20 years ago

[jawnbc]

A random thought: what was I doing (or probably doing) exactly 20 years ago today?

05 October 1983: I have now been at Oswego State for a little over a month. On a typical Sunday, I'd crawl out of bed blindly hungover (Saturday night at Broadwell's), and start the only part-time job I could find: Sunday morning janitor for my dorm, Seneca Hall.

After emptying 10 floors' worth of pizza boxes, vomit and buffalo style chicken wing bones, I'd scrub my entire body down and head to brunch in Pathfinder Dining Hall. Carbs, carbs, carbs, scrambled with ketchup, copious amounts of orange juice. Uniform consisted of a backwards baseball cap, t-shirt and sweat pants, with bowling shoes. Pathfinder is connected to Seneca via a tunnel (in the winter, as I will soon experience first hand, Oswego averages -15C/10F with 5 metres of snow).

While my peers seem kind of obsessed with this notion of homework, I spend my day listening to tunes, chatting with friends, and being a general distraction. I may bang out my calculus homework (the fooker collects it), and will read the stuff for Medieval Lit. I won't crack a book (or even bother to attend) Existentialism: having read L'Étranger deux mille fois, I'm all about existentialism. I'll also call home and do the school-is-really-hard-but-I'm-a-good-boy shtick. Tonite I'll rustle up the others on the 5th floor with poor work habits (all of whom will drop out, save moi) and populate a corner of the library.

I mean Tavern. I always get those two mixed up.

What were you up to 20 years ago today?

Comments

Re: September 1983

[jawnbc]

Cheers. We could have hung out at that age--and probably today--based on your interests and musical tastes. Well perhaps the one thing Mike Harris did that I agree with is get rid of Year 13.

[clauditorium.livejournal.com]

I feel an argument coming on.
I think it was a horrible idea to ditch grade 13. Most high school students aren't ready for post-secondary education at age 19, so I fail to see the wisdom in sending them off a year earlier.
There's something missing between high school and college/university. I don't know what it is, but I do know that almost no one I know knew what they wanted to do for a living when they finished high school. Which results in having to pay off student loans for a decade of your life.
So in conclusion, if they were gonna drop grade 13, they should have found something to replace it.

[jawnbc]

Ontario students went to school for one additional year with no benefit. They still had to spend as much time in uni or other post-secondary educational/vocational programmes--they merely started a year later than their peers in pretty much every other jurisdiction in Canada and the US.

Rather than puttering away in another year of high school, we should encourage youth to take a year off after high school and work or travel. Like many European kids do. Or do a year of liberal arts in their first year of uni if they want to go right into school.

Do you think that Ontario students under the old system were any better at discerning a career path at 19 than 18? I don't. I think the problem is anyone presents university as the place where one identifies--and gets the credentials for--a specific career. Grade 13 doesn't mitigate that fallacy.

[clauditorium.livejournal.com]

The problem now is that grade 12 students are expected and encouraged to jump into university right after high school, just like the grade 13s were. I think a year's time at that age can make a huge difference.
But I agree that grade 13 in itself is not necessary. Kids should be encouraged to take some time after high school to figure out what they want to do - the year-off you suggest.

[jawnbc]

agreed. Did I mention I flunked out of uni first time around? After grade 12?

*scurries away*

[clauditorium.livejournal.com]

I flunked a few courses in university. That's because I hadn't realized yet that I wasn't made for studies, but that my destiny was to become the charge of a sugar daddy bear.
(I'm still waiting for my destiny to arrive. Anyone? Hello??)