Logging into Facebook

I came to school in Canada to start over, to make new friends and leave behind my high school peers that had different values than me. But now I wonder, did I really escape? I only talk to a few close friends from my home town, but that doesn’t mean that others aren’t checking up on me. There’s a chance that the boy who sat next to me in grade 10 math knows that I now have straight hair (my hair was permed all through high school), or that a girl I did an English project with sees that I visited Quebec City during March Break. Clearly I didn’t tell these people these details- but there is a chance they saw them on Facebook.

I’ll admit I enjoy checking up on old classmates from time to time. It’s nice to find out that Sara made it into grad school, or that John is taking a semester off to volunteer in Africa. Facebook is extremely helpful when you have a question about building websites and remember that guy in your art class (whom you haven’t spoken to in three years) used to build them in his free time. Without Facebook the chances of you tracking him down to ask him are slim to none- but with Facebook you could find him, ask him, and possibly even get a response in less than 15 minutes.

But then you get into the personal details, such as “Suzie went from being ‘in a relationship’ to ‘single’ ”. It’s already painful enough when breakups happen- but t the potential that your entire university and graduating high school class know the exact day that you broke up- it doesn’t get much worse than that.

There is an older generation who are now all joining Facebook. Facebook has quite the opposite effect on them. For instance the mother of one of my friends recently joined Facebook, and is enjoying catching up with friends she hasn’t spoken to in years. She had her chance to escape- and now she’s making the choice to go back and contact long lost friends.

On the one hand Facebook makes it easier to keep in touch. There are no excuses anymore of loosing phone numbers or addresses. You can’t apologize that you simply haven’t had the time to write. Chances are you’re on Facebook anyways- uploading pictures or procrastinating by filling out pointless quizzes. It’s getting to the point where it’s easier to reach people by a Facebook message than email or even by phone.

It would be nice to not to be “followed” all the time by people who are more or less strangers. But this is a choice that people make. People complain about Facebook “stalkers”- but everyone has complete control on what they post on their pages. There’s also privacy settings and the choice to not have a Facebook to begin with.

In this day and age Facebook makes social networking so easy that not having a Facebook is almost not an option. And all the benefits seem to outweigh the fact that complete strangers and people from your past know what you’re doing. Who knows- there may come a day that the boy who sat next to me in grade 10 math class could help me with something.

Bravo welcomes his new life in Canada.

Esteban Bravo Calle sits behind the wheel of a white SUV, in the parking lot of Blockbuster. Shaggy brown hair and a single dread lock sticks out underneath his white baseball cap. Bravo’s hat matches the crisp white t-shirt that hangs on his thin frame. His left hand rests on the steering wheel and he wears an oversized watch on his thin wrist. Bravo’s dark brown eyes meet mine as I park my car next to his and roll down my window.

“Hola. ¿Como estas? ¿Te sigo?” he said.

“Hola. Si, está bien,” I said.

The passenger of my car, my roommate Paula Hidalgo, looked at me, squinted her eyes and tilted her head slightly. She asked where he was going to follow us to. Then I thought about what he had just said and realized that I had confused, “You follow me?” with “I follow you?”. During our phone call the mix of English and Spanish had confused us both- to the point where we didn’t actually know where we were holding the interview. I had brought Hidalgo with me for this very reason- to be my translator if my knowledge of the Spanish language failed me or if Bravo’s knowledge of the English language confused him.

On March 6 last year, Bravo and his family emigrated from Medellin, Colombia to Fredericton, New Brunswick. According to Statistics Canada, Bravo is one of the 1,803 immigrants who came to the province between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008.

New Brunswick is trying to increase its population. One of the reasons behind the campaign is that there is a labour shortage. Brendan Langille, the director of communications for New Brunswick Population Growth Secretariat, says that immigration is one of the most attractive and most available ways to increase the population.  Immigration allows new skilled workers, along with new cultures, to come to the province. By 2015, the Population Growth Secretariat hopes to increase immigration to 5,000 people per year.

New Brunswick is spreading the message worldwide that people can “be themselves” in New Brunswick. Langille says they are working hard create this environment, by providing settlement services and Multicultural associations. He says that close to $1 million have been spent on multicultural associations to help newcomers integrate into the Canadian society. But sometimes it isn’t that simple. Bravo’s story is an example of the limitations of language, education, social life that new immigrants face, in New Brunswick.

Esteban Bravo Calle was eating dinner in February of 2008 when his father gave the family the big news- they had a month to get ready to move to Canada. About a year prior to this Esteban knew that there was a chance the family was going to immigrate, but he wasn’t sure until that day.

Bravo knew that Colombia wasn’t always safe, but he didn’t pay much attention.

“I always felt safe, even when I knew it wasn’t. The problems were with my dad. I don’t like to remember those problems. I don’t like to talk about them. They are problems that are only talked about within the family- no one else knows,” Bravo said.

Bravo will only say that his was facing “security problems”. Bravo’s father was a CEO of a bank in Colombia, so when the problems began his father talked to his employers. His employers talked to the Canadian embassy and Bravo’s father began filling out the paperwork to immigrate to Canada. Before they came to Canada the Bravo Calle family had a permanent residence status and social insurance numbers.

Bravo had mixed feelings about coming to Canada.

“I cried, because I had lots of friends and I had a girlfriend. So I was upset but I was also happy at the same time,” Bravo said.

