“University is tiring; it’s mentally challenging and physically exhausting,” wrote Alana Janes, a third-year film student at York, in a back-to-school column in The Toronto Sun Aug. 21. “As hectic and crazy as university is for eight months, life is always like that. That’s why you can’t allow yourself to get bogged down and lost,” she advised returning students. “It’s easy for things to pile up and stress to build, and most of the time students just let it happen, focusing on getting to summer break. That may work for now, but once graduation comes, the time of thinking in school years and summer breaks is over. University is the time to find yourself, find your speed – to figure out how it is that you are going to get through life without having a breakdown. There are plenty of ways to make sure the many pressures of school don’t get you down,” and she listed going to the gym, finding campus clubs and borrowing videos and art books from the library. “You just have to decide to take the time and try new things to see what keeps you smiling and exhilarated in life.”
On air
- Thomas Klassen, political science professor in York’s Faculty of Arts and co-editor of a forthcoming book, Ageism, Mandatory Retirement and Human Rights in Canada, commented on a University of Winnipeg physics professor’s fight against a mandatory retirement ruling, on CBC Radio’s “Information Radio” in Winnipeg Aug. 22.