Picture this. The year is 2018 and you’re walking up the stairs to the second floor of South Campus Hall. You grab some food from Southside Marketplace and head over to sit in Velocity. That’s when you see it…
A wall - full of colours and messages.
You ask yourself, “what is all this?...”
On June 8th 2018, while most people were sitting outside enjoying the weather Nadine Fladd, one of our Writing and Multimodal Communication Specialists, was 326 ft above ground rappelling down Toronto’s city hall.
Last week, we celebrated John Vardon who has made a tremendous impact in his 40+ years working as a Writing and Multimodal Communication Specialist at the Writing and Communication Centre. As John retires and starts a new adventure in doing so, we look back at his time spent here.
Quilting, an excellent metaphor for community, assembles pieces to form a whole. Quilting is also an excellent metaphor for the recursive writing process: prewriting, drafting, editing, and publishing.
Throughout the year – September 2017 to August 2018, contribute a piece of yourself by adding to this living quilt.
This summer, the Writing and Communication Centre embarked on a campaign to promote reading for enjoyment. Often our lives get too busy to do things just for fun. It’s understandable. Life gets hectic and tasks pile up; however, it’s extremely important to take time for yourself just because you can. We need to make more time for enjoyment, and what’s a better time than summer?
Since starting at the Writing and Communication Centre in May, I have learned numerous things about myself as a teacher and a student. Despite having a background in teaching, this was an entirely new style of teaching. In the past I had been a dance teacher, crew trainer and a choreographer, and while these all entailed certain skills in patience, communication, leadership and collaboration, having the opportunity to work in this position has only furthered these skills.
As the spring term draws to a close, the fall term is drawing nearer. If you are enrolled in co-op at university, it may be the dreaded recruitment term. On top of juggling courses, assignments, essays and exams, you have to find a job. You have to submit what seems like 200 cover letters and resumes, and attend multiple nerve-racking interviews, just with the hopes of landing a good job with decent pay, in a decent location and with decent responsibilities. Although the recruitment term is stressful and overwhelming, it is a great opportunity to refocus your goals and aspirations.
When I say “public speaking” what comes to mind? Dread? Nervousness? Excitement? “Public speaking” often brings uneasy feelings to first year students, as standing in front of a classroom ranging from first year to fourth years may seem a lot more intimidating than one full of your long-time high school classmates. You have a well-written and researched speech and you have already sought out a peer review from the Writing and Communication Centre, but the easy part is over.
All throughout high school, you have learned countless techniques, rules and tricks for academic writing. In high school, there is predictability, reliability, and structure, which often carries over into the writing process. One of the biggest worries for students entering their first year of university is the transition from high school to university writing. Whether it’s assignments, papers, presentations, reports and the like, writing seems to change in university – or at least the expectations do.
Seeing as this will be my final posting, this is a perfect time to reflect on the fall term and project to the upcoming winter term. Fittingly, one of the big takeaways from my experience with a vastly diverse group of students is plan ahead. And I don’t mean that in a remedial or punitive way at all. It’s more of a general sentiment on developing a process, a process which you’re concurrently tweaking as it develops. Perhaps this is too meta (considering this post is prefaced on looking forward), but I’ve heard that being self-referential on the internet is the thing to do.