UTSC has a golf cage? Really? Squash too?

Hello sports fans! This is Raphael back for Friday’s blog and your weekly dosage of UTSC news.  This week I’m going to mix it up, go into Jessica’s territory (our Tuesday Athletics blogger) and talk about sports! More specifically, the underutilized facilities that are available at UTSC. Now for some of our dedicated readers, you may remember a past blog I did about the Attic.  I love the Attic and it is probably my favorite “chill” spot on the campus. I guess this next spot I will mention is a close second place. Now I don’t go as often as I used to but this spot is great because so little of the student population know about it.

Alright so let’s get right into it: The golf cage at UTSC is nothing too special. For those of us who don’t know what a golf cage is, it's basically a 3 sided net where you would take swings with the club to practice your posture and accuracy.

Now as you guys can probably tell I love to explore places, I guess that’s why most of my blogs have some relation to looking or finding some new places and this golf cage is the perfect spot.

The golf cage at UTSC is not very large, but they do have free golf clubs you can use at any time. What's even better is if you start to take a liking to golf (such as myself) the Athletics Center offers classes to improve your golf game. Just visit their website www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~athletics for more information.

Now I won't be surprised if many of you haven't even heard of a golf cage, but I'm sure that some of you heard about the squash courts at UTSC. For those of you who don't let me tell you all about it.

The squash courts (as shown below) is available throughout the day (and they are usually empty during the day since many students have classes).

I still remember playing squash for the first time with one of my friends. We were in first year, just exploring what UTSC had to offer for us. We had just finished class and wanted to check out the gym, but we got sidetracked and took a door to our left instead. We walked the long hallway and ended up in the squash rooms! We really had no idea that the campus had squash, and at first we thought that the squash room was a mini basketball court (until we saw there was no hoop or net). I told my friend, "Hey why don't we try playing squash? I mean it shouldn't be too hard, right?" WRONG! The problem we had going into playing squash was we had no idea on what the rules were. After just half an hour running back and forth whacking the ball against the wall, we were EXHAUSTED! I mean really tired. Granted neither of us are real "athletes" but we felt so winded after that we just sat on the court for half an hour just to catch our breath. Upon leaving the court, we notice that right outside the door there were billboards that had the rules of squash written out! We were so tired that we decided to just go home.

(Note: for those of you who want to take up a sport and feel your body moving, take up squash. This is made easier because our school provides lessons for both beginners and advanced players. For those of you who want to see the offered lessons, download this pdf file: http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~athletics/images/fallguide.pdf)

So that was my experience, please don't be discouraged by my experience in the court, I actually am genuinely interested in the sport, and would like to revisit it sometime (maybe after I hit the gym a little more). And for those of you who think squash really isn't your thing, try out golf. I came into it not knowing if I would like it or not, but golf is a great stress reliever. Just whacking the ball with a club against a net can feel really good (especially if you just want to relieve some anger from missing your bus, or messing up on your test). And if you are lazy and just want to sit and watch, there are benches located at the upper floor of the squash area, convenient for those who would prefer watching others move around as opposed to themselves. :)

The squash and golf cage rooms are located by taking the door to your left (before the locker room or the gym). If you see a dance studio then you are headed the right way, just keep following the hallway and you'll get there eventually.

Oh, before I forget, Happy Belated Birthday to our supervisor Nadia Rosemond, without you as our leader, we would be hopelessly lost with our blogs :)

Dope Inspirational Stuff.

Hello readers! It’s Moiz coming at you again. I hope all of you had a successful mid-term season! (my mid-term season is still going on -_-) I’m going to get right into my blog post this week because it was a long and hard process for me to decide what to write about this week. I think I changed my mind about 4-5 times but I finally figured it out, Enjoy!

After I finished most of my midterms I found myself making more personal goals. Not long term goals necessarily, more short term goals such as the very popular, “No more procrastinating.” At the time, when you decide on a goal, you feel like nothing will get in your way of accomplishing your goal. But in most cases, it’s a matter of time before you return to your routine of speeding to get things done at the last minute and then vowing that the next assignment/test will be different.

If it seems like I just told the story of your life, DO NOT FEAR! I know many people that go through the same phases all the time and because of this I’ve decided to share with you some tips and tricks to help you stick to your goals!