Bravo is happy to be in New Brunswick because of how safe it is here, but the move has set him back four years.

He graduated high school in 2005 and after graduating Bravo studied English for six months in Colombia. He then went to Florida to study English for six months.

Bravo studied journalism at a university in Medellín for one year in 2006. He has many different interests of things he would like to study. Although he doesn’t know whether he would like to study journalism again or something else, like business, Bravo is anxious to get back to studying at university.

However, his Colombian high school diploma isn’t accepted here. In order to study at the university level he needs to obtain a Canadian diploma.

Bravo is 20-years-old and because of his age Fredericton High School wouldn’t allow him to study there.  Bravo decided to go talk to École Sainte-Anne. Bravo knows a Colombian girl who lives in Fredericton, who speaks French. He says that she helped him get into École Sainte-Anne.

The rest of Bravo’s family is studying now as well. Although Bravo’s father studied business in Colombia and his mother was a nurse, right now neither of them have jobs. Monday through Friday they take English classes at the Multi-cultural Association. Since the classes are from 8 am to 3 pm they don’t have time to work- and right now it would be difficult with their level of English. However, Bravo’s father has a friend who is a carpenter and sometimes he works with him.

Bravo has one younger sister, who is currently studying at Fredericton High School. Since she is the appropriate age to be in high school there wasn’t any problems with her getting into the school. She too, however, has been set back. In Colombia she would have been in grade 12 but here she is in grade 10.

Although Bravo found a school where he could get his diploma, there is a problem. École Sainte-Anne is the French school of Fredericton- and Bravo doesn’t speak French. However, Bravo says that the school knew from the beginning that he doesn’t speak French.

“It’s hard. I don’t speak French and I don’t really speak English but it’s good. I’m in 12^th grade right now. All I have to do is study-just study. Even if I fail exams sometimes I will get the diploma. I will graduate, I just have to go and study and make the effort.”

Bravo is learning one of New Brunswick’s official languages (French), but this is frustrating for him. He can communicate in English better than French and he wants to improve his English. But since he wants to study at a university in New Brunswick he’s being forced to learn French just so he can receive a high school diploma.

“The hardest part is when the teachers talk to me. When my teacher talks to me it is difficult because the teacher was speaking and I don’t understand. So ‘I’m sorry’…’Excuse-moi’. But it’s not a problem. When I tell them I don’t understand they say, ‘Ok, no problem’ ,” Bravo said.

Bravo says that all of his teachers know that he doesn’t speak French and that they all help him a lot.

When he first arrived to Fredericton, he took advantage of the free English classes that the Multi-cultural Association of Fredericton (MCAF). He took classes there for two months and thinks the concept of free English classes for immigrants is great. He realizes, however, that the quality of the classes isn’t as good as if, for example, you were taking classes from a university.

“Right now I’m not really doing anything to learn English, because I’m learning French. I learn English from ‘mis amigos de la calle‘ (‘my friends of the street’),” Bravo said.

For the first few months he was here, he didn’t really have any English speaking friends.  In April, he met Hector Tovar at a Latin Party at McGinnis Landing. Tovar introduced him to his roommate, Jonathan Bojorquez .Both Tovar and Bojorquez are from Mexico and although they both speak English normally to each other they would all speak Spanish.

Even though they speak Spanish most of the time, friends like Bojorquez help Bravo with his English as well. When he doesn’t understand something in English, Bravo can ask what the Spanish equivalent is.  For example, Bravo had a worksheet with the different possessive words and Bojorquez helped him realize the difference between words like “my” and “mine”.

Now Bravo has more friends that speak English than those that speak Spanish. He is still friends with Tovar and Bojorquez but the majority of his friends are Canadians. He says this can be hard sometimes because of the language barrier. However, even when he doesn’t speak, all of his friends speak in English so it helps him learn.

Bravo says that he acts much different here with his friends than in Colombia.

“In Colombia, it was different because all of my friends spoke Spanish. I was always talking with them.  It’s harder here because I can’t speak English very well, so I am quiet a lot. I was more active in Colombia because I could speak the language,” Bravo said.

Bravo says he is “quiet” in Canada, but personally I would never use that word to describe him. Maybe the fact that I speak Spanish, I see more of how he would act in Colombia. But sometimes words aren’t necessary to communicate. Bravo is always smiling and joking around, his body language makes up for the English that he doesn’t know.

Bravo laughs about how he meets his Canadian friends.

“I meet them at Nicky Zees.  The people I meet at school, it’s a problem because they all are 16 or 17 years old. So I can’t say to them, ‘Let’s go to the bar!’  I hang out with them at school, but on the weekends I hang out with friends that I meet at the bars,” Bravo said.

Bravo would like to see the Multi-Cultural Association have more social activities for immigrants coming to Fredericton. He believes a lot of immigrants feel “rejected” and thinks it would help for them to be connected with other people, especially Canadian people.

When he first arrived in Fredericton Bravo lived with his family. But after a few months he moved out to live with three other guys and a girl (all Canadians). This January he moved to a different apartment with a girl he met through his old roommates.

“It’s really good. She [my roommate] is a really good person. A lot of the time it is hard though, because she speaks English and I don’t speak English. Most of the time it is quiet in our apartment. She will want to talk to me but it will be quiet because I don’t know how to answer,” Bravo said.

