Life Update – Mid-Terms and Snow

I know I have been a little bit too relaxed with posting regularly on my blog so far this year. To share how things are going at the moment and where I am right now in my life, I thought I would just do a quick Life Update post.

·         As of Monday I am now in the midst of Mid-Terms. This semester I have three mid-terms and I have already done the one that I was most worried about so it’s not too bad.

·         It has been snowing again. I talked more about Canadian winter in January here. To be honest at this point I am just getting a bit bored of winter, the constant cold is just getting tiring.

·         I am a vegetarian at the moment, I talked more about that in this post.

·         Academically things are going well, the classes I am taking this semester are all interesting. I have also been working on my proposal for my dissertation which should be really interesting.

·         To be honest, things have generally been a bit quieter this semester. I am still enjoying being in Canada to Study Abroad but it seems like there is not as much is happening as there was back in September and October.

Toronto is Awesome

About a month back I went to Toronto. This weekend, to celebrate coming to the end of mid-terms I decided to go to Toronto again.

As with last time I traveled via Greyhound (which is a good way to travel). When I arrived I got a coffee at the Starbucks on the corner of the street where the bus station is and walked to the Eaton Centre Mall. The Eaton Centre is a really cool mall, honestly probably the best mall that I have ever been to. I had a browse around, bought a couple of things and had lunch there. There’s going to be another blog post coming up where I detail what I bought.

This time I decided to go to the Royal Ontario Museum (R.O.M). This is a fantastic museum that has an amazingly wide ranging selection of stuff. I like that it combines natural history (there’s dinosaurs) and classical civilisations (Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt for example). There’s a lot of eras that I have studied in history classes over the years but it is always interesting to see and learn new things. Also – as with the A.G.O which I went to last time – there’s a substantial selection of exhibits about the First Nations communities of Canada, it’s nice to see that the major museums and galleries of Canada are celebrating the people who were here pre-colonialization.

After that I decided that I wanted to get away from some of the more touristy areas of Toronto. I had a wander around Bloor Street and Yonge Street with the eventual aim of gradually making my way back towards the Eaton Centre. This ended being a longer walk than I had anticipated but I think it was worth it because I did get to see a different side to the city.

During this walk I came across what is probably one of the coolest places I have ever visited – a comic coffee shop! Of course somewhere I can get coffee and comics (two of my favourite things) is going to be a big hit with me! I bought a comic there and sat to drink a Poison Ivy coffee. This was a completely unexpected find but I am really glad that I came across it, definitely somewhere I will be going again.

I ended the day back in the Eaton Centre and the surrounding Dundas Square area. I just relaxed around there before I had to catch my bus back.

I had quite a busy day with a substantial amount of walking but it was undoubtedly a lot of fun. One of my aims this visit was to get to know the city of Toronto a little bit better than I had last time and I feel like that was something I managed to do. I definitely want to go again because Toronto is a really exciting and interesting city, even after two visits I feel like there’s still a lot more for me to do.

Surviving Coursework Season – In Canada!

Back in May I wrote a post called “Student Life - Surviving Coursework Season”, as I have just finished my first coursework season during my time studying abroad I thought I’d write a blog post about surviving coursework season in Canada.

First off, more accurately than it being coursework season this is mid-term season. Generally mid-terms are sit down exams. However I have been fortunate enough to only have had one out of the five classes I am taking set a mid-term exam. I prefer writing coursework essays to taking an exam as I do quite well with the whole process of researching, formulating an argument, writing and then editing.

As I just mentioned I am taking five classes this semester, back in the UK I only take three classes a semester. This does mean that I have more coursework to do over here but generally they have not been as long. All the essays I’ve had to write over here have been under 2000 words whereas back in the UK my essays have usually between 2000 – 2500 words long.

I am naturally quite an organised person and this is a very helpful trait to have when dealing with writing coursework. I keep an eye on when deadlines are on their way. I will always begin writing an essay with enough time to have a couple of days before the deadline to repeatedly go over it and edit it. The downside of being organised like this is that I then tend to become stressed out if I deviate from my plan, even if it’s just running a day behind schedule.

One real struggle has been that classes are still running completely as normal whilst all these coursework/mid-term deadlines have been occurring. This means that there’s still been the regular amounts of reading to do alongside writing essays. Usually in the UK a lighter load of reading is set for weeks when there’s coursework due.

However overall I have managed to adapt to the differences and once again have survived coursework season!