As your beyond proud Chancellor of NU, I thought it appropriate to share with you my academic background and related interests.
In gym class, the two captains would leave me for last pick and then argure over who had to take me. But when it came to group projects in class, everybody wanted me in their group. Haha. I usually got to work by myself. Still, at the age of 16 I was bored with school, and that in combination with other factors, led to the decision to quit school. To most people, that would be the worst mistake ever. Not so in my case I’m happy to say.
At the age of 21 I knew that what I wanted most was to go to University. And I knew that meant going back to high school. So I did in order to complete Grade 11 and 12. I also went back with the conviction that I was going to graduate First Class Honours and not have to pay for my first year of university. I’m happy to say that both became a reality. Many thought that this was a brave endeavor on my part but to me, there was nothing brave about it. It was a necessity to get to where I really wanted to be. I knew I’d made the right choice when my first report card average after being absent for 5 years was 90%. (Please take this as it is, pride and not arrogance).
And strange as it may sound, high school at 21-23 was actually quite fun. I wasn’t too old not to be able to enjoy many aspects of high school ~ without all the usual teenage angst. I didn’t care if I got asked to the Prom. I didn’t care if the right cute boy sat beside me. It didn’t matter if I was popular ~ although it never did the first time around. I had a lot of good friends but my popularity really hit its peak on fridays when people wanted me to go to the LC for them. (Nova Scotia speak for Liquor Commission). Eventually they realized I wouldn’t and they stopped asking.
And then came grade 12 with all its glory. I applied to only one University. As far as I was concerned, if I couldn’t go to this one, I wasn’t going at all. The Foundation Year Programme at the University of King’s College was the only place to be. FYP was based on the University of Chicago great books program and it was a phenomenal start to University. It started with the Epic of Gilgamesh and carried on to present day with everything else in between. Plato, Aristotle, St Thomas of Aquinas, Sartre, Neitschze ~ too many more to list but you get the idea. We had guest lecturers on most of the works from Kings or Dalhousie ~ people who were at the top of the field in the works being discussed. I had 6 hours of lectures (each lecture was 2 hours) on Plato’s Republic and I learned more about Plato in those 6 hours than any half year course I took later on as an Honors Philosophy student. Never took another note on the Republic after FYP.
I have also always had the knack of doing something quite effortlessly that I asssume everybody else does so when I was accepted into the Honours program before completing my first year I took it as the standard. I was surprised to learn that this almost never happens. Guess I’m a bee that flies because I never knew that I shouldn’t be able to according to aerodynamics. buzzzzzzzzzz.
I chose Political Science as my minor which was just another way to take Philosophy classes. You can only take so many classes in your major so I registered them as PolySci classes. I eventually added Comparative Religion as another minor. Had it not been for the outrageously rising tuition rates, I would have gone further than an Honours BA. Still, I wouldn’t trade one over nighter for anything. FYP was one of the best things I’ve ever done. What other first year programme would teach you enough so that your last paper was a Neitschzian interpretation of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland?
My love of learning and expanding upon what I already know continue to this day. It is my hope that the students of NU find their academic experience as rewarding as I did. But I can also tell you that while many of my profs were amazing in teaching what they knew, most had little to no idea of what the real world was all about. One prof would walk by the classroom several times while peering about for the right room. He’d eventually get there. So remember, learning and knowledge come from everywhere. All you need to do is be receptive to that knowledge and make it your own.
Gaia
