BACK TO THE BOOKS

And so another school year begins. This year, only Ronan returns to the halls of academe, going into second year at the University of Toronto. It’s actually his first year at U of T, but his second year of university, as he spent last year in the U.K. at the University of Bristol, and elected to transfer. Turns out studying English in England wasn’t quite his cup of tea: he had less than 10 hours of class a week, it rained every day, and he was homesick. (Yes, you WERE, Ronan. You can pretend otherwise, but you’re a 6 foot 3 bag of feelings, and you missed your mummy.) Anyway, that was an expensive little experiment, but he’s back on newly appreciated home turf, and hopefully U of T, which is only the 15^th highest ranking school in the world for Arts and Humanities, will give him what he needs.

I love school, at least the academic side of it. I did not love the social end of it, either in high school or university, but nerd that I am, I sure love me some learnin’. My own studies have, however, been scattered and incomplete. I graduated from high school in Montreal with a truly impressive 96% average. Having little guidance from either family or school, and being all of 16, I elected to go to Carleton University in Ottawa, ostensibly to study journalism. Instead, I studied boys and recreational drug use, and almost failed my first year. Lesson learned, I buckled down, switched my major to Film Studies (“What?” said my father) and graduated at 20 with no real ability to do anything at all.

Four years and several false starts later, I enrolled at Ryerson in the Radio and Television Arts program. I loved every moment of it, but at the beginning of second year, I was offered a full time job at what was then the biggest radio station in Canada. Even though I wasn’t really planning to work in radio, I figured this was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I dropped out. The rest, as you know, is not exactly history, but still, a pretty decent career. Ryerson was really nice about it, so much so that when I decided to return 20 years later, they took me back.

This time it was for graduate school. The M.A. Program in Communications and Culture, which took me almost 4 years to complete part time, while working full time. I was in the middle of writing my thesis when I came down with a bad case of cancer. I withdrew from the program to undergo treatment, but when that ended, I looked at my young family and my demanding job and said “Slow down, smartypants. You can’t be everything to everybody at all times.”

I’m still thinking about going back, but I’m not sure for what. Another M.A.? A Ph.D.? A Grand Diplome from the Cordon Bleu? Will I be an 80-year-old lady showing up at university keggers with my grandchildren? (“God I hope not” say my unborn descendants) All I know is that there is no better way to satisfy my deep curiosity about everything. Live and learn, they say, but better still, learn and live.

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