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Author: Laura Sciarpelletti

  • Scholarships for Women

    Scholarships for Women

    In Canada, the bulk of scholarships and bursaries geared towards undergraduate student—regardless of the field of study or year—are available to both genders. But as the journey into higher education continues and expenses begin to pile up at a more alarming pace, scholarships become more specific. Here are some options for women who are looking for the funding that could eventually have a substantial impact on dream job placement.

    Canadian Federation of University Women Fellowships and Awards
    Value of awards: Up to $11,000
    Level of Study: MA and PhD
    Length of awards: 1 year each
    About the awards: The CFUW provides numerous scholarships specific to different fields of study for women each year. It is the largest affiliate of International Federation of University Women (IFUW), promoting equality, higher education for women, and women’s rights within Canada. For information on the different awards available to female MA and PhD students, visit
    www.fcfdu.org/en-ca/fellowships/fellowshipsandawards.aspx

     

    Soroptimist Foundation of Canada
    Value of award: $7,500
    Level of study: MA and PhD
    Length of award: 1 year
    About the award: An award for women to help women. This scholarship is available to female Canadian graduate studies students who are pursuing careers in law, social services, medicine etc. with an aim to aid other women. The foundation’s goal is to generate a cycle of support and aid for female Canadians in order to promote health, education and women’s rights.
    For further information visit www.soroptimistfoundation.ca

     

    The Stacey Levitt Memorial Award
    Value of the award: $2,500
    Level of Study: any
    Length of the award: not applicable
    About the Award: Originally created by the Levitt family to honor the memory of athlete and student Stacy Levitt, this scholarship aims to help women who with to pursue educational, travel and athletic goals. This scholarship is a project of Parachute, and you can learn specifics about application procedures at www.noregrets.parachutecanada.org/get-involved/the-stacey-levitt-memorial-award

  • You Can Handle Anything- Just Try!

    You Can Handle Anything- Just Try!

    I am an amputee, missing both hands and my right leg above the knee. I know what you’re thinking, “How is she typing this?”

    Well, it’s easy. I simply bash my head against the keyboard until the right sentences string together.

    Okay, okay, just kidding. But you should have seen your face.

    I was born with my amputations, so I have lived my entire life being “different” and learning how to become an independent person. As you can imagine, there have been many challenges to face as well as many funny experiences. My family raised me with a healthy sense of humour and so I have always felt comfortable with my disability. However, that didn’t change the fact that other people weren’t so comfortable, and that I had to find ways to deal with strangers asking me questions on a daily basis. I have heard everything from “What happened to you?” to “Can I touch your arms?” so by now I have a decent variety of responses to be ready with at all times.

    When I went off to university, I had no idea just how different my life would be. It was my first time living by myself. Even though I knew I was completely capable of being independent, I still had a few concerns. What if I couldn’t do laundry? What if I needed help with it? It’s normal for students to feel nervous about moving away from home, but I felt especially anxious considering that I had a lot to deal with that other kids didn’t. I made up my mind to not be discouraged by ‘what if’ and instead be as confident as I had always been. After all, if I could live independently in my hometown, I could live independently anywhere!

    Things went well during my first week of university. I lived in residence with a roommate and it didn’t take long for me to get adjusted to student life. All my insecurities went away until one day a professor called me into his office to meet with him and a special needs advisor. I had never really used special needs services before, but have always appreciated that they are available to me. At this meeting I was told that with the semester getting underway and workload starting to pick up, I should probably use a scribe to take notes during my lectures because there was no way I would be able to keep up with my peers. Now, most people wonder how I write or type – it’s not very exciting; I just use my arms. I’ve learned to be very crafty and resourceful with what little I have, and I type up to 100 words per minute!

    I knew that I didn’t need a note taker. I could do this myself. But I let people who thought they were helping me get in my head. I started to panic thinking that maybe they were right – maybe I wouldn’t be able to keep up. Just as I was about to give in, I reminded myself of my decision to be confident. I spoke up and said, “No thank you! I’ll be fine!”

    And I’m proud to say, I was. Not only did I complete the semester taking notes on my own but by the end of the semester I had actually volunteered to be a scribe myself and take notes for other people!

    If you are struggling with insecurity, just remember that you know yourself better than others. Be confident in your abilities, take a chance, and show people what you can do.

