Queer History Month
The fourth annual McGill Queer Research Colloquium is taking place on October 24th and 25th at the Humanities and Social Science Library. It is a forum that shares research regarding LGBTQI2+ (more…)
The Best Things I Did During My Graduate Studies
This will be my last blog post for CaPS (at least for now :), so I thought I would leave with a short list of the best things I did while completing my master’s and doctoral degrees at McGill.
Power of Yes
Good Morning McGill,
As the seasons shift from summer to fall, the air is a little more crisp in the morning and evening. But during the day all those layers you have put on must come off because it warms right back up, and depending on the building you’re in, either its way to cold or way to hot. I feel like I am constantly shedding and layering myself. My rant of the day!
PhD to Industry: Transferrable Skills
As the job market landscape for PhDs continues to shift, with more and more PhDs opting for non-academic career paths, there is much work to do in supporting PhDs in honing “core competencies” in a way that makes them employable and competitive for industry positions. I’ve spent the past few years working to identify and translate the skills developed during a PhD in the context of industry and government needs, and found that I have the skills, I just needed to work on communicating them to potential employers. (more…)
Arrivederci
For anyone sticking around this summer, whether it be for a course, an internship, or an employment opportunity, below you will find my favorite summertime activities:
- “Batobus” crossing between Parc Saint-Louis and Parc René-Lévesque in Lachine
- Jean-Talon Market
- Laronde
- BIXI biking
- Festivals
- Saint Lawrence Boulevard’s sidewalk sale
- Saint-Jean-Baptiste / Canada Day celebrations
- MTL Zipline
- Wednesday nights at Terasse Bonsecours
- Point Au Roche State Park
~xoxo~
PS: Blogging for CaPS was an honor, and I hope readers learned as much as I did from my posts. 🙂
Recent Volunteer Experience
During the month of May, I immersed myself into the world of three very different, but equally pertinent concepts: physical education, animal welfare, and energy conservation.
The 2019 PHE National Conference
As a volunteer at Physical and Health Education Canada’s event held right here at the Currie Gym, I mainly helped with the registration of attendees. Meaning, I got to see many faces, and finally got to experience what career and academic advisors have been telling me for the past two years — that career paths are certainly based on your grades, on your interests, and on how well you respond to that “tell me about yourself” interview question, but nowhere near as much as they are based on your personality.
REVIEW – SKILLS21
Throughout this past year, I’ve attended my first (and perhaps last) set of SKILLS21 workshops. For those not familiar with this undergraduate program, SKILLS21 “aims to provide students with opportunities to become contributing global citizens in the 21st century.” (Um, woah there.) It includes workshops from five different areas (Citizenship, Collaboration, Discovery, Leadership and Wellbeing).
After completing the “Wellbeing” stream in addition to attending several workshops from other streams, I’ve put together an honest review of my participation experience.
Bucket List
Increase your Worldliness, Save Money, and Check in with Yourself
- Attend an advance movie screening. Back in December, I sat in on the Montreal premier of On the Basis of Sex. I got my tickets through the History Students’ Association of McGill, but if you keep an eye on this page, it won’t be long before you’ll have experienced viewing a film before its Canadian release date.
- Send a message/suggestion/opinion/remark to the Mayor of Montreal. Whether this has only been your city for one year or twenty-one years, you can’t not have ANYTHING to say to her. Back in November, I proposed an idea pertaining to our public transport system, and I received a response within a month’s time. Express yourself!
Fear, Confusion, and Change- A Search for Answers
It’s hard to think that your choice of study may have been the wrong choice. Some common thoughts are: “maybe I’ve enrolled myself into a program that I thought would give me a good shot at a well-paying job” or “maybe I enrolled into a program for the passion I have for the subject despite knowing the job opportunities are slim”. Sometimes we only realize that we may have made a mistake only after receiving our degrees and entering the work-force. If you’re in one of these places right now you’re probably feeling trapped or anxious. But hey, a semester just came to an end and you owe it to yourself to search for some clarity in all this… (more…)
Report is due, but don’t panic!
Credit to: Calvin and Hobbes (Scientific Setbacks)
As graduate students, we are often assigned teaching jobs, most commonly lab and course TAs. I really enjoyed my time with students when we did lab work together (I’m a lab TA), and we chitchatted about life, study, weather, or future. My colleagues have various working styles, but in general we are a bunch of cooperative ants focusing on our tasks. On the other hand, grading several dozens of lab reports is the most painful moment at the end of every experiment cycle – we are sad to see people forgetting what we emphasized during the experiment, not double-checking the formatting, giving us blah-blahs without even reading the background information… (more…)