Step One: The Plan

This is where you spend time deciding exactly what your goal is. Do you want to improve your GPA? Do you want to gain more from university than just the education? This step is where you decide on what it is that you want to achieve. MAKE SURE THAT IT IS SOMETHING THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY ACHIEVE. If your GPA was a 2.0 the previous year, telling yourself that you’re going to have a 4.0 in the current year is an unrealistic goal. What the goal should be is to pay attention in class more, to review notes every night, to attend all lectures, etc. Now there’s no guarantee that these goals will get you that 4.0, but they will definitely help you work up to it! Also, something that I have found to help me is to write the goal down somewhere. Somewhere that you look at every so often just to remind you about what you are working for. Also, changing the location you put once in while helps you to actually take it in and not just pretend it’s a part of something and ignore it.

Step Two: Words into Actions

This is where you start to put your new goal into action. The key to this stage is organization and prioritizing. Mastering these two concepts will make your life so much easier! Some tips to stay organized? Set up a calendar at the beginning of each month! In this calendar put in all assignment deadlines, all test days, EVERYTHING that you deem to be important in that month! Seeing how close a deadline for an assignment or test is will help you prepare well in advance. The last part of this stage is to make sure that you are somehow tracking your progress, just to boost your ego and show you that you really can make your goal a reality.

Step Three: The “oh there’s still time” stage

We all know this stage, this is where we all try to deny the fact that we’ve been procrastinating and try to make excuses to defend ourselves. My most common one use to be, “Oh, I work well under pressure… I’ll just do it tomorrow.” THESE PHRASES ARE BAD BAD BAD! To stop yourself from doing this you must challenge each excuse to make. For my previous example you could say, “Do I really work better under pressure? What happened the last time I did that?” If you’re like me, the best solution is to find inspirational quotes/videos that show you a little extra work can take you a really long way.

Step Four: Survival

Just live. It’s important.

Do you have any other goal-setting tips you’d like to share? Have idea’s for a blog you’d like me to write about? Just post all thoughts/comments/questions into the box below and I’ll be sure to have a look at them. That’s all I have for you guys this week, until our next digital encounter.

Peace and Love.

Moiz’s quote of the week: Set some goals and follow through with your plans. Time waits for no man.

I Got 99 Problems and Money Is One of Them.

Hello fellow readers! It is Malcolm here again bringing you my weekly two cents on student life and experience. This week let’s discuss the ups and downs of student life. As students we are typically 3 things – tired, hungry, and strapped for cash. It seems the less we are the latter the less we are of everything else – which is a good thing. However, as students our bank account balances have a tendency to go down faster than they go up.

If you’re like me, I’m sure you’ve heard “you need to budget your money properly”. However, I’m not a huge fan of hardcore budgeting plans – I feel they leave no room for fun or flexibility and you end up breaking the budget anyways. I’ll admit to you all I am not a big spender but I am a frequent spender (is there a difference?). I’ll spend 5 or 6 dollars here or there each day but it really adds up. Over the years I have devised a few key budgeting and money saving tips and tricks that I believe have helped me through my university education.

Pack your own lunch, dinner and snacks.

I used to eat out every day of the week because I was too lazy to pack my own food. I don’t remember what compelled me to start but I’m glad I did. On average I found out that I was spending anywhere between 7-10 dollars a day on lunch not including snacks or coffee. Even if you just pack your lunch you save anywhere from 35-50 dollars a week; that’s $140-200 a month.

Bring your own coffee thermos and instant coffee or tea bags.

This is a tip I got from my friend – he told me that Campus Express has a hot water tower now which you can use for free – I’ve confirmed this and this is true. Not having to buy coffee from Tim Hortons not only saves you money but time as well. 2 cups of coffee at Tim’s is around $3 each, $15 a week $60 a month – you do the math. As students of UTSC we are no strangers to the lines regularly grace the Tim Hortons. Before this hot water tower was available another friend of mine used to keep an electric kettle in his locker and boil his own water. It takes 3 minutes for those types of kettles to boil water – to put it in perspective think about how long you wait in a line up at Tim Hortons. As an alternative you can also keep a microwavable cup in your locker to heat up water you get from the water fountains and pour it into your thermos.

