Take 1
“Next Stop Seneca Hill Drive, Seneca College.”
The first four weeks we the students petition
regarding an instructor who is incapable
of holding class. She passes out the Quill & Quire :
“Here, see if you can learn something.”
Week five (of seven), she is, indeed, fired.
“We’re sorry,” says the department head.
(To think we thought at the time,
we’d seen the worst of it).
Take 2
We are required to take an online course in computer skills.
Word. Powerpoint. Excel. (Something else? I forget.)
During other classes held in computer labs,
most are either on Facebook or playing online “bingo”
that is, running through time and time again
the practice tests to recognise what clicks reward you
with the desired green box, “Correct”. Repeat this
ad nauseam and you’re likely to get the 70%
necessary to “pass”.
Excel? Haven’t a clue. But I’m great at bingo.
Take 3
“You need to go to school for that?”
I’m in a “library and information technician” program
in the School of Business. Long, largely unused term for
all the grunt work, little/no recognition, half the salary.
“What’ya wanna be called?”
(Yes, example of a real question
posed and not responded to in yet another dumbstruck,
mind-numbing, painfully senseless hour).
Stupid, signing up for the wrong
lousy waste of fucking time and money program
(and stay—ing).
Take 4
a) There are three signs (ads) that predominate the halls at Seneca (particularly the Men’s rooms) other than the SenecaRED that screams EVERYWHERE you look in an obvious attempt to distract one from their actual bleeding. One encourages you to find work where nobody would ever consider or want to go (Edmonton). Another advertises careers in the Canadian Armed Forces (if you’re dire enough be standing at a urinal at Seneca, why not join the Forces?), and, my favourite, signage reminding and instructing individuals how to wash their hands (in case you’ve forgotten just where you are at the moment—epidemic at Seneca).
b) I received more encouragement and instruction/feedback in any single given minute at my field placements than in my entire year/course at Seneca. (If not for these positive experiences off-campus, I would’ve been long gone. They were such a reprieve and “reality check” from Seneca Hill Drive).
Take 5
Cataloguing. Something relatively simple made extremely difficult.
Why so hard? Because cataloguing should not be taught by a cataloguer.
Cataloguers should never leave their cataloguing cubicles. Cataloguers
are apparently dumbfounded by cataloguing and therefore not the best
explainers of what there is to actually do, be done.
One thing I do know for certain:
A cataloguer must have the material in hand in order to catalogue it properly.
How many times did we as students hold/have the actual item “in hand”?
Zero.
(wtf?)
Take 6
Bozenna is a godsend.
We’re coming up with terms for our search strategy
regarding children who are “gifted”.
“We used to be called special,” I offered.
“O, darling, you still are special,” she smiles.
I owe that woman a bottle of good Polish vodka.
(p.s. Nobody uses Dialog anymore. p.s.s. Delia “gets it”, too.)
Take 7
Are we here to learn? Or
are we here just to be tested?
“It’s almost over…”
“You’ll get through.”
Getting through.
That’s all that matters.
Twenty (overwrought, silly-ass) exams.
Sink or swim.
That’s all.
That’s all anyone is here to do.
( “Let’s check-out the bookstore and see if Aaron’s working.”)
8
MomthisistheworstfuckingmistakeIhaveevermadeinmy
entirefuckinglifeIcan’tevenbegintotellyoujusthow
fuckingbadthisisitmayfuckingkillmenoI’mnotexaggera-
tingthismayjustfuckingkillmesoifIdiebeforeitsthroughlet
everybodyknow “She died trying.”
9
The cost of the book for Ibby’s class is $130 (wtf?!).*
“I can’t imagine you getting through the class
without buying the book. They’ll be a [multiple guess] quiz
on the readings every Wednesday which
will count for 15% (?) of your grade. Are there
any questions?”
“Do you have any questions about the [fuck-all] assignment/s?”
“Any questions?”
Yeah, why the fuck did you choose this inexcusably expensive textbook
other than the fact that it comes with an instructional CD-rom with
already prepared lesson plans?
I, and everyone I know, passed
without purchasing the book.
Ten
“Seneca changes you.”
Yep.
I am not a better person
for ever having stepped off the TTC
at Seneca Hill Drive,
for having ”gotten through.”
I will never be a proud alumni,
nor will I ever credit them
with any promising future
I will undoubtedly carve.
As one instructor,
so eloquently admonished
in a huff,
“Why do I bother?”
or to echo
one of the most famous
lines in movie history—
“Forget it Jake,
it’s Seneca.”
_____
Note: Only two colleagues I know of got hired since graduation:
one whose mom is also a library technician (this is not how/why
she got the job, and I’m sure it didn’t hurt her odds),
the other where she has already worked for the past eight years.
(I understand a few have taken jobs as pages, but you don’t
need to attend college or university to fill these positions).
Over 90% of the current job postings in the field require an
MLIS or it’s equivalent.
Don’t make my sorry-ass mistake. Fuck Seneca. Become a librarian. Go for your masters. There’s a one-year Master’s Degree program (much cheaper than UT) here.
_____
*Note: This was not a book on librarianship, nor did it make any reference to actual library work (the class hardly did itself). It was a textbook (on reserve in the library) on supervisory skills in the workplace, for which very few in the class expressed any interest/desire to pursue. A 14-week class which could have been taught more effectively as a half-day workshop (same goes for well over half of the other courses).
Suffice it to say there are many like stories with details far, far worse than the ones selected here. Some will say “he didn’t follow instructions”; others, that I was the “brightest light in the program.” Guilty, on both counts. I’ve always said, “If it’s void of humour, make another choice.” And this place, this poured concrete embankment excuse for a suitable educational environment (which considers itself five “buildings” when it is really only one butt-ugly-god-awful fortress smack in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere)—though a god damn laugh riot—is utterly humourless.
Photo: Cover of a book I received as a gift from one of my placements, something I esteem far greater than any piece of paper earned at Seneca. To my peers and classmates, we carried each to the other side—a deservedly brighter future to all. Thank you.
