I’ve always considered myself a normal person, but that changed.

I left for the Ontario Classics Conference (a series of competitions for students in Latin, Greek, or Classical Civilization courses) on Wednesday night, and even though I returned on Sunday, everyone on the trip agreed that they had become a lot “weirder” over the course of the four nights (three for me, since Friday was an all-nighter).

There were 45 of us from my school, and though we don’t study very hard for the competitions, we always have a blast. The school has a reputation of being loud and funny, and this was true. We stayed up until the early hours of the morning every night, listening to music all together in the dorms, and blowing vuvuzelas at every chance we got (until they were confiscated, then we got party noise-makers).

The atmosphere of our classics team can be summed up by saying that anytime you make eye contact with anyone, you make a funny face at them, and anytime you don’t know if you should sleep or not, you stay awake. It occurred to me how much the “normal” world is overrated – how we walk our halls at school all the time but never really bond with people. The conference was the opposite of that. Everyone was weird and wonderful. We were a group of people who clicked.

It was nice to be a part of that different world, even if it was just for a few days. You could really forget about people judging you and there was no shame (even after a breakdown the morning after staying up all night, involving laughing and crying at the same time). A lot of people would say we were very weird, and we would agree. In fact, I have a vague recollection of being a normal person a few months ago, before the effects of being in Classics got to me.

“Weird” is wonderful. It’s funny and fascinating and it means laughing a lot. Now that I’ve been thrown back into mainstream society, I realize how weird it feels to be in a place where it isn’t normal to be weird.

Love always,

Catherine

For
December’s Woman of the Month, I’d like to acknowledge our lovely blogging
mentor, Heather! Heather has been working behind the scenes on this blog for
the entire year with the six of us, reading and editing our posts, giving ideas
and suggestions, and organizing collaboration sessions. Fresh out of university
with a new job and a Pathfinder unit, this busy gal gave up even more of her
time to help make this blog awesome. She has been an invaluable resource, from
helping with brainstorming to reminding us that our turn to post was coming up.
I’ve had a lot of fun this year getting to work with Heather, teleconferencing,
and sharing my writing with her! She is an excellent example of all the
fantastic young women that bring fresh ideas and insight to Guiding, and we are
lucky to have her!

For the last month I’ve been reading the entire Harry Potter series again. You probably know how well these books have done since Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published in 1997. J.K. Rowling is a name known across the world as the famous author who wrote one of the most successful children’s book series of our generation. But good old J.K. wasn’t always so lucky. As part of my grade 12 English exam, I read Rowling’s commencement address to Harvard University’s class of 2008. In her speech Rowling discusses the failure she experienced after graduating from university. She had a very short marriage, and was living in poverty with her young daughter. Failure, Rowling’s biggest fear, had been realized.

Evidently Rowling was able to get back on her broomstick and soar to great heights, but it was failure that allowed her to do this. She learned from her failure – learned that she was disciplined and had a strong will, and she poured these qualities into her work. As she had already failed terribly, Rowling was no longer afraid of failing. She worked hard, and even though she was at first met with rejection, the story of Harry Potter finally found its way into the hands of children. You don’t need a Time Turner to see how things turned out. Now one of the richest women in the world, success and J.K. Rowling are pretty much synonymous. It is not Rowling’s monetary success that makes her a September WotM, but her ability to overcome  and learn from failure.

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”

-J.K. Rowling

In the blink of an eye.
Everyone disappears.
Gone.
Everyone except for the young. Teens. Middle schoolers. Toddlers. But not a single adult. No teachers, no cops, no doctors, no parents. Gone, too, are the phones, internet, and television. There is no way to get help.
Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents-unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers-that grow stronger by the day.
It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen and war is imminent.

Hello all!

Because I had my semester one exams in the last week of January, I’ve had a few days off this past week before semester two began. Rather than spending that time distancing myself as much as possible from anything involving school, I was at home, at my desk, knee-deep in scholarship application forms. Any other third year Rangers out there been doing the same?

In my planner I have October 1, 2010 marked with “Start Scholarship Hunting”. A combination of confusing websites, applying for university, and having very little time pushed that date forwards by about four months. Luckily, Student Awards has revamped their website and I’ve had some less-hectic-than-usual days to figure these applications out. As many of you will be heading off to post-secondary in the next few years, I thought I’d share some of my findings on what is a necessary part of going to school – finding the money to pay for it!

Although there are still some scholarship applications that aren’t due until the beginning of February, March, or April, many of them need to be submitted before or shortly after Christmas. The Loran Award, a pretty prestigious scholarship, was due at the end of October, and the major admissions scholarships for Queen’s and the University of Guelph were due in mid-December and mid-January, respectively. Even though you might not know where you want to go or what you want to do that early in the year, plan ahead for scholarships. Most applications can’t be completed off the cuff – they require signatures from guidance counsellors, school transcripts, references’ telephone numbers, and for you to write things about yourself. Scholarships can take a long time to fill out, and I’ve learned the hard way that leaving them until late in the year isn’t the best way to go about things.

Besides starting early, another piece of my own scholarship advice that I didn’t take was getting more involved in grades 9, 10 and 11. Granted, some applications don’t ask you about what you did extra-curricular or volunteer-wise that far back, but why not try something new early on in high school? I was surprised by how many scholarship applications took your marks into consideration, but were more focused on your involvement in your community and school. (Not that marks aren’t important – some applications ask for your averages from the last 2, 3, or even 4 years, but you certainly don’t need to be a 90%+ student to qualify for many!) I don’t think looking good on paper is the best motivation to start participating in an activity or volunteering more, but it is one of the benefits. Most importantly, you’ll have a lot of fun.

My last bit of advice when it comes to scholarships is to look around. www.studentawards.com is a really helpful website for finding scholarships now that they’ve revamped it. I found that sorting through all of the “scholarship matches” I got in order of due date and hiding all of the ones that I didn’t meet the requirements for gave me a compact list that made sense. www.scholarshipscanada.com is the other website you can try, but I don’t think that it’s as user-friendly. These special sites aren’t the only place to find scholarships though. Check organizations or unions that your parents are involved in to see if they offer scholarships, ask your relatives if they know of any, and take a look at the requirements for entrance scholarships at the schools to which you’re applying. Research what options your provincial/territorial government has for helping to finance your education and apply – even if you don’t think you qualify you might get a bit of money. If you have any other suggestions on where to look for scholarships, leave them in the comments!

Finally, I have to mention the scholarships Girl Guides has available! This website has a section all about the different scholarships offered by Girl Guides, which ones you can apply for, and the necessary application forms. For any third year Rangers, if you haven’t already heard, the applications must be mailed to National and postmarked with April 1, 2011 at the latest.

I hope that anybody who is planning on attending post-secondary in the future found this post helpful (: As I foray into the unknown that is university I’ll be blogging about my experiences, and I’d love to hear your input on the matter of post-secondary. Is college or university so far away that you don’t even want to think about it? Or have you already applied and are heading off next year? Post any thoughts you have in the comments!