He still sees or talks to his family almost every day, but Bravo likes the freedom of living on his own. However it was becoming hard because he didn’t have a job, and he needed money to pay for bills such as his rent, his cell phone and food.

At the beginning of February, Bravo started working at the Mexican restaurant, El Burrito Loco. Right now he is learning how to be a waiter, and if he passes the training he can continue.

“I got the job because I speak a little English and most people there only speak Spanish. I like the job. It’s good for me since they all speak Spanish I don’t have to worry about not understanding,” Bravo said.

Although speaking English is still a major challenge for Bravo, he is happy to be here in Canada. He hopes to enrol in the English Language Program at the University of New Brunswick.

Bravo riding a horse at his family farm in Colombia.

“Canada is a different culture. Canada is quiet, Colombia is…I don’t know. There’s a lot of cars, a lot of people. I don’t know how to describe it,” Bravo said.

Bravo claimed there to be 42 million people living in Medellín. But he realized this was too large of a number.Preview

“Ok, I’m lost. I guess I don’t know the population [of Medellín]. But a lot of people live there.”

According to the government website of Colombia, the city of Medellín has an estimated population of 2,223,660. However the country of Colombia has 41,242,948.

Bravo says a lot of people have the wrong idea about how life in Colombia is.

“My family had two cars, a house, an apartment, a farm. This was normal in Colombia. I wasn’t rich at all. I knew people who had seven houses. People think that Colombia is ugly, but they don’t know.”

Bravo says they still have some things in Colombia. For example his family still owns a house in Medellín.

Bravo plans to get his Canadian citizenship and live in New Brunswick. He says that he can get his citizenship in roughly three years, however if he goes back to Colombia it will take longer. This is a sacrifice he is willing to take. He misses Medellin and plans to go back to visit family and friends soon.

Although Bravo is accustomed to the “big-city life” of Medellín, he is excited for his future in Fredericton.

“I don’t understand why people would want to leave New Brunswick. I love it here and want to stay. [Fredericton] is a very calm city and all the people are very friendly. There are a lot of good opportunities here.”

**The interviews with Esteban Bravo Calle were done in a mix of English and Spanish. For the benefit of my audience I have translated the quotes to English, with the help of Paula Hidalgo.

On their way back to Fredericton from Boston, Jon Scerey & Holly Russell stopped in New Hampshire with a mission- to buy cheap liquor and cigarettes.

They grabbed a shopping cart and began their shopping. They loaded two half gallon bottles of Bacardi rum (which were on sale if you bought two and even came with a mail-in rebate), a half gallon of Beefeater gin and a twenty-six ounce bottle of Screech.

They also stopped at a grocery store to buy Miller Chill, the latest Miller beer product that isn’t sold in New Brunswick. They spent $93.95 on alcohol.

At the grocery store, Russell also purchased two cartons of Marlboro cigarettes. For a total of 16 packages of cigarettes she paid $76. In New Brunswick one pack of cigarettes is usually around $10.

Since they are honest people they claimed their purchases when they crossed the US-Canadian border. They ended up paying $82.72 USD in taxes. Even after these fees they saved around $50.

Today the exchange rate is $1 USD to $0.989 CAD. Although most Canadians are well aware of their slightly stronger currency, most Americans don’t have a clue that their currency is dropping in value- nor do they care.

Canadians are travelling to the United States to shop. This trend is likely to continue, as long as the Canadian dollar stays above or at parody with the U.S. dollar.

Karen Buhr, the assistant professor of economics and Canadian studies at the University of Maine, says it’s normal for people to be oblivious to the exchange rate.

“They [Americans] just don’t pay attention. They don’t pay attention to the news. Most of them are in their own little worlds. If they aren’t traveling or working in an industry that is directly affected by the exchange rate then they don’t think it affects them,” Buhr says. “But, people are starting to notice. I was talking about how many New Brunswick license plates were at the mall, to a class of mine, and a student made a comment of ‘Ugg…Canadians coming to shop here’.”

Although the US dollar is declining, in many aspects the strength of the Canadian dollar is helping the United States.

Buhr says the exchange rate will affect the tourism of the two countries. She says most people in the United States will choose to visit Canada less because it will cost them more money. Buhr also says Canadians may choose to go to the northern states more, because it will be less expensive.

* * *

Scerey went up to the cashier at Dysart’s Restaurant and Truck Stop in Hampden, Maine with a $10 Canadian bill.

“You can pay with that but it’s not worth as much,” the cashier said.

Scerey saw there was a button for the exchange rate, and politely asked her to look it up.

She did so, and was startled that the exchange rate was in favour of the Canadian dollar. She gave him his change according to the current exchange rate.

* * *

Margret Churchill, who is the manager of the Gap at the Bangor Mall, says that she thinks Americans are being to realize the current exchange rate. She says it has been in the news lately, especially recently with stories of Black Friday and all the Canadians who came down to shop.

“The retailers all love the extra business they are getting, but many customers are tired of the Canadians coming. They feel that they’re just making the stores and the restaurants busier,” Churchill said.

Churchill says that most of the effects of the exchange rate are positive for the United States.

She says that the business at the Gap is considerably better, compared to last year at this time, and the Canadians coming down to shop are to thank for it.

However, because of all the Canadian shoppers, the Gap is having problems with their credit cards. It is a routine procedure to ask all customers if they are interested in signing up for a Gap credit card. But, you must have a US Social Security Number to apply for the card.

