What makes books sell? The covers, partly. And what makes your essays nab great first impressions? The covers. We all know that presentations?not just cover pages?rank high when visual eye-candy gets served. We tend to love slideshows of optical illusions, but loathe screens stuffed with bullet points?especially when the speakers? words and the text don’t… Read more »

As my recovery from a fall on an icy sidewalk drags on, I’ve learned a few things. At the risk of being too clever by half, let’s call them the Five A’s. Alone. As much as some of us (okay, it’s me) value time spent alone, it is absolutely impossible to get through this life… Read more »

Dear Barb: Hi, I am in my last year of high school and have been applying to universities and colleges. Last week I received my first acceptance letter from at a topnotch university and will be living in residence at least for the first year. I know that AU is a distance university, but I… Read more »

I got demoted at work. Although I’ve been trying to keep workplace anxiety under control with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), I didn’t need less stress; I needed better skills. You see, I took a risk and went underqualified into a marketing position. Yes, I soon got demoted, but I also received a potential offer to… Read more »

Bad Cop founder, Adam Christopher Moult of Nashville, had a troubled youth, but music proved his salvation. The indie band formed in 2009 and released their first album, Harvest the Beast, with punk label ROIR, then changed their lineup and evolved their sound to honour a variety of influences, including psych rock, art rock, and… Read more »

Are you isolated as an AU student? Worse yet, are you lonely? I mean shut-out-in-the-woods-with-no-running-water lonely. Once, we went camping to find a run-down, vacant house, lived in by a scruffy, bearded man who threatened to fetch his gun. He was lonely. Well, You’re not alone. The common view is that many AU students live… Read more »

Last Tuesday morning I left my house to head into Edmonton for a day of errands. I never made it. A skiff of snow covered an icy patch on our sidewalk, and in a nanosecond I was lying on the ground stunned. In trying to understand how badly I was hurt, or if I’d be… Read more »

Dear Barb: We have a charming sister-in-law and I respect her opinion. One day me, my wife, my sister-in-law, and her husband were discussing different things and the subject of porn came up. She is sixty years old and I am seventy-seven. She is a very liberal person. I told her I look at porn… Read more »

What do your workplace conditions look like? I survived my first month of work after overcoming years of daily panic attacks. At first, I felt strong in the workplace. But, now, I feel frazzled. I work in a high-stress, scatterbrained environment. My boss’s negative personality trait is “uncooperative”; mine is “oversensitive”—not the best fit. Some… Read more »

It will come as no surprise that I love words. From a behaviour perspective, that means I’m a dedicated reader. It also explains why I’ve collected words for as long as I can remember. If some piece or paragraph, some book or story, some cartoon or poster has said something brilliant or funny chances are… Read more »