Take good class and textbook notes and keep them.

When you sell your textbooks you typically can snag an extra 20 or so dollars if you include a copy of your notes with the textbooks you sell to another student. The more money you can get back from your textbooks the less stressed your budget will be later on.

Print at the SCSU office.

You can cut your printing costs in half by printing at the SCSU office. The only catch is that you have to go when the office is open. The SCSU offers printing for 5 cents a page whereas printing elsewhere in the school will run you 7-10 cents a page. This is not about penny pinching as much as stretching your money as far as it can go and getting the most value possible.

Use your skills and get paid for them.

There is a plethora of job opportunities available on campus that you can use your skills to make some money. There are honorarium and work study positions widely available for students to gain some experience as well as some extra cash flow. Typically an honorarium will grant you anywhere from $500-1000 per semester depending on the job. A work-study position grants you $10.66 per hour at a max of 10 hours per week for the semester (works out to be about $2000). These jobs don’t require an intense amount of your time so you can still keep your part time job and have time for school and partying. ;)

Live within your means.

This is possibly the most important piece of information you should take away from this. It basically means don’t spend more than you make. Most students already have a pile of student loans having credit card debt on top of that makes the debt become harder to deal with – and nobody wants that.

I hope you found these tips and tricks helpful! Remember to subscribe to the blog and share your favourite posts with your friends. If you have any more money saving tips and tricks that I didn’t mention please let me know in the comment section below – it’s as easy as typing in the box below! Follow me on Twitter for the latest updates and awesome from ME - @malcolmwong1

A Commuter's BIGGEST PET PEEVES!

So I've been commuting/busing it to UTSC for almost two months and...I got a few issues, I NEED TO TAKE CARE OF (YES! I am yelling)

Let's just get right into this hot topic.


Here, in this post are my top five TTC pet peeves aka "you know what really cheeses me while I'm on the bus..."

5) Uncooperative people. Those hoodlums who walk in and pay the WRONG fare and then argue about it when the bus driver confronts them.

4) Loud talkers. I don't need to hear about how ugly you thought that girl's dress was or how your boy was hitting on all the chicks at the party. I know the most probable solution for this problem would be to "just go listen to your music" but even when I try to drown out your voice, I can STILL hear you! Keep your business to yourself. Thanks

3) Random shift changes. The bus driver just stops at a stop and then gets off to talk and chills with his fellow co-worker. Good for you! Now get back on the bus and take me to school, I'm running late and you aren't helping! Fine, *pretty please*

2) Perverts on the bus go round and round. This is more of a girl problem, not to say that men can't be creeped by other creep men, just sayin... I ABSOLUTELY HATE IT when, the whole bus is empty and this ugly old guy comes and sits right next to you and smiles at you (with all his teeth) and hopes that will open you up for conversation. NO! Not Cool! JUST STOP

1) The MOST annoying thing about the TTC is crowded buses.
There are two ways to approach this issue. One, the whole bus is packed and there's no seats left and the bus driver insist on taking more passengers...and then the automatic voice lady comes and says "please move back...thank you" and well, you can't move anywhere because there is no space and then the bus driver threatens and says "I won't move this bus another inch until everyone moves back." You whine and suck your teeth and groan about it and make like a square inch of space until you're squished against the hoodlums and perverts and then the bus starts rolling again.
OR
People are just lazy and refuse to move back and take the few empty seats that are there and in the end we all suffer :(

Epic Quote of the day: "Romantic love is like a mental disorder."

Epic Song of the week



P.S. Yesterday was UTSC's Leadership Development Program Coordinator's birthday...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NADIA!

Construction at UTSC begins for aquatic facility

With the 2011 Pan Am Games having wrapped up in Guadalajara Mexico, it's Toronto's turn to take the world stage. As host of the 2015 Pan Am Games, the city is getting ready to build five state-of-the-art athletic facilities.

One being built at our UTSC campus.

I talked to students and one of the directors for the 2015 Pan Am Games, Jason Fellen, to discuss the progress of the world-class aquatic centre.