Many of the Canadian customers are upset that they can’t benefit from the Gap credit card. When this issue was brought up with higher staff, it wasn’t quite taken seriously. Churchill’s boss didn’t think that that many Canadians were coming to Maine to shop.

However when her boss tried to visit to Bangor, the hotels were all booked up. The hotel managers told her it was because of Canadians coming down to shop. Bus tours are coming down from Canada every weekend.

It’s not just Bangor that is noticing the difference. Churchill says many customers come down and hit up the whole state, stopping in cities such as Augusta and Portland. Gap stores in these cities are benefiting in a similar fashion that Bangor is.

“Hopefully it’s not short lived. I hope it lasts for a while,” Churchill said.

Churchill says there are concerns that the trend of Canadians coming to shop in the United States will slow down come January.

This January it will be required to have a passport to travel between the two countries. Churchill says people may not have passports to come. Because they’re expensive and often take time to get, many people may not bother.

* * *

At the first Tim Horton’s Scerey and Russell reached, after crossing the border back into Canada, they decided to spend the last few U.S. dollars they had.

The woman at the drive-through extended the bag with their food in it as she asked for the money. After seeing the American money, she held back the bag and said, “It’s going to be more money.”

After recalculating, the bill ended up being 10 cents more.

Written for class: November 2007

Learning French at an early age isn’t the only reason why people are concerned with the education minister’s plan to eliminate early French immersion.

Lisa Weir, a parent from St. John, has been attending rallies, doing interviews and writing letters against Kelly Lamrock’s new plan for French education.

But Weir doesn’t want her daughter, Kennedy Weir, to be educated in French. She wants the choice for her daughter to be taught in English.

“Right now in her phase of language development it [the intensive French program] doesn’t make sense. Kennedy is working really hard to grasp the English language. She doesn’t need French on top of that,” Weir said.

Kennedy, who will enter Grade 5 next year, was born with moderate hearing loss. She had begun to understand and speak English before she lost more of her hearing at the age of three.

She also has some sight impairment.

Next fall, according to Lamrock’s plan, every Grade 5 student in New Brunswick will be given the choice of entering late French immersion or going through the new intensive French program.

Kennedy has been going through the core French program the past few years, but Weir says basically she just sits there.

“Her interpreter sits with her during the class, but doesn’t translate. That’s not their job. Because she doesn’t have the support, Kennedy really doesn’t get anything out of French class. I had been talking, with her teachers, about getting her exempted from French,” Weir said.

With the intensive French program, students will be taught in French for 75 per cent of the day for five months.

Weir says that this program could work for her daughter in the future, but only if there were the appropriate resources.

Kennedy uses speech and sign language to communicate. She is especially reliant on sign language in busy environments such as classrooms.

She has many specialized teachers including: teachers for hearing impaired and sight impaired children and an interpreter. However none of these teachers are trained to do their jobs in French.

Lamrock, says he looked into the issue of resources for special need children. He says adding resources to the program isn’t that easy.

“I think we always need to be aware of the politically painless solution that no one ever got around to implementing because chances are it doesn’t exist. And look there’s no doubt that if it were that simple someone would’ve done it. I’ve been preceded by good, sincere people that probably cared a great deal about the streaming issue,” Lamrock said at a panel discussion held at the Capitol theatre in Moncton.

Lamrock admitted that they don’t have the resources but he is under the impression that it could take as many as 10 years to come up with a solution.

One of the panel members, Joseph Dicks, director of the Second Language Research Institute at UNB, says he is one of the people who met with Lamrock on early French immersion and children who were having difficulties.

Dicks said his solution to the lack of resources would be a relatively fast answer.

“ I proposed that we look at a model in New Brunswick that is similar to what they do in Ontario, where they have additional qualifications where teachers can go back for a summer or two summers and come back with additional qualifications in special education and work in the system,” Dicks said in response to Lamrock during the discussion.

Dicks said that not all of the special education teachers in the system need to have master degrees to be qualified.

At the discussion, Weir got the opportunity to ask Lamrock how it is appropriate and possible for her daughter to go through this program.

Lamrock said that in particular cases schools may modify the program or exempt students from it.

“I don’t want to make a blanket statement saying that special needs kids can’t learn French and therefore we shouldn’t bother have a universal French program,” Lamrock said.

Weir says that she hasn’t really discussed the matter with her daughter because she doesn’t feel the need to worry her.

Weir is exploring the different options for this fall, but she says under no circumstance will she have her daughter enrolled in the intensive French program.

The Catholic Church gave North American students an excuse to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day twice this year.

Although the original intent was to avoid Holy Week, a lot of students aren’t even aware of why the switch was made. They just see it as a good reason to celebrate the Irish holiday more than once.

Isabel Pereira is one of these students. She was out at a house party on Saturday, the “new” St. Patrick’s Day, wearing a green shirt and a plastic green hat.

“Sadly, like most other holidays St. Patrick’s Day has become a commercialized holiday, so I don’t think anyone cares about the change in date. Saturday is a better day for going out anyways.” Pereira said.

Pereira predicted that the bars would still be busy on Monday, since any other year March 17 would be St. Patrick’s Day.

Nadia Barry Fuglstad, a St. Thomas student from Cork, Ireland, says St. Patrick’s Day is a religious holiday in Ireland.

“People don’t go out drinking, it’s a family holiday. We all sit around and play board games. It’s similar to Christmas Day,” Fuglstad said.