  • Living in the Now

    Living in the Now

    One of the biggest causes of unhappiness and discontent is the inability to let go of things that went wrong in the past. Living in the now is not some kind of hippie-wannabe-Zen concept, it’s an absolute necessity for conquering your goals and becoming the person you want to be. In my third year of university I had a breakdown that was so different from any anxiety attack or obsession over my future I had had in the past that I stayed home from school in bed for a week and a half. Setting aside any personal learning disabilities or anxiety problems I may have been dealing with at the time, there were three key issues that contributed to this depressive state that many may relate to:

    Build self-esteem and confidence.
    I was not confident in myself and spent too much time comparing my success and patterns with other peoples; this lead to poor work and exam performance. One of the most crippling things you can do is to compare yourself to someone else. Avoid vices that appear to give you confidence, because that is temporary and misleading.

    You are not controlled by your past, you are propelled by it.
    Don’t forget the past. We learn from our mistakes, and recalling how you handled things in the past can help you approach the present in more productive, lucrative and healthy ways.

    Build resiliency by learning to cope well with problems.
    How have you handled problems in the past? If your reaction was to crawl into bed and not leave for days, get out and go for a walk. Watch a movie that inspires you, listen to a soundtrack that builds you up, and take time to spend with nature. Being overwhelmed by workloads can perpetuate a constant feeling of ugliness. As silly as it may sound, go outside and drink in the beauty of your surroundings. Remind yourself that your problems are fleeting and there will always be new ones, so take a minute to appreciate something beautiful and live in that moment. Learn to brush off the right things, and confront other things head on with a goal to problem solve.

  • Council of Canadians With Disabilities: Opportunities

    Council of Canadians With Disabilities: Opportunities

    I hope you are all getting out there to vote. As part of our ongoing work with the Advisory Group for Disability Issues at Elections Canada, we have been asked to document the experiences of our members while voting. There have been a lot of changes made, Elections Canada needs to know what they got right and what they must continue to improve! So please help us gather the experiences of Canadians with disabilities from among your members. We are looking to get up to 20 experiences from each of our member groups, with a mix of positive and negative experiences. Any assistance you can provide will help us to better advise Elections Canada in the period between this federal election and the next one.

    Please send any personal experiences you gather to James Hicks: james@ccdonline.ca prior to November 27, 2015. Thanks, in advance, for your assistance.

    James Hicks, National Coordinator Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) Conseil des Canadiens avec déficiences (CCD) 909-294 Portage Avenue Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 0B9 204-947-0303 TTY/ATS: 204-943-4757 ccd@ccdonline.ca http://www.ccdonline.ca/en

    See more at: http://neads.ca/en/about/media/index.php?id=292#sthash.n7K4kjha.dpuf

  • NEADS: November 2015 Event Calander

    NEADS: November 2015 Event Calander

    Organizer: National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS)
    Title: Focus group for students who identify with mental health conditions in Timmins, Ontario, Friday, November 13, 2015
    Category: Education
    Location: Tiimmins, Ontario
    Date: November 13, 2015
    Telephone: 613-380-8065, ext. 201E- mailchelsea.mohler@neads.ca
    Description: Focus group for students who identify with mental health conditions in Timmins, Ontario, Friday, November 13, 2015

    The National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS) has partnered with The Regional Assessment and Resource Centre (RARC) at Queen’s University along with the Northern Ontario Assessment and Resource Centre (NOARC) at Cambrian College to develop a specialized transition and mentorship program for students with mental health issues who are transitioning to post-secondary education: The Successful Transition Online and Mentoring Program (STOMP). We will be conducting a focus group in Timmins, Ontario on Friday, November 13 from 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. at Northern College to learn more about the student transition process.

     

    See more at: http://neads.ca/en/about/events/index.php?id=1359#sthash.ilH7jvLZ.dpuf

     

    Organizer: WESP
    Title: Workplace Essential Skills Partnership (WESP) Workshop – Toronto
    Category: Employment
    Location: Toronto, Ontario
    Date: November 16, 2015 – December 11, 2015
    Telephone: 416-260-3060 x 234E – mailskhan@ccrw.org
    Website: http://www.ccrw.org/wesp
    Description: Workplace Essential Skills Partnership (WESP): Toronto’s premier pre-employment program for persons with disabilities operating under the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work (CCRW) – a national not for profit organization dedicated to providing equitable and meaningful employment for persons with disabilities.

