Take it easy
I’m pretty nervous right now. I haven’t even attended my first class yet, and I’m nervous. I’m not nervous about how class will be — I mean, I’m in my third year of university. I’m used to classes and the responsibility and stress that comes with them. I guess I’m nervous because any time I accomplish one of my goals, I immediately focus on a new one. I don’t give myself time to celebrate those accomplishments, as small as they may appear to be.
As the semester crawls to a start, remember that as daunting as your car payments, grades, social life, and work may be, it’s always important to take a step back and appreciate the fact that you’re making progress. And the fact that you’re worried about these issues means that you’re paying attention to them, and that fact should put your worries to rest — at least until midterms roll around, anyway.
MARTIN CASTRO
School year’s resolutions
So it’s a new semester, a real chance to start fresh. For once, I swear to God, I’m going to plan out all my assignments well in advance, go to bed at a reasonable time every day, and show up to class on time, every time!
Who am I kidding? No I won’t. I’m not going to have an organized binder. I’m not going to develop a system of marking textbooks with post-it notes. Certainly, I’m not going to refrain from doodling during lectures.
Every year, many of us make these impossible “School Year’s Resolutions,” and by October we’ve lost all faith in them. This causes all kind of unnecessary anguish: “I’m not good enough!” or, “I’ve failed myself!” or, “I might as well just give up!” We ought to give up on these resolutions and allow ourselves a little psychological slack. Fantasies of smooth-running goal-accomplishment are nice, but accepting that we’re not academic machines is nicer. Be human, screw up sometimes, and do your best without destroying yourself.
ALEX RAKE
Thanks, Abby bike thieves
Welcome to Abbotsford! The land where you cannot be expected to own a decent quality bike for longer than a year.
Recently, my shared dorm was broken into and three rather expensive road bikes were stolen. Victim One bought their bike barely one month ago, Victim Two purchased her bike six months ago, and Victim Three bought her bike less than nine months ago — to replace her bike which was stolen less than a year ago.
The worst part of the story: these bikes were on the second floor of an apartment. The thieves climbed in a window to snatch them, and then walked right out the back door. Where the hell do people get off with this shit? Maybe life is rough, but is climbing into someone else’s apartment to steal their primary method of transportation really a good option in even the toughest spot? So much for honour among thieves.
MITCH HUTTEMA
K-Cups should be trashed
K-Cups are little white lies — they promise a fresh cup of coffee, but what they fail to mention is that they are just another item of disposable plastic created to appease our own laziness.
That’s right, laziness. It takes just as much effort to put a K-Cup in a machine as it does to scoop a teaspoon of coffee into a filter. The idea of technology and mass-production making our lives easier is quickly transforming into brands selling us disposable products to create the illusion of ease. Simply put, we use K-Cups because they seem easy, when really, scooping coffee isn’t that much more difficult.
Just to add insult to injury, K-Cups are expensive. Not only are we buying into a lie, we’re paying $20 a week — not to mention the costly and soon-to-be-obsolete-anyway contraptions that only work with those little plastic devils.
As if this weren’t bad enough, K-Cups are adding to our tonnes of waste, one tiny bucket at a time. Most K-Cups — and their Verismo, Tassimo, and NesCafé cousins — are not recyclable or biodegradable. Solution: if you have a K-Cup machine, please purchase a reusable filter. Nature will thank you for it.
MEGAN LAMBERT