She says most people in Ireland are Catholic. Catholics wear shamrocks to a special mass to celebrate St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.

St. Patrick’s Day was originally only celebrated in Ireland, but has spread due to Irish people immigrating around the world. In the United States alone, according to the US Census Bureau , 36 million people have some Irish in their ancestry. That’s about 12 per cent of the country.

Today the holiday is even celebrated in countries with little or no Irish population. St. Patrick’s Day is widely known as the day that “everyone is Irish”.

Stewart Donovan, an Irish studies professor at St. Thomas, says quite the opposite of Fuglstad. Donovan says St. Patrick’s Day doesn’t have anything to do with religion.

“Yes they are celebrating a saint, but really the only difference between St. Patrick’s Day here and in Ireland is they don’t have all the commercial things we have here. Ireland doesn’t have green beer and all the other St Patrick’s Day products. These are just product placements and ways for bars and businesses to make money,” Donovan said.

Donovan says that St. Patrick’s Day is a secular holiday, and a day to show the Irish culture.

Fuglstad says it is understandable that the Catholic Church changed the date.

“Where it’s a temporary change, I don’t think people will mind. If they were going to permanently change the date of St. Patrick’s Day, I think people might have problems with it,” Fuglstad said.

Although St. Patrick’s Day is a religious holiday for Catholics, it’s not as high on the religious scale as Holy Week is.

Holy Week, the last week of Lent, is a time to relive and remember the life of Jesus Christ.

Brian White, a seminarian at St. Theresa’s Parish, says it was important that St. Patrick’s Day was changed.

“Holy Week is a sacred time in the Catholic calendar. Holy Week would really over ride St. Patrick’s Day or any other celebration. Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day on Monday would’ve taken away from the solemnity of the week,” White said.

White says he knows people will still celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on March 17. He says it will depend on their connection with the church.

People who aren’t connected with the church won’t feel the need, or understand why it’s important to respect Holy Week.

It’s not very often that St. Patrick’s Day coincides with Holy Week. The last time the holiday had to be moved was in 1940, and it won’t happen again until 2160.

Written for Print class, March 2008

Roger Moore and Ana Maldonado de-stressing after the workshop

Don Robinson stands with his legs shoulder-width apart and slowly raises his arms in front of him. He drops his elbows and lets his wrists fall back towards him and down to his sides. He continues to make movements like this, almost as if he’s dancing.

But he’s not dancing, he was demonstrating the first four forms of tai chi chuan, a soft martial art form that is created by over 100 movements known as forms.

This demonstration was part of the workshop that St. Thomas’s Learning and Teaching Development (LTD) program gave on anxiety and stress management related to teaching.

Although tai chi is a martial art, it can be used to de-stress by focusing your mind and body on the moments. Robinson says it’s a good way to get away from the “chatter” of life for a bit and relax.

Roger Moore, the director of Teaching and Learning, organizes workshops that will benefit mostly the faculty, but also the students, of St. Thomas. Usually at the end of each term there is some type of workshop to do with stress and anxiety.

Moore hopes that this workshop helped the faculty of St. Thomas but he says how it will help depends on the individual person.

“I can’t say to you what I hope you will get out of the workshop. I would rather think that at the workshop you have an opportunity to explore your own areas of stress and tension, Anxiety comes from how you personally deal with it,” Moore said.

Moore said he was looking forward to talking to the faculty about their personal experiences with stress and anxiety and finding areas of his life he could work on.

For Moore it is important for everyone to learn to deal with their own stress and anxiety. He often uses meditation to relax.

“Meditation is something I have used regularly. For me meditation, quietness, the ability to get outside the ruckus of life is extremely important. I usually do it with writing. I do it with breathing, stretching, and meditation. It’s a big part of my life,” Moore said.

Professor Ian Fraser moderated the first part of the workshop by directing a discussion among the participants.

Everyone got to share their personal anxieties of teaching. These anxieties ranged from anxiety related to technology, to anxiety of having to step out of the comfort zone, to anxiety related to disruptive students.

In 2001, Fraser along with Michael Houlihan, Kim Fenwick, Tom Fish and Christin Moller studied the stress and anxiety among faculty members and how it relates to their teaching styles.

The study showed that over 30 per cent of the participants felt moderate to high anxiety levels. Participants who experienced high anxiety levels tended to avoid teaching techniques such as class discussions, avoid going into detail on feedback, and avoid assigning written assignments. In general they would avoid their students, to avoid a higher anxiety level.

Ana Maldonado, a student at St. Thomas, attended the workshop by mistake. She had never seen anything about stress management at the university and thought it would be interesting to attend. Although she didn’t realize it was focused on anxiety of teaching, she is happy she went.

“When I go to classes I’m thinking of the stress of the student but never the stress of the professor. It was especially important to me because I’m always conscious of the other people because I’m not from here. It was really good to hear that professors are also feeling that way,” Ana said.

Maldonado is from Quito, Ecuador and says along with school work and everyday stress, she is often stressed out by the fact that she is so far away from home.

Maldonado says that she often runs or reads something not related to class to de-stress.

“ Sometimes it helps. But sometimes we don’t have enough time for doing stuff, not a lot of time for de-stressing,” Maldonado said.

Sharron Murray, a member of the LTD committee, attended the workshop and also helped plan it. She thinks it is important for the faculty to get together and share information on many ideas.

