Coffee Shop Serenade

This is where I get really pretentious and actually start blogging about coffee.

My coffee this morning was amazing. Lately I've been drinking Starbucks' Pike Place roast, with approximately one cream (half-and-half, though I think I should switch to soy) and two sugars. I don't know what it was, but this morning the taste of the coffee itself really shone through. I think it was the most flavourful cup of coffee I've had yet; it wasn't held back by the cream or sugar, but it wasn't strong enough to be overpowering. All in all a very full flavour, mellowed to perfection by the cream and sugar. It certainly brightened an otherwise miserable morning.

So I'm sitting in a Starbucks now. I have another Pike Place in front of me, and it's still a bit too hot so I haven't had a proper taste. I do miss the daily vanilla lattes from Second Cup of yestersemester, but I regret it more. Daily lattes are not a financially sound decision, especially on minimum hours at minimum wage.

I think soon I'll start going through the bean selection at Planet Bean, the local free trade coffee company that's all the rage with the hipsters of the town, but unfortunately I haven't yet had the motivation to get out there. Soon though; I really admire their business model and I would love to give them my support. I do know that they make an amazing mocha, especially at the downtown branch, so I'm looking forward to finding my favourite blend.

Until next time; may your coffee stay warm and bring music to your taste buds.

A New Beginning

First of all, I'd like to thank Cassi for the perfect blog title. I certainly couldn't have come up with anything better.

So this blog has been lying abandoned for about three years now, and as I've been reminded of its existence - to quote myself from earlier, "I have a blog?!" - I've given this thing a bit of an overhaul and I'm determined to write something on it every once in a while. I'm keeping my three original posts both because Cassi and Veronika begged me to, and as a kind of reminder of where I used to be.

The rest of this post is going to be about university, and how you shouldn't expect the image everyone tries to sell you. Not in a bad way, necessarily; it's just been something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and this is as good an outlet as any.

When I started university, I had a life path in mind: four years of undergrad, med school, residency, maybe a specialisation, then work. I had myself in a pretty firmly pre-med route, but even by the end of first year I started to consider law school. It wasn't until third-year Human Physiology that I realised how much I would hate being a doctor - the course is known for being what you can basically expect in med school, and I derived no real enjoyment from it. At least, not to the degree that I enjoyed Population Ecology.

Had anyone told me after first year that I would be enjoying ecology so much come second-year Intro to Ecology, I might have laughed in their face. And yet despite dreading having to take the course for my major, I ended up loving it! I couldn't get enough, so I took Population Ecology, which I loved even more. In second semester of third year, I've now dropped any illusions of med school and am focusing on ecology, with the hopes of going to law school for environmental law.

But even now, my plans are changing. I've decided to take a fifth year so I can spread out my course load a bit, and take more time for work and extra-curriculars. I've started thinking about doing a master's between my bachelor's and law school; the School of Environmental Science here offers a course-only Master's of Environmental Science. With a year and eight courses, I'd have another degree - one that would definitely give me a leg up if I continue toward my current goal of environmental law.

Basically, the moral of the story is that plans change. People like to give you this idea that university is very one-track, when in reality it's a very flexible system. Sure, some will follow along the track exactly how you're intended to, but it isn't mandatory. You're allowed to take your own pace, and honestly? The most important tool you can bring with you to university is an open mind.

Summer Sleep Cycles

As the summer draws to an end, one thing becomes painfully clear:

I am in no way ready to be waking up at 7 AM (sometimes 6:30) to go to school.

This thought has been occurring to me for a few weeks, but it struck quite painfully last night at 6:40 AM when I was sitting on my floor, staring out my window and waiting to watch the sunrise. I'd finally pulled myself away from video games at 4:30, and away from the computer at around 5:30 - I crawled back out of bed at 6 when I decided that no sleep was going to be happening.

So as I stared at the sky, it came to me that maybe going to bed at 6 AM and waking up at 4 PM is not the healthiest sleep cycle to adopt a week before school starts again.

