Olga's Poetry & Thoughts

During my undergraduate degree at U of T, I was completely and desolately lost. I had no idea what I wanted from life, academically, spiritually, or career-wise. During my second year, I decided to do my double major in English and "Ethics, Society and Law" (a pseudo- "pre-law" program) because those topics were (and still are) my two passions. I aimed to go to law school because 1) I thought of myself as a social justice warrior, striving for equality for people of all genders and races and 2) lawyers get paid well. My two opposing motivations for going to law school ultimately wore me out, and I ended up selling my LSAT prep book. I didn't even take the test. My back-up plan: a Masters in Public Policy. I was selected by a supervising professor to do my undergraduate thesis (approx. 50 pages) about an obscure painting located in Siena's city hall, and how it relates to medieval Sienese politics. After all that hard work, and after presenting at a thesi...

Hooray. I graduated from the notoriously soul-sucking, snobbish, yet also beautiful and prestigious establishment that is the University of Toronto. When asked, "what have you learned in your four years?" nothing remotely related to academia comes to mind. I could say that I learned about wacky political philosophers and their undying sexist theories. I could tell you that I acquired "critical thinking skills," improved my writing and grammar, and can now read a Victorian novel in one day without a problem. But the things that I was taught in my classes are not the things that have stuck with me the most. All my various experiences of growing up and "discovering myself" in the maze of U of T can be summed up in one lesson: Sometimes, the things that are good for you don't feel good, and the things that feel great are leading you down the wrong path. This is an elementary lesson that we learn as four-year-olds. "Eat your broccoli, Susan! Even i...

Before I went to university, I thought the whole four-year experience would look something like this: And on the odd occasion, there would be a little bit of studying involved, like this: (Seriously, why are university students always smiling in the grass in all university pamphlets!?) But, my university experience pretty much looked like this: When I first started university, I was striving to be the best, and I was thriving after repeated failures, visits to the writing centre, visits to professor office hours, and countless hours spent studying. Now, I'm just surviving university. The eager motivation I had as a freshman, second year, and even third year student has now worn off. The illusion is gone: of endless partying, drinking, carefree nonsense... well sure, I did some of that too, but I always felt a perpetual guilt when I wasn't studying. I didn't settle for Cs, I aimed for Bs. Then I stopped settling for Bs and only accepted As. I pus...

It is hard for me to believe that twenty years have passed. Two whole decades. A new generation of kids have entered elementary school. Kids who don't have a clue about Gwen Stefani, Walkmans, or the joys of MSN Messenger. I feel old and yet so ridiculously young at the same time. Twenty is a difficult age: I'm old enough to potentially drink myself to sleep every night, but I'm still too young to be taken seriously in the workforce. Therefore, for me, twenty is all about self-discipline. Having the option to do something doesn't mean you should do it. So I'll stay in school, spending countless hours slaving over essays which will be bell curved anyway, in order to get a piece of paper that may or may not give me a head start in "the real world" (twenty year olds don't really live in the real world, you see). For now, reality as a twenty year old can be summarized in a few simple bullet points: Frozen pizza  Debating between going to class or goin...

Stage 1: Indifference Upon receiving your exam schedule, you divide your time accordingly, maybe even writing a little study schedule for yourself. The world is your oyster. You feel indifferent towards your schedule, as exam time has not yet begun. You know that you have all the time in the world to start preparing. Stage 2: Determination As exam time creeps up on you, you start preparing your notes and looking over lectures, maybe doing some practice exams. You are determined to ace these finals and you know that you will do your very best. Stage 3: Anxiety You slowly start to realize that the amount of work you still have left to do is disproportional to the few days left that you have before the exam. The failure of your self made study schedule is revealed. You start feeling pangs of anxiety, maybe even calculating how badly you can do on the exam so that you don't fail the course. Stage 4: Denial You begin falsely assuring yourself that there isn't that much to ...

In high school, the "university experience" was mystical. It was something that was on everyone's tongues throughout senior year. We'd fantasize about the parties we'd attend, the friends we'd meet, and the freedom we'd have away from public education. We'd go to university fairs and university representatives would come to our high school, shoving colourful pamphlets in our faces featuring smiling students sitting in poppy fields with books in their hands. University. A new chapter in my life. A step into adulthood. And it is nothing as I expected it to be, nothing like the candied university booklets I received by the dozen in high school. Here are some raw facts about university life, and the things I learned during my freshman year: The "university experience" is mostly one of cramming for tests and exams. In high school, you may have had a test every now and then, and exam periods once during a 5-month semester. In university, you ha...

At U of T we are squished side by side like sardines We feed off of textbooks and concentrated caffeine We each have our ambitions and hunger for success We all panic a lot more than we would like to confess What makes this group special is that we survive U of T And come back during break to help others succeed Sadly, many people these days are stingy and cold But I look around the room and see hearts made of gold Life is a stray beast that is unpredictable and cruel Life can lift you up, life can make you feel like a fool Life can take you up in its jaws and swallow you whole Life can also teach you things because life has a goal The goal is to help others slay the beasts they possess ‘Cause we all have dark monsters that we like to suppress All we need is a person to listen and understand Someone to protect us and lend a warm hand But how will you ever find a savior for your troubles If you’re too afraid to save someone else from the rub...

What is alcohol? A high school student would describe it as a very grown-up drink, a lick of courage, a bottle of beer the ticket to the party, the admission to a grown-up way of living. For a college student- a lifestyle. Everyone forgets about ping-pong when there's vodka pong and pass-out pong. A casual chat with friends accompanied by a glass of poison makes the chat so much more interesting and honest. A slice of stale bread in the fridge feels claustrophobic with all the everclear bottles around it (and then the students complain that they have no money at all). For an adult it's a windshield wiper for memories, an escape into a feeling of nothingness, or un-feeling (which is, subjectively, the worst feeling of all). Traffic jams and bossy bosses and market losses, one deserves a drink after all this! For an old man it's the reason he's rolling around on a thin mattress at the hospital, his insides churning with black acid, and liquor is no longer a casino ga...

A shiver goes down my spine when that one boy…the one with the hair in his eyes and a scruff of hair on his chin, walks into the lecture ten minutes after the professor has begun talking, and he stomps like the Green Giant to the front row and while moving to the middle of the aisle his backpack hits my face. No, I can’t stand students like that. Then there are those who treat the lecture hall as their personal restaurant. Once, this girl opened a full can of tuna and pasted it onto a piece of bread, downed it with Starbucks (worst curse upon this world) and proceeded to strawberry yoghurt and crackers and fries. Why? But these are mere observations of mine. Other students count sheep or just listen to the professor and they fall asleep, even if in the second row. There are those who type furiously, as if the course was a pathway to God. They record every detail being said, they probably write down who coughed in class and when and for what reason and questions on t...

Trying to pay attention in a class with 1500 other students, And all I see is a sea of Apple logos and consumerism and U of T hoodies, The occasional obnoxious boy with feet perched on the seat ahead of him, A screen with a powerpoint slide that is the size of a house, Constant gossip and people trying to squeeze through ten minutes late and a girl checking her neopets account a nd a boy sleeping right under the professor’s nose, while I’m there writing feverishly, drifting off occasionally and fantasizing about Paninis and coffee served on a plateau of sugar. Walking, walking, constantly from one class to the next, no one seems to be rushing, moving like a slow artery, that of a wrinkled man on his deathbed, blood barely reaching his heart. But I’m always in a rush, because I want to save time in order to do more useless things like sit on a bench beside the food truck that was last inspected in 2005, its windows shabby and its menu much too large to fit the ingredients in tha...