UTSC gets a little high and mighty

The most common complaint you hear when you go to UTSC is that there is concrete everywhere. The second most common thing you here is that “we are no match for UTSG”. Well, to each their own, but for all you art and culture lovers out there, you might want to think twice before saying that again.

Let me introduce you to the little known gems of the school: the Doris McCarthy Art Gallery (DMG) and the Leigha Lee Browne Theatre (LLB). Both havens of high-brow fun are located right here at school and, should you choose, will give any student concrete reason to visit!

I’ll be honest with you, when I went to the DMG, I was pretty stumped. Were it not for a class project which forced me to analyze the visual stimuli I was being presented with, my Jersey-Shorified brain really couldn’t care less (I just used a made-up word …point in case). And boy, was there a lot of visual stimuli! I’m posting pictures below so you can help a sister out!

Super It by Blue Republic

The exhibition ran from Sept. 6 - Nov. 2 and featured many pieces. Clearly, as seen above!

Now look, I’m not some fancy-pants monocle wearing, hoity toity art critic  – so the thought of going to these things kills me a little inside. But after going to the Gallery, I realized that for someone else reading a novel might pose the same sort of challenge as going to the art gallery does for me. I learned that it’s important to give all art an opportunity to reach you. Regardless whether in paint, performance, ink, or clay.

And though, after that monologue, I’d like to say I reached some brilliant conclusion… I didn’t.

But what I did learn was that art is less about understanding the artist’s message view and more about the relationship between artist, art, and viewer. Obviously I had some trouble understanding the message, but doesn’t that come down the way the message was brought to me and not whether I could decode it?

See how deep my thinking is getting already?

It might be because this isn’t my first experience with the covert art scene here at UTSC. Doris McArthy also runs Gallery 1265, the student art gallery that offers UTSC and community artists free space to showcase their work. I visited Gallery 1265 last year and took in an interesting installation about education and technology. Again, I only really understood the art pieces to be something other than wall decorations because I took the initiative to open my eyes (…and also because I was writing an article about it, but it was mostly the former).

A couple of days after the DMG visit, I attended a talk held at the LLB theatre titled ‘South Asians in the Arts: Diasporas, Alliances and Collaborations across Communities’. Suffice to say, it was simply fabulous! But what made it better was the intimate space of the black box-theatre, the lighting and the proximity of the audience to the speakers. It literally gave me chills!

Funny enough, later on, when I was telling a friend of mine about my experiences both at the gallery and the theatre, she had trouble believing I was telling the truth. “We have that here?” she said.

Needless to say, I was shocked! How did someone not know about these things!? The DMG is located a few steps from the Bookstore, on your way to the ARC. And the LLB falls on the way to the research labs and SY110 over in the new Science wing. Well, you know what they say, it’s different from the inside looking out than it is from the outside looking in.

Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly), UTSC’s best kept secrets aren’t really very secret. One only needs to look around once in a while. Here’s a hint: anything other than concrete at this school automatically points to cooler things than “ground-breaking architecture in the brutalist form.”

A way students can find out about these cool places and these cool events is to check out the Division of Humanities website. The HumDiv website also houses the Arts and Events Programming (AEP) information space which let’s you know about events coming onto campus.

An event being organized by the AEP, one I will do a shameless promo for, is the campus display put on by the ENGC51. Held tomorrow in the Meeting Place, this campus display (from 1:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.) will educate passerby about Arab women writers from all countries and all eras. It will be interesting stuff folks! 

And no, I’m not obligated to say that because I’m participating in it…  

But really, who knew things got so pretty high-brow right here at UTSC?

Well the students who curate the DMG did, as did the members of UTSC’s Theatre program and members of the Drama Society… or anyone with keen eyes and interest really. But for those of you who are new to the concept of arts and life at UTSC aside from boat cruises and charity club nights, there’s a lot more coming up!

In the next few weeks, check out DMG’s new exhibit, Moment by Beatriz Olano and Magdalena Fernández (November 16, 2011 - January 28, 2012).  Also look out for more student exhibitions at Gallery 1265 and more talks as well as the production of Closer early next year on the LLB stage. 