I mean, sure, for half of the summer I was doing fine. I still had school (technically), so I was going to bed and waking up at perfectly normal hours (for me, that is; I can usually work on less sleep than the general populace). But that was in a time zone five hours ahead of what I live in. I got back and hey, I was waking up at 10 AM! It was mostly because of jet lag, but I had a nice cycle going on for a while there. However, good sleeping habits never last long with me.

It wasn't long before I started falling into the usual routine of waking up in the afternoon and going to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. And before long, I'll be a part of the sleep-deprived teenage masses, shuffling into the classrooms like zombies because as soon as summer hits, all reason is thrown out the window and we decide that it's better to be awake at night rather than during the day.

This morning, while I was sitting, I thought a lot. It was nice to take some time to think, especially when the world is still quiet and there aren't the usual distractions. I didn't see the sunrise; while my window faces east, it was cloudy and my house is surrounded by trees. This was a little disappointing, but I wasn't staying up any later to see if it would happen eventually.

In any case, let's hope I don't stay up that late (or early, however you look at it) again!

Greetings From England

I'm spending the month here in the UK, and it's been an amazing trip so far. I'll try uploading some pictures of Oxford (where I've been for the past week) later, if my camera ever decides that it doesn't hate me. I'll be in London starting Monday, and then it's off to other exciting places.

So I'm here doing a credit for summer school - we do school on weekday mornings and the rest of the time is exploring. For one of our first assignments I had to write a piece about myself based on Margaret Laurence's "Where My World Began". I've decided to share it, so here goes:

My world began with exploring other worlds, all vast with their own unique feel. You never quite forget just what a particular one is like, as they all feel like home sooner or later. My world began while I was wandering through forests and deserts, towns and castles. Defeating monsters everywhere I went, from the highest mountains to the deepest, darkest dungeons. These worlds span far and wide, including the bottoms of oceans and the furthest reaches of space. I learned in my travels to always work as hard as I could, because the evil sorcerer wasn't going away anytime soon and the kingdom wasn't going to save itself. Video games have shaped my life in many ways, maybe most of all giving me my will to help people. Some will say video games make you violent, but based on my own experience, I don't believe that. I've been gaming since I could use that blocky, grey Nintendo 64 controller, pathetically failing at Beetle Adventure Racing and Super Mario 64. And even when I just couldn't win the fight, I left the dungeon and didn't return until I was strong enough. I've played a lot of video games through the years; some good, some bad. The good ones - the ones that I love playing over and over again - tend to be saving the princess, the kingdom, the world... It may sometimes seem a little bit cheesy and overplayed, but the sense of accomplishment you get when the princess is thanking you, the kingdom is safe, and the world is still there is overwhelming. You feel good knowing that you've done something to help people, however real they are. All your time spent solving the riddles and making sure you were strong enough wasn't spent in vain, because your quest is finally over and all is at peace. You have taken the responsibility that was given to you, you've defeated the monsters, you've levelled and gotten strong enough to defeat that undefeatable boss, and the feeling you get from rescuing somebody - be it the princess or the entire world - is amazing. I aspire to be a doctor, one that saves people and changes lives, so maybe video games have influenced me more than I'd thought. I'm not really drawn to shoot-'em-up, kill-everything-in-sight first-person shooters as much as the classic save-the-world RPG, because I feel like that fulfillment is more important than shooting aliens. Saving and helping people leaves you with a warm feeling; it doesn't matter if they're just another NPC or a flesh-and-blood person, the feeling is still there. Having gotten that warm feeling from a young age has really helped shape me as a person. Once you help a person, you feel fulfilled. You want to feel fulfilled more, and you start helping people. Even if it's just a little thing, like picking something up for someone when they drop it, or a big thing like saving a life on the operating table, or even yet saving a virtual princess, it all counts. You've made somebody's day even just a little better, and doing so has made your day better too. After playing video games for all these years, I'm not a violent person. I enjoy helping people and making the world a better place. This is how they've helped shape who I am, and they'll continue to do so for the rest of my life.

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Wow... So sorry for the block of text, but I really felt like this should be posted.

I'm eager to see your opinion on this (or where your world began - a defining thing/moment in your life that has shaped you into who you are) in the comments!