Free My Ahem
Hello again and welcome to another installment of the delicious and insightful PAL Peer Mentor blog. In this week's installment, I want to encourage you to spend a little more of your time around these hallowed grounds of learning and self-improvement and squeeze a little bit more value out of your loans and summer employment. Tuition is often a touchy subject with university students, and like many of you, I feel we pay far too much for the 'opportunity' to subject ourselves to unhealthy levels of stress and excessive amounts of work.
For my first few years of university life, this one-way relationship—we seem to pay the bills and do the work—left me with a very bitter taste, and this feeling only worsened with exposure to a few professors more interested in their own research than the students who pay for it. However, as I am currently in the process of discovering, there are plenty of opportunities for us, as students, to reap the benefits of the funds and labour we donate to the institution – it just takes a little bit of effort on our part to seek out these benefits to which we are entitled.
First, and most obviously, we have a number of facilities available on campus available for our fitness. The PAC features a well-equipped gym that (excluding the first-month rush of each term) is almost always ready to accommodate you. A climbing wall and gymnasium are also 'free' for our use if you want to mix it up a little and get away from the weights and waits. The campus also houses two swimming pools, and a number of squash courts, in the Education building and PAC if you feel like something different. The use of the courts, pools, and even clean towels has already been paid for by your tuition, so take advantage!
Various colleges within the university frequently offer public lectures, 'free' for students to attend, featuring speakers of prestige within their subjects. In addition to complementing your studies and giving you a leg-up on your fellow students, these lectures often offer 'free' food and drinks – something we can all use from time to time. Not only do you increase your knowledge of a subject and get outside your routine studies, but you get fed at the same time! How can you refuse? Just keep an eye out for posters and show up!
Finally, when summer draws near, and it's time to replenish your funds for another round of university life, why not take advantage of the Student Employment and Career Centre - a great group of university employees dedicated to helping you get a job. They can help you draft up a killer resumé, and their website houses a database full of promising summer jobs for students broken down by discipline.
As it would a daunting task to compile a list of all the 'free' goods and services on campus, the goal of this post is just to get you into the mindset that nothing at this university is completely free; you have already paid for it, all of it, whether you take advantage or not. And you will continue to pay every time you submit tuition to this institution.
Since this list is so impoverished, I invite you to take advantage of the wonderful interactivity of the world-wide web. Below you will see a link titled “Comments”; if you have taken the time to read this far, I only ask for you to give it one click and share you favourite 'free' thing with your fellow students. We're all in this together, and this lifestyle costs us all far too much.
Cheers! Your PAL,
Joel