Third Year at Mount Allison

Being two weeks behind writing about it. Haha...that's third year. From the get-go I felt like I was behind on my work. Third year means doing it on your own. Here's what you have to read...have it read before class or you won't have context for class. Midterm in a month, term paper due in two, final exam in three. It's all old-hat and memorized by rote...but not really. By third year (unless you change your major/program) you'll be going to all classes hand-picked by you based on what you are going to do after Mount A. Speaking of that...what are you doing after Mt. A?

 There are generally information and advising given by department, including a recent Political Science/ International Relations graduate school information session this week. After first year you don't have an academic advisor but instead are able to go to Department Heads (or Department selected department Academic Advisors) for information on degree requirements, etc... 


At least in IR the first few weeks of class are just a lot of reading and then getting into midterms and essay assignments/proposals by early October. Third year is the time to apply to pursue Honours, which has to be done by December. It is also a good time to start looking at Graduate Schools. I'm looking primarily at American schools...but I'll be writing a whole post about the process later. I'll have to apply earlier than normal because I have international credentials. The process seems to be about the same as for Canadian schools except every US school I've looked at requires the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) which is very similar in content and is administered by the same company that created the SAT. 


That's really about it for now. I'll soon be writing about a recent Mount Allison student focus group session I participated in, applying for graduate school, an update/statement/clarification on my sense of being American in Canada (and how that relates to my decision not to vote in the NB general election tomorrow, and for that matter any Canadian election past or future dispute the legal right to (and how that relates to both my first year Human Geography course and my European Politics class)), my decision to return to the US for and after graduate school, and the first steps in the long process of applying to serve in the Peace Corps.


In the meantime...I hope true fans will appreciate this video as a prelude to my future post about what Canada means to me: