror, for better or worse. Journalists have to seek the truth, even if it leads to scary and unfriendly consequences.
Call me an idealist for portraying journalists as heroes, but that’s what they should be. Modern day journalism looks more in line with the corruption in society than the truth-telling, and that is not where it should be.
It’s easy to name-drop when it comes to the ideal journalists; Ed Murrow, Hunter S. Thompson, John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Malcolm Gladwell. Not all of these men are responsible for hard-hitting political or social pieces, some are just phenomenal feature writers. These men show the diversity of journalism, and its ability to appeal to a wide variety of readers. I hope to see a revival in solid journalism, but am unconvinced by the apathy of many of the coming generations (my own included).
Dare to dream. Dare to hope. Dare to create.
Investing $20,000 and Four Years of my Life for a Piece of Paper: My Bachelors Degree Experience At Laurentian University
High-schoolers face many difficult decisions on their way to becoming graduates. Whether to enter the work force, attend university or college, or even travel, are among the most significant of these decisions. The guidance counselors and teachers at my high school, Sudbury Secondary School, pounded one fact inside of our heads; UNiversity was the place to go if you wanted to be successful. We were too young to notice their bias at the time, but it is fairly easy to guess they would give that advice considering every single one of them had attended university themselves. Granted, not everyone has a positive opinion of university education, but these individuals were all working fairly nice jobs after graduation, which naturally creates a bias.
I have a vastly different view of university education, when compared with that of the teachers and guidance counselors. I learned more from my own personal reading, than I did from my university courses over the span of the four years I roamed the campus in search of knowledge. When I say roamed, I mean it. I took a wide variety of courses in search of something special. My topics of studied ranged from my major, in history, to philosophy, religious studies, human geography, psychology, physical geography, and even six credits of biology.
In my first year philosophy course, which I took during my second year of university, I learned more philosophy from the books I read on my own time that were unassigned in class, such as Mill’s On Liberty, Camus’ The Fall, and Sartre’s Human Emotions and Existentialism, then I did from the lectures and assigned readings. The course was subtitled “The Study of Human Nature,” but there was very little about it that seemed human, or natural for that matter. My professor would stand up in front of us, and speak for well over an hour. He would occasionally try to ramp up participation by asking “what do you think of that?” as if that were a stimulating way to draw us out of our half-awake, half-asleep states, which he induced with his yawn-inspiring lectures.
Dry lectures are not the place to learn about human nature.
It would be unfair for me to claim this course was the perfect model to explain my in-class university experience. It was the norm however. I do recall fonder moments, such as delivering a seminar to my fellow students of Kuhlberg’s History of Northern Ontario in the pub. I sipped on beer in between pauses, rather than the more-oft used water, and some of my class-mates did more than just sip on their beverages. I also recall Hobb, his beard swinging as he shouted with his Crime and Punishment class, “hard economic times!!” in the middle of one of his lectures. He explained how he was sick of hearing about the recession in the news, and in his dealings with higher-ups at Laurentian.
These fun, and human stories, were few and far between. Their courses represented about 10% of my entire university degree. These two professors showcased what a solid university education could have been, but wasn’t.
I’m back!
Sorry everybody, I went on vacation for a little while (and had a blast!) Now I’m back and ready to start posting again, so fear not faithful readers. Enough with the delay, time for me to post some new content. Enjoy!
-Andy
Professor Robert “Hobb” Beckett’s Website
Dear friends,
I recent stumbled back upon one of my all-time favourite websites. My favourite professor, Hobb, has his own personal website, and it’s well worth the look. You will find mountains of priceless information, free courses, not to mention many life lessons. Hobb is one of the most intelligent people I have ever had the privilege of calling friend, and the amount I have learned from him is impossible to quantify. Without further adieu, I bring to you his website: http://users.vianet.ca/beckettt/
Andy
Hey Everybody!
I have decided that a blog/website would be the best course of action for my writing, and random postings, so here we are. Expect my poetry, reviews of everything (literature, video games, movies, etc), links to interesting things and news, and general comments about almost everything (hockey, soccer, other sports maybe, nothing celebrity related though haha). I’m going to get this site set up, I’ll post again in a little while. Bye for now!
Andy
Andy Veilleux 