An unofficial AU advocate at large, Jason never misses a chance to recount the merits of an Athabasca education. Jason’s studies began alone in front of a rustic rural fireplace in December of 2003 and carried on through various brick and mortar college classrooms yet always with Athabasca as part of his journey. In 2014 he completed his BA in Sociology and in 2022 graduated with an MA in Cultural Studies. To this end, his columns seek to explore edifying moments of learning how to learn within the challenging ideological terrain of that great bugaboo facing students everywhere: the real world!
The end of summer: it’s hot, it’s sticky, it’s sultry. Study time melts over the edge of reality like it does in the famous Salvador Dali painting. Drip, drip, drop, splat; a metronomic rhythm resounds as our motivation slows to a crawl. But what if time stopped completely, what then? Our modern industrial psyches recoil… Read more »
As our identities shed skins of past selves our learning proceeds apace. We’re never quite the same student we were last year or back in our days as a younger, perhaps more dogmatic, scholar. Imagination and play at AU are only a study break away and, really, the flexibility to take flight from drudgery is… Read more »
Rural AU life affords the opportunity to embark on a nature walk—the better to wake up and get those study juices flowing. So, when I stepped near a rattlesnake this morning and heard its distinct cackling rattle before seeing it’s coiled body, that really got my brain’s pulse pumping. As the snake scrambled leglessly to… Read more »
Few joys match the peaceful feeling of laying back and watching languid clouds drift across a summer sky. Science and intrigue are even then a possibility, however. If you have a kiddie pool or a lake or a pond on hand just notice how the sky’s reflection refracts onto the water’s surface and reflects an… Read more »
Beard era circa 2020 implies new formulations of the phrase: does the carpet match the drapes? Prescient though this giggled query may be, it connotes timeless equivocations whereby what’s outside (or above) is taken to signify what’s inside (or below). Sure, we mouth slogans that it’s what’s inside that counts, but superficial aesthetic judgments are… Read more »
August 6th and 9th mark 75th Anniversaries of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s sad, but it happened, and the war ended a week later. These attacks, approved by Britain and Canada as per the Quebec Agreement, followed on the heels of not only the Nazi Holocaust but also the Blitz of London… Read more »
Multiple lifetimes ago I took a Horticulture Technician course in Creston, BC. Our first unit was mechanics, and I vividly recall possessing a dull and listless gaze as I tried to wrap my noggin around the textbook’s schematics. The instructor was the local high school mechanics teacher, and he made things interesting by telling stories… Read more »
“I’m stuck.” A plaintive cry rang out through my elementary school classroom as another student fell victim to that mysterious vortex comprising blank page syndrome. To demonstrate resistance to the gnawing emptiness of staring for too long at an empty sheet of paper some kids would expertly place their textbook on their desk and, like… Read more »
Calendars can be a hobby in themselves. Different ones present different key dates and these furnish gilded corridors in which our imaginations can play. As our AU selves traverse private realms of course contract dates, our inner calendar can seem out of step with the outside world. We can take comfort, though, in knowing that… Read more »
Our Canada can be seen as a metaphor for the many possibilities bound within a single human organism. To be the True North, strong and free, rather than limited and insular, means to accept not only differences of culture but also differences of belief. It takes all types, all colours, all cultures, and all epistemologies… Read more »