In Part I of this series, we talked about the flavour of Mumbai, India, with its apartment buildings, its shops, and its markets. This time, we’ll take a peek at some of the city’s inhabitants. Bugs are Everywhere Yes, in India they surely are. As in any tropical country, ants are strong on the forefront,… Read more »
It’s chilly in Canada! Home after a five-week trip to India to visit my husband’s family, I’ve found the return here definitely shocking to my system. And it’s not only the contrast between 30-degree days and unseasonable snow. The palm trees, the street life, the roaming chickens and cows, the dust blowing in the windows,… Read more »
What is the purpose of higher education? There are a million possible answers, but according to one controversial Guardian article, It’s crystal clear: Get a (good) job. The author focusses on Ivy League-educated women, but the take-home moral rings suspiciously universal. If you get a degree and don’t use it, you might be shirking. In… Read more »
Sadness. Anger. Disbelief. That’s what I’ve seen proliferating across my social media feeds this week as we all try to process yet another tragedy. The bombs at the Boston marathon followed too closely on the heels of the death of Rehtaeh Parsons, the Halifax teen who committed suicide after being allegedly gang-raped. It’s as though… Read more »
In the midst of the recent controversy surrounding all things post-secondary, there’s some good news: The AUSU Annual General Meeting, which took place via teleconference on Wednesday, April 10, showed that the undergraduate students’ union is in good shape financially and is working diligently advocating for its student members and creating new and exciting opportunities…. Read more »
When the government of Alberta rolled out its new budget with significant funding cuts to the post-secondary education sector?we all knew there would be long-term consequences to education as a whole. What we might not have expected was to start seeing those consequences so soon. On the heels of the budget comes Athabasca University’s announcement… Read more »
Three hours. That’s the length of a feature film, with previews and enough time to load up on pre-movie snacks. That’s one evening, downtime I would have spent on dinner: cooking, eating, cleaning up afterward. That’s a few sitcoms and a bit of Facebooking. That’s enough time to learn how to save a life someday…. Read more »
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch?or, for that matter, a free education. Clearly, the government of Alberta didn’t take this proverb to heart when it passed its budget earlier this month. Funding to post-secondary educational institutions was not only not increased, it was cut, perhaps in a short-sighted effort to save costs… Read more »
What does it say about AU? AU recently released its annual report for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012. I always dig into this report as soon as It’s available, because in my job It’s important for me to know as much as I can about our students and the University. Each year the… Read more »
Reading Differently In 1664 Margaret Cavendish wrote Sociable Letters, a fictionalized group of personalized missives that intentionally or not shed a great deal of light on the peculiar reading and writing practices of women. Her remarks on Plutarch’s Lives were critical of the conventional humanist way of reading texts, and she was equally skeptical about… Read more »