Saskatchewan Electoral Districts

Here is my current federal electoral district:

People from Saskatchewan can probably see what is wrong with this picture. Saskatoon is a small city in Saskatchewan. There are approximately 300 000 people in Saskatoon, compared to about a million in the province. Yet our electoral district, as you can see above, consists of a huge 'pie piece,' extending from Saskatoon to include much of the surrounding area. That's more than 100km from Saskatoon. The other electoral districts in Saskatoon and in Saskatchewan's capital, Regina, are similar.

The logic at the time (in the 60s) was that Saskatoon mostly consisted of people with strong ties to their rural families. That may have been true at the time, but it would be hard to make that case now. Recent newspaper articles such as this one report huge growth in Saskatoon and Regina, from both national and international migration. That's in addition to the families who have been living in the province's major cities for 2 or 3 generations.

No matter your political affiliations, it is reasonable to assume that, on average, people in the city will share more issues and concerns with other people in the city than with people in the country. That is why I am happy that there are new electoral districts being considered for Saskatchewan:

These proposed boundaries would ensure that people who have more in common are voting together. Then, our nation's MPs can be elected knowing that they have been given a strong mandate to represent everybody in their electoral district as best they can.

If you are reading this and you agree, please share it. If you want to go a step further, please email your MP and request that they support this bill. My advice is to not mention anything about certain parties. The most important thing to note is that the proposed boundaries are more democratic, because they will allow the people in Saskatchewan to be better represented according to their concerns.

This website will help you find your MP's email address if you would like to email them. All you need is your postal code.

Art Attack!

This post is in semi-response to this article, about person who is "breaking up" with the University of Saskatchewan because of the supposedly poor way that arts students are treated.

The author seems to forget that though it's hidden under layers of bureaucracy and airy dreams, the University is fundamentally a business. It has been supported for years by our culture's belief in 'getting an education.' Now, in a tougher and more pragmatic world, the value of a liberal arts education is becoming harder to discern, and thus harder for our culture to support, which is reflected somewhat by government funding (I say somewhat because we don't all support the current government in Canada).

As far as I am concerned, universities are possible because of a cultural mandate. For hundreds of years now, we in western civilization have valued the broad education offered by universities. Certainly, there are many benefits. This produces more culturally-aware people. Art and music are very important, as far as I am concerned, as is the study of numerous social and soft sciences. But it doesn't follow that we need so damn many.

Let's talk about the more artistic things first. I think that there's a disconnect in numbers in these fields. How many art majors go on to make important pieces of art? Likewise for music. Not every aspiring artist is going to make a splash, of course, but it would be interesting to see just how many graduates of these programs actually make something worthwhile. Of course, there are other reasons for this. Governmental patronage is important outside of university as well, of course, and many will say that we don't have enough. Good point. So let's stop sending so many damn people to University and instead support the people who count. That would be some money better spent.

For social and soft sciences, such as psychology, sociology, etc., my argument is similar. Many of these people make important contributions to their fields, but does that mean the university has to churn out 9 sociology grads who go on to middle management in completely different fields for every 1 that actually contributes to sociology? There are other ways to gain these skills than spending thirty or forty thousand dollars and three or four years of one's life to get a degree that you get only directly.

We've been doing this to ourselves in Canada. We have one of the highest rates of college-goers in the world (statistic heard somewhere sometime). I'm not sure this is a good thing. Not everyone needs to go to college. I think we've been dumbing down the system for a while. We let people get by on 50s and 60s, which is complete crap, because university is already not that hard. Thousands of students go to university just to party. This is not a problem in and of itself; the problem is that they have the money, so the universities like to keep them around, and further dumb down the system to accommodate them. When the system is dumbed down, the more driven students do not derive as much benefit from it. 

I may come off as quite extreme from some of what you see here. I'm not. I believe in arts degrees. I just think that we don't need so many. We should encourage people who take other paths to success. We should support artists, sociologists, political scientists based on merit, instead of supporting everybody just because we can't stand to see somebody fail.

I'm still working out what I think about it all. What do you think?