“I think the more we talk and the more we share experiences the more informed we are and the more we will gain from each other. Because teaching is often a very isolating experience. You just go in and teach your class and you don’t get to talk to other people about it except in these types of forums,” Murray said.

Murray said she learned a lot about the different ways people feel anxious about teaching. She says some of them she had never thought about before.

She looks forward to using some of the ideas she got from fellow professors. She says they are all really good ideas.

Students and professors disscussed international education

Three students and two professors talked about their international experiences in a panel discussion about the challenges of international education. This was one of the many activities the University of New Brunswick had going on to celebrate International Education Week.

Silke Klenk, who works in the international relations office of UNB, had a big part in organizing the activities of the week. She feels it’s important for students to get international experience.

“Our main objective [at the international relations office] is to bring an international perspective into every aspect of the university-to the teaching in the classroom, to research and our service outreach,” Klenk said.

Klenk feels that students will most likely be working with people from all over the place and need to be prepared for this. Any international experience they can add to their lives can help them prepare.

“It’s important for graduates to have the skills they’ll need to work in an internationalized environment and our society is becoming increasingly global,” Klenk said.

Many students want to get involved in an international experience, but have no idea where to start. Klenk says she talks to students like this and finds out what their academic and personal interests are and matches them up with a program that would suit their interests.

She says she also introduces them to people, such as international students or other Canadian students who have international experience. She says sometimes just talking to other students gives them ideas of what they could do.

During the panel discussion students and professors talked about the positive aspects of international experience, as well as the factors that make it difficult.

Krista Lalonde talked about her experience studying in Holland, during the discussion. Lalonde says she learned a lot about communicating from her time spend there.

“Most people spoke English. But with other international students I learned how to listen and communicate. They all spoke differently languages, and understanding body language became really important,” Lalonde said.

She picked Holland because she had known some Dutch international students in Fredericton and got along with them well. She says anyone can go anywhere as long as they stay open minded.

“If anybody is thinking of doing an exchange or you know somebody who is thinking to study [overseas], my motivation, or something you can tell them is: They have to pay to live, they have to pay to eat, and they have to pay to study anyways. So why not do it overseas? The thing is you gain so much more, ” Lalonde said.

Alan Reid, who teaches in the Culture and Language department at UNB, says it is important to put international experience together with classroom experience. Reid traveled himself to the Soviet Union and has taken students to Russia.

“All of them [students] find ways to do it again and continue travelling. It is an essential part of who they become,” Reid said.

Reid’s own experience was important to his life and he encourages everyone to get involved with programs outside of their home country.

He referenced an article from the Washington Post to emphasize how important global experience is. The newspaper was discussing characteristics of top graduates. Five students were profiled with majors ranging from comparative literature to neurobiology. Beyond having high GPA’s, Reid said the students all had three things in common: they speak languages, they do volunteer work, and they have international experience.

“It should be part of your education no matter what you are doing. And don’t wait until you’re done, because then you’re going to want to get a job or you know get married or some other thing,” said Reid.

Greg Morris, another student member of the panel, went to the Black Forest in Germany for seven months last year. Morris went to Germany in search of an adventure and wanted to experience the world from another culture’s point of view.

He got many different views of life during his time abroad. In German the people he stayed with were all vegetarians—a lifestyle he had never experienced before.

Morris also visited countries such as Serbia and Croatia while he was in Europe. In Serbia , he says he got to witness how they were re-building (or in some cases not) after a war.

“[Now] I appreciate the difficulties international students have to go through in Canada. And actually everyone wanted to go to Canada. They would say, ‘Oh my god I’ve always wanted to go there’. Either that or Australia, depending on whether they like the snow or the sun,” Morris said.

Morris said he definitely got the adventure he was looking for; he said he often “flew by the seat of his pants”. For example, he mistakenly thought that he could take a bus directly to a town he wanted to visit in Croatia. But he ended up having to walk about 35 kilometres in the hot Croatia sun to reach the town from the bus stop.

“My biggest word of advice is: do it. If you’re wondering whether you should do something or not, just do it. Because you may only have that opportunity once, and you’ll learn something and it will be interesting, at the very least,” Morris said.

Published to Dispatches Volume 3 Issue 7

Published to Aquinian November 25, 2008 issue (Volume 73, Issue 11)

Ayaka Kukihara working hard on last minute resumes.

It’s three in the morning and Ayaka Kukihara is sitting at her kitchen table. She leaves for a job fair today and she’s still working on her resumes.

Her resumes aren’t as simple as typing job experiences and educational background into one neat page. Each resume has to be handwritten in Japanese characters, and the content varies amongst companies. Essentially, she’s combining a cover letter and a resume into one.

“For me, the Japanese resume was the hardest part of preparing. It probably takes three or four hours for one resume. And you can’t correct them, if you make a mistake you have to re-write the whole thing with another paper,” Kukihara said.

Kukihara, along with other students from St. Thomas, went to an international student job fair in Boston, looking for a job at Japanese companies.

Even though it’s early for job searching in Canada, Kukihara feels she can’t catch up with the Japanese job hunt.

“We’re so behind. I was so stressed out when I was preparing for this forum,” Kukihara said.

Besides her handwritten resumes, Kukihara also had to take online tests, fill out application forms and arrange interviews with companies – the ones that accepted her application.