Join the AEP group on Facebook to stay in the loop about art events happening on and around campus. You’ll never miss a thing again (trust me, they send about five emails a day, can’t miss it)

So while I won’t be throwing any wine-and-cheese parties just yet, I had an enlightening experience thanks to the secret awesomeness that is the arts and culture here on campus. Have you seen any surprising/cool/awesome on or off campus? Share your experience and let know in the comments below, or as always tweet me :)

Until next week, later days!

Phone, Internet, TV

These are 3 of the things we cannot live without in a modern day. You would be amazed how we are unable to operate in our daily lives without these 3 things in our lives. Some of the things listed above are more important than others, but we all know that we wouldn’t last a day without any of these 3 things. Sometimes I wish to live a life without all of these complications, but little did I know that I would get my wish sooner than I expect.

Let me update you guys on what has been happening to me lately. These past few days I have been living in a cave. Yes, quite literally in a cave. I just moved to a new house, and while the house itself is beautiful, it is pretty much a modern cave. It has no internet, phone, or TV installed yet but it does have a nice looking kitchen, nice looking furniture, and nice looking bathrooms. See what I mean? Sure the house is modern and quite spacious, but what really makes a house “modern” is the technology. Without a phone, I felt secluded from the outside world; without an internet connection, I had no access to the World Wide Web; without cable for my TV, I am not updated on the latest news!

I felt like I didn’t exist in the world, out of the radar, not to be seen or heard from again. But then I discovered the great invention of Libraries!

I have forgotten about these great establishments, these buildings that seem to be put aside because of the fast paced world we live in. (I think the last time I went to a public library was elementary school, no kidding!) We tend to forget that close to where we live there are places where people are willing to share their internet connection. Ahh, what a great place to be in. What I’m trying to get at is our day to day lives will drastically change without the access to free internet services. Think about it, how would you check your marks on ROSI? Or how would you change your courses on your timetable? Our lives are made much easier due to the fact that we have technology. Heck, I wouldn’t even be able to write this blog right now if it wasn’t for the internet. I am truly grateful for it and you should be too!

Just look at how happy I am when I finally got Wifi at my house! (This is literally the first picture I took when I first got internet access at my home). You can tell I find Internet the most important of the three.

At UTSC we have numerous ways to stay connected with the outside world. The library for one is a great place to use computers or just find some space to study. Also people tend to forget the vast amount of information the library contains: books. For anyone majoring in English, the library is a great resource for any papers or assignments (and sometimes has access to special articles and books published by the university). We also have the computer labs located on the 4th floor of the Bladen wing. While most of the time these computer labs are occupied with classes, there are 2 rooms that are always open to students at any time during the day: BV(482) and BV(490) . And for those of you who still want to use the other computer labs, just make sure to look at the timetable posted outside the classroom and check if there is a class scheduled during that time.

I know some of you still won't be able to find study space here in the campus, well then try the new IC building! (For those of you who haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favour and check the building out, it's Super Awesome!) Ok secret time, shhhh, don't tell anyone but I have another secret space that I just discovered just a few weeks ago. If you take the stairs up to the 3rd floor of the IC building there is a large computer lab with a weird stock exchange bar hanging in the room. If you assume that it is reserved only for management students, you're wrong! It's open to all students, and the great thing about it is each computer is equipped with 2 monitor screens! Isn't that awesome? Consider this space your "last study space" for those of you who read my first blog, and if you haven't yet please do: http://utscpulse.blogspot.com/2011/10/study-space-what-study-space.html .

Computer Lab in the IC building

I know that maybe some of you are probably reading this blog in a public library or a computer lab because you don’t own a personal laptop to bring to school. No problem! The SCSU offers the Toshiba Loaners Program, where 20 laptops are loaned to those students who in most need for one. It operates in a per semester basis (unfortunately this semester’s deadline for applications already passed), but applications for the winter semester should be coming soon.

Wow, this blog is getting too long but just imagine what the world had to throw at me before I could finally appreciate the technology we have today. I am really grateful for a community like UTSC, without your free Wi-Fi, I wouldn’t be able to live.

Please subscibe to us by clicking the link above that says "follow" and follow me on twitter at @RaphaelSantiag5, also follow our twitter @utsc_pulse! For more information about the Toshiba Loaners program click here http://www.scsu.ca/toshiba/. Have a great weekend everyone!