Good for a quick laugh

A hilarious excerpt from a (Korean) student's essay!:

If I dance, my body become very supple.
So I will be very good at many things that something needs supple.
My body will change like a squid HAHA!

Conversations with Korean students

I am going to start posting my favourite conversations with my Korean students. This may or may not happen a) whenever I feel like it and b) never again. After all, what good is it teaching for a year (and then stopping) if I don't get to exploit my students for the funny things they say.

Girl Student 1: (Out of nowhere) "Teacher, you have girlfriend?"

Me: " 'Do you have a girlfriend,' Pearl."

Girl Student 1: "DO you have girlfriend?"

Me: "No"

Girl Student 2: "Really?"

Me: "Really. No girlfriend for me."

GS2: (very sagely) "I can't believe it."

GS3: "Me too."

Thanks for the vote of confidence girls!

Student 1: (I'm wearing my glasses.) "OH teacher you have glasses?"

Me: "Yes. Usually I wear contact lenses."

Student 1: "It's better I think."

Student 2: "I think so."

(skip to the end of class. everyone else is gone)

Student 1: "Teacher?"

Me: "Yes?"

Student 1: "Please never wear your glasses. You look like grandfather."

Me: "(lol) OK"

Self-Confidence in a Cover Letter

Today I had the wonderful experience of writing a cover letter in 5 minutes. The words flowed, the experience came together in a coherent picture of a young man who was ready to take on the world from his potential seat in a high-rise in downtown Calgary. I sold myself by identifying the right idiosyncrasies and painting them as exactly what the company needed. Lately, writing a cover letter has not been so easy.

There is something very disconcerting about not being able to write an effective cover letter about yourself. Human adults spend more of their waking hours working than engaged in any other activity (and for most of us, working surpasses sleep as well), and we define ourselves partially by our work life. So, when try you to sit down and put your good qualities on paper, and you fail, it does not feel good. You try to think of what would make you a good employee, and you come up short. What is happening is that, in essence, you have lost faith in yourself as a worker.

When you write your cover letter despite this feeling, your negativity will show through. For myself, I go through the rigmarole of stating my experience and how it ties into what the employer is looking for. Of course, this is what you are supposed to do, but it ends up looking uninspired. Instead of weaving a narrative about your experience, it ends up reading like a truncated list of unnatural connections between experience and expectations. With more and more companies using the Internet as their primary source of potential candidates, the cover letter is your first line of attack; it's the only place your personality can shine through. An uninspired cover letter doesn't exactly .. ahem.. inspire a positive response. So what happens is a self-fulfilling prophecy, where a lack of response to your jobs undermines the same confidence that you need to write a good cover letter. This is unfortunately the pattern I have been stuck in for a little while. Does anybody else know what this feels like?

Thank goodness then for the occasional flash of inspiration that allows you to rise above this. The cover letter I wrote today happened in a mere 5 minutes. I proofread it twice and then sent it off. I know it's good. I know it's good precisely because it only took 5 minutes. I had that sort of intense, pleasurable concentration you feel when you are doing something you truly enjoy. For me, that usually comes when I am wall-climbing, or reading an inspiring book, or even writing this blog right now, but today it happened when I was writing a cover letter.

That's not to say that you should write a cover letter in 5 minutes. Never underestimate the value of planning what you are going to say ahead of time, and even outlining your cover letter (or any formal correspondence) before you start writing. It only took my five minutes because I have been writing 3-6 cover letters per week for about 3 months now, and even though many of them were uninspired, I still have a good idea of what I want to say. In fact, I am sure that part of my inspiration came from all of the mundane practice I have had at writing cover letters over the past while.

The point of all of this is that even when we are caught in negative patterns, I believe there is always a way to overcome them. If the bad news is that sometimes we get trapped in these negative-feedback loops, then the good news is that chances are inspiration will come one day and help us out. But don't sit there waiting for it.  Inspiration is not a flash of lightning that strikes, coming out of nowhere and changing your life forever all in one moment. Inspiration is the culmination of hard work and practice and hard work and practice. Whatever your goal is, whatever your current equivalent of my cover letters is right now, you have it in your power to succeed.