In Japan, students typically take as many classes as possible during their first two years of university, so they have more time in their third and fourth year to search for jobs. During the last years of university, these students search for jobs four days a week. Universities even have seminars about how to find and apply for jobs.

Because the job market is so competitive, students in Japan will often apply to over 50 companies. Each company will normally have their own tests and a multiple interview process. For example, a friend of Kukihara’s applied to Mitsubishi. After being accepted to the company, he learned that there was close to 6,000 applications and he was one of the six accepted to the company.

Here in Canada, university students tend to wait longer to apply for jobs, but this isn’t necessarily what they should be doing.
Anne Soucy, manager of the student employment center at University of New Brunswick, says the Canadian students who wait until spring to look for jobs miss many opportunities.

Many employers hire in the fall for students graduating in the spring. Soucy says many students who apply early can have job offers by Christmas.

Soucy suggests that from first year on students should look for opportunities to get involved.

“ The biggest thing I [tell students]: start from the first year, see where they can get involved on campus, start to network and build a network of peers but also people within the community so they can build some transferable skills. Sometimes [companies] feel they can send someone to be trained for something but they can’t train them for those transferable skills,” Soucy said.

Soucy also recommends people start putting together a portfolio of the work they’ve done, or certificates they’ve received, so they can have easy access to it when future employers ask about their work

“It’s important to have a good resume,” she says.

Since companies receive many resumes it’s important to have what they’re looking for in the cover letter. Some of the larger companies may spend as little as 30 seconds looking at each resume, Soucy says.

“It doesn’t mean you’re not going to get a job if you don’t think about it [early] but the early bird sort of gets the worm in a way. So get out there, start early and start developing relationships.”

St. Thomas student Hideki Koshizuka is weighing his options. He’s considering working in Canada, applying to graduate schools and he also attended the job fair for Japanese companies. He is unsure of whether he wants to go back to work in Japan or not.

Koshizuka said that most of his friends back home already had jobs lined up for them by their third year of university.

“I thought [the job fair] was going to be more bilingual but it was basically Japanese-Japanese. I wasn’t prepared for that. I thought some interviews were going to be in English but that wasn’t the case,” Koshizuka said.

Koshizuka attended university in Canada to give him an advantage of being bilingual in Japanese and in English. He says the Japanese job market usually values people who can speak English, but in the end he feels that being an international student gave him a disadvantage as far as working in Japan.

“I guess it’s more job specific that you have to be bilingual. I guess those jobs pay better but at the same time you face a similar kind of competition where the people who go there are, naturally, bilingual. It’s not like I’m competing against people who don’t speak English, so it’s not like I had an advantage what so ever, I was just placed in a different job market,” Koshizuka said.

He says that Japanese companies pay more attention to small details, such as handwriting and organizational skills. During one of his interviews at the job fair, he was asked to do calligraphy, because to the Japanese it shows people’s personalities.

“There is less emphasis on individual ability in Japan. There’s a saying in Japanese, ‘If you’re a nail that’s sticking out you’ll get hit and nailed down again’. There’s a sense that originality isn’t valued, being unique isn’t valued, being different isn’t valued. It’s more that you have to be uniform and you have to be a manufactured part of the organization. If you feel comfortable with this then it’s good, but me- no,”

Ayaka Kukihara agrees. She says Japanese corporations value how people cooperate with others.

“They have programs for three months where you have to go somewhere and learn things. For example how to email people, or how to greet others,” Kukihara said.

Kukihara says that her ideal situation would be to get a job with a Japanese company but work in a different country.

“They pay you more and it’s more free. They pay you more because for example if you go to a developing country they are like ‘Ok it’s dangerous’ so they give you security money. And if you have kids the company will pay their tuition and support them a lot,” Kukihara said.

Published in the November issue of Dispatches

http://www.studispatches.ca/en/article.aspx?id=292&issue=28&page=1

Also published in the November 25, 2008 issue of the Aquinian (Volume 73, Issue 11)

Cote with one of her students

Marylynn Côté was immersed into the community of Parika, Guyana last summer for a five week program with Youth Challenge International. Although she didn’t have a choice on where she was sent, Côté immediately fell in love with the rich culture of Guyana.

Côté participated in various volunteer projects while she was there, the main one being teaching students at The Parika Community High-School.

Even though she’s back in Canada now, she still has a connection with that school and is doing everything she can to help the students. Currently she is collecting school supplies to send over to the kids.

Côté says that she had planned to send pictures back to Guyana and figured she should send some things that they needed at the same time.

“It’s a personal project, because I saw how much they are in need down there. I know the students , I know the teachers, I know the community. So it seems like a logical choice that I would send aid to this school specifically, but really all schools around the world are in need of supplies, help and aid, even in the United States, “ she said.

Côté asked the school for a list of what they need, so she can send items that will be useful. She’s hoping that she can send at least some of the items on the list over, but there are many items that the school needs.

She is encouraging people to donate gently used items that they don’t need any more. But she also plans to fundraise money to buy some of the supplies. Côté plans to pursue all possible ways to fundraise and obtain school supplies.

She hopes that the by receiving the school supplies the students will gain hope, and be more excited about studying and attending school.

“I hope through working with Youth with a Mission, that is in the same committee as the school, we’ll be able to make sure that the school is actually distributing the supplies properly and ethically and they’re not keeping it all to themselves. I hope the kids will actually get to use these school supplies,” Côté said.

