SongDragon
11-04-2007, 11:15 PM
It has been a while that I have been ranting and raving at the strike, and specifically my university’s Board of Governors. Or BoG. This is because, to end the last strike, they gave AUFA, the teacher’s union, a series of promises which they did not keep. There are several funny versions of this. And there are so many ways to say this that it really does not take one more kid saying it anywhere. So even though I have been thinking of making a blog for all these tirades it really does not matter, because they are few and far between, and I am sure someone else is saying just what I am, somewhere else, though the Janis Ian influence is, completely, my own fault, and so probably does not appear in any other posts about the strike.
I have been bored recently, and I have been nearly to tears. I have been feeling depressed, at points, wondering if this is just one more thing to go on my history of grand mistakes. To follow not knowing what I want to do, to follow not getting a job early enough, to follow getting a speeding ticket, to follow not applying to universities in my senior year of high school. Some of these are major mistakes, some are minor mistakes. All were mistakes that are in my life now and cannot be taken back. Many of them I desperately wish I could.
Personally I do not think I would take coming to Acadia back. I still love the scenery, I love the small town, and I love being able to walk everywhere. I love my volunteering job, which I must say has gotten me out of my room and into an active position in the community in its own way. I looked out the night I arrived, it was late, and this beautiful campus was mostly in the dark, but shining brightly was the University Hall clock, a soft golden glow, and around it was leaves, and just a sense of… spacing. You know the feeling, though I may be describing it all wrong, when an artist lays out the canvas perfectly, so that the viewer feels neither bored nor overwhelmed in any place in the piece, and it is a pleasant feeling, not one of those moody sorts of pieces. The sort of place that you would want to be. One of these pieces, for me, is “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Afternoon_on_the_Island_of_La_Grande_Jatte)
But now I am even questioning myself. Whether or not I should stay, mainly, and what this whole thing will mean to my studies. I am not exactly angry at the faculty, for I understand their reasoning, but in turn I am angry at both the BoG and Aufa, because the friction between them caused this strike. This delay in learning. If this week goes by with no relief we will have topped the strike record for the maritime universities (the Eastern border of Canada, basically). It is hard not to lay blame at your own feet when all the information was out there, somewhere, that there had been a strike simply three years before, and there were tensions between the faculty and the administration, and all you ended up seeing was the small rural setting of the school, the acclaims, and yes, once I arrived, the beauty of the school.
The beauty is now the most annoying little thing, to me. It seems the BoG has been doing petty little preening projects with money rather than keeping their promises to AUFA. The new football field, the best outdoor, university field in all Canada? That may have been from a benefactor, but still, I would have preferred the education side to be preened more than the veneer. The education side is quite good, but it has been better in the past, and has lost much prestige, especially in light of the current president. Before I came I did not see enough pictures of the campus to know how lovely it was. I would not have felt I was missing something if I had showed up and the school was average in looks, as long as the education was worth it, as the town always would be.
So I was looking around the site, as usual, catching up on the blogs about the strike, and such. Hey, I need to be interested, it greatly concerns me. And one of the videos I ended up watching was of Aufa’s silent march that can be found on this teacher’s strike blog (under ‘A Silent Promise’):
http://aufastrike2007.wordpress.com/
And it hit me as almost funny in this rather depressing moment of my life where I happen to be reduced to watching blog videos, desperately waiting for a strike update, they should put “All Those Promises” in the background. That might get the point across. It may not be the same sort of betrayal as two lovers, but it is a relationship that has fallen to pieces because someone did not keep their promises. And so, as I walked back to school, after going into town for a bit, walking by all those places that are in the video, I hummed “All Those Promises” and I thought: didn’t they make a commitment to us? Didn’t someone in this whole mess promise to teach us, and guide us? Somewhere those promises, too, got lost.
~SongDragon
P.S. “All these promises/that you made and left behind/were filled with emptiness”
They never were promises they could keep, so why did they make them? I will never understand.
P.P.S. http://theasu.com/strike/
My strike information, though it is supplemented by other things. Just thought I would point out my main source.
I have been bored recently, and I have been nearly to tears. I have been feeling depressed, at points, wondering if this is just one more thing to go on my history of grand mistakes. To follow not knowing what I want to do, to follow not getting a job early enough, to follow getting a speeding ticket, to follow not applying to universities in my senior year of high school. Some of these are major mistakes, some are minor mistakes. All were mistakes that are in my life now and cannot be taken back. Many of them I desperately wish I could.
Personally I do not think I would take coming to Acadia back. I still love the scenery, I love the small town, and I love being able to walk everywhere. I love my volunteering job, which I must say has gotten me out of my room and into an active position in the community in its own way. I looked out the night I arrived, it was late, and this beautiful campus was mostly in the dark, but shining brightly was the University Hall clock, a soft golden glow, and around it was leaves, and just a sense of… spacing. You know the feeling, though I may be describing it all wrong, when an artist lays out the canvas perfectly, so that the viewer feels neither bored nor overwhelmed in any place in the piece, and it is a pleasant feeling, not one of those moody sorts of pieces. The sort of place that you would want to be. One of these pieces, for me, is “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Afternoon_on_the_Island_of_La_Grande_Jatte)
But now I am even questioning myself. Whether or not I should stay, mainly, and what this whole thing will mean to my studies. I am not exactly angry at the faculty, for I understand their reasoning, but in turn I am angry at both the BoG and Aufa, because the friction between them caused this strike. This delay in learning. If this week goes by with no relief we will have topped the strike record for the maritime universities (the Eastern border of Canada, basically). It is hard not to lay blame at your own feet when all the information was out there, somewhere, that there had been a strike simply three years before, and there were tensions between the faculty and the administration, and all you ended up seeing was the small rural setting of the school, the acclaims, and yes, once I arrived, the beauty of the school.
The beauty is now the most annoying little thing, to me. It seems the BoG has been doing petty little preening projects with money rather than keeping their promises to AUFA. The new football field, the best outdoor, university field in all Canada? That may have been from a benefactor, but still, I would have preferred the education side to be preened more than the veneer. The education side is quite good, but it has been better in the past, and has lost much prestige, especially in light of the current president. Before I came I did not see enough pictures of the campus to know how lovely it was. I would not have felt I was missing something if I had showed up and the school was average in looks, as long as the education was worth it, as the town always would be.
So I was looking around the site, as usual, catching up on the blogs about the strike, and such. Hey, I need to be interested, it greatly concerns me. And one of the videos I ended up watching was of Aufa’s silent march that can be found on this teacher’s strike blog (under ‘A Silent Promise’):
http://aufastrike2007.wordpress.com/
And it hit me as almost funny in this rather depressing moment of my life where I happen to be reduced to watching blog videos, desperately waiting for a strike update, they should put “All Those Promises” in the background. That might get the point across. It may not be the same sort of betrayal as two lovers, but it is a relationship that has fallen to pieces because someone did not keep their promises. And so, as I walked back to school, after going into town for a bit, walking by all those places that are in the video, I hummed “All Those Promises” and I thought: didn’t they make a commitment to us? Didn’t someone in this whole mess promise to teach us, and guide us? Somewhere those promises, too, got lost.
~SongDragon
P.S. “All these promises/that you made and left behind/were filled with emptiness”
They never were promises they could keep, so why did they make them? I will never understand.
P.P.S. http://theasu.com/strike/
My strike information, though it is supplemented by other things. Just thought I would point out my main source.