Côté had been thinking about doing international volunteer work for a while. When she was younger thought about doing missionary work but as she doesn’t have a strong link to her church she decided a non-religious organization would be a better fit for her. After doing some research she found YCI, and it seemed to be just want she was looking for.

While in Guyana, Côté helped hold literacy classes, HIV/AIDS and abstinence workshops, an environmental workshop, as well as doing infrastructure work such as painting road lines and cleaning up the community.

She found it difficult to work with the students sometimes because of the how different the teaching and learning habits were in Guyana. She said that sometimes the kids would act out, but she and the other volunteer teachers didn’t feel they had the authority to discipline them.

But overall Côté’s trip to Guyana was a positive experience for her.

“It changed me. It definitely made me appreciate what we have here in North America a lot more and it’s made me want to do more volunteer work and more charity work as much as I can anyway.”

Anyone who is interesting in helping Côté with her project can email her at marylynn@stu.ca.

Published in Dispatches October Issue Volume 3 Issue 5

http://www.studispatches.ca/en/article.aspx?issue=26&id=280

Picture from Boston.com

This year on October 14 they will get their chance to exercise their right to vote. The Student Unions of both University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University have been busy preparing for the election and educating students about the candidates.

Melissa Wah, Vice President Education of the St Thomas Student Union, has been busy helping organize events for students to help educate students about the voting process. But as a first time voter (she was too young to vote last federal election), she has learned a lot about the process herself.

“I’ll be honest, I had no idea how to vote or where to register. I have been learning along the way,” Wah said.

Residence students had a problem when registering to vote, because in order to vote Canadian citizens need to prove their address. With residence you don’t have a lease or an official document like that, so Wah worked with Residence Life to fix this issue. They sent out letters to all the residence students. Not only did this prove their residency, but it also gave the students all the information they needed to vote, plus it advertised all the STU Student Union activities going on.

The biggest activity was Politics and Popcorn, where the national leaders’ debate was broadcast live in the James Dunn Cafeteria on a big screen. All the attendees got free homemade popcorn.

“I hope that students that normally wouldn’t watch the debates came out. And I hope that they learned from each other,” Wah said.

She said there was a distinct dynamic between students supporting different parties. She hopes that this allowed the students to learn from each others’ views and that the debate created discussion.

Wah finds it very important for all students to vote.

“Every vote counts, to put it simply. If students don’t vote, our issues will get ignored. And essentially we would be letting other people decide who will be the leaders of our country.”

Wah said that for students who are undecided, CASA’s(the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations) website has regular postings on the platforms of the different candidates. CASA focuses on the educational based issues. Wah suggests students go to other news websites such as CBC.ca or the Globe and Mail for other issues.

She also reminds students to watch the news every night, because there is always something new in politics.

Wah says it is important to be open minded but not let others influence your vote, she believes it’s important to make the decision on your own.

Jon O’Kane, the Vice President External of the UNB Student’s Union, says it’s very important for students to know what issues are important to them.

He emphasizes that it’s very important to watch debates and learn what each candidate thinks of different issues.

Although there was a local candidate debate on October 7 at the St. Thomas campus, O’Kane is hoping to reach more people with the debate being held at the Student Union Building on October 9. The St. Thomas Auditorium holds 400 people, but the UNB debate will be able to hold 1000. A panel will ask educational related questions and then the question period will be open to the audience to ask questions about other issues.

“Meet individually with the local candidates, most of the time they are more than welcome to meet with people. And don’t just accept their ideas, challenge theirs with your own ideas,” O’Kane said.
Like Wah, O’Kane was not old enough to vote in the last federal election but voted in the last provincial election.

O’Kane hopes that this year the voting at UNB will be more organized as it is being held in the Blue Room so there is more then one exit. Last election there was issues with students having to come in and out of the same exit.
Joseph Landry, a St Thomas student, was old enough last federal election, but didn’t vote.
“I wasn’t enthused by the candidates. The news was making them all look like crooks and I didn’t feel motivated to go vote,” Landry said.

This year he plans to vote because he feels the NDP has a stronger candidate. His main concern is the social programs of Canada and what changes there are to come.

“I think everyone should vote. It gives individuals an ownership of the government,” Landry said.
In Landry’s opinion, when individuals vote but don’t like the winning candidate they don’t have to take responsibility for them coming into power. But when people don’t vote there isn’t anything they can do about it.

St. Thomas student Allison Davis hasn’t always been into politics. One of her friends used to always talk to her about current political issues and she was never interested. But once she understood what was going on she realized how important it is to be informed.

She emphasizes how important it is to get all the information before making any decisions on whom to vote for.

“I myself am still undecided in who I will vote for. I probably won’t decide until minutes before I go to vote. Until then I will be learning as much as I can about each of the parties because I want to ensure that I am voting for someone who stands for the things I believe in,” Davis said.

She suggests you look at what each party is representing and be very objective. She says that making an informed decision is impossible if you don’t have all the information and know what the motives of each party and candidate are.

Davis encourages every student who is able to vote in next week’s election to do so and emphasizes the importance of voting.

“First of all, just the fact that we have the right to vote, is a reason to vote. In some countries people don’t have that right. Second, the decisions that the politicians make affect each and every student in this country on a personal level whether they realize it or not. We as student have to stand up and vote for what we believe is right and more importantly what we think is wrong.”

Published on Dispatches