    For more details about registration, please see our event page at http://wespworkshop.eventbrite.ca or visit our home page at www.ccrw.org/wesp

    See more at: http://neads.ca/en/about/events/index.php?id=1326#sthash.TN9NVoYF.dpuf

  • I’m Afraid my Mental Illness will Hold Me Back…

    I’m Afraid my Mental Illness will Hold Me Back…

    I can’t stress enough how crippling it is to have a mental illness. The stigma surrounding it doesn’t help either, especially with admitting you have one or even seeking help to get better.

    When it came to my first year of university, I did not acknowledge that I had a mental illness. I went through the motions and got terrible grades, convincing myself it was all in my head and that I would make it on my own, which made things worse. I never told anyone why I needed to stay at home sometimes and couldn’t speak to anyone and I felt ashamed because I stayed at home to begin with.

    Second and third year hit and that was when things really started to get bad for me. I had to take a leave of absence, for reasons unknown to me at the time. When I finally got into therapy I realized that it was because I was depressed. Coupled with anxiety and OCD, I had to leave school and work through the rest of my year feeling like I had let everyone down.

    But everyone was very supportive. My professors told me there was nothing wrong with taking some time off, and some of them even told me that they had gone through depression themselves and understood completely my need to leave. My friends stood by my side and not one of them told me what I had feared they would: that I was a failure.

    Your mental illness will, if it hasn’t already, keep you from doing the things you want to do once in a while. You won’t feel like leaving the house or you’ll get very emotional or you’ll just feel like the pressures of keeping good grades and a social life going is too much to handle.

    I think something no one told me was that it was okay to leave school. So many of my friends told me how they wished they had taken a year off rather than continue and let their grades suffer or feel like their mental health was suffering.

    But, if your mental illness precludes you from doing certain things, that’s okay. If you can’t give a presentation because of your anxiety or you can’t write essays on time or you need someone to take notes for you, it’s okay. There are places on campus to help with accommodations for you and there’s nothing wrong with cashing them in.

    If you ever feel like your mental illness has stopped you from doing anything then you need to speak to someone so you can have someone to talk to, to dispel all the negativity that you’ve failed. If you need to take time off, do it. If you need more time to finish something, ask your professors. It’s normal to need some time for ourselves, especially if you have a mental illness, and there are so many people who are willing to accept that and help you with what you need; don’t be afraid.

  • Trouble at Home is Distracting Me At School…

    Trouble at Home is Distracting Me At School…

    With so much happening around us and with so many different parts of our lives to participate in, it can be difficult to give school the focus it deserves. One of the most all-consuming distractions can be trouble at home, when the place that is supposed to be your safe haven is upsetting or unaccepting. There will be many situations and people that you can’t control. The important thing to remember is that YOU CAN control how you handle it.

    Here are some exercises you can work on to help maintain a healthy separation between home life and school life:

    Imagine the reality you wish to have.
    Think about what the opposite of your situation would be, and make that happen at school. For example, if you’ve had an argument with someone at home, make an effort to compliment a friend or potential friend at school. Reverse the damage done and treat a peer how you wish you had been treated, or treat a peer the way you wish you treated that family member at home if you weren’t proud of your reaction. This projection of positivity and warmth will make you feel empowered.

    Don’t complain.
    It’s good to have friends to confide in and you should be able to vent, but dwelling on home life can drive people away and make you yourself feel worse as it promotes anger and discontent. You can’t control that part of your life; you can only control yourself and what you want. In the end, being angry is exhausting and can leave you feeling empty.

    Build relationships with role models.
    Often trouble at home can leave you feeling like you’re without guidance. Do you have a teacher at school you admire and respect? Build a relationship with them. Take book recommendations, ask them for advice from time to time, and surround yourself with positive role models and friends who display qualities you yourself wish to possess. Quality in-school relationships will leave you associating education with a sense of well-being.

    Create a feel-good playlist.
    I know all too well the feeling of leaving home in the morning for school feeling worn down and angry. To turn things around, start to think of ways you can cheer yourself up on the way to school. One way is to create a playlist for your iPod that will help put you in a feel good mood. Get yourself dancing, or get yourself calm and collected. Music is a great way to get out of your head and into your body.

    Get involved.
    Join an extracurricular activity; find a leadership or teamwork role that you love. By creating a world at school that you’re excited about, you’ll more easily be able to separate problems at home from the way you handle daily school life. Find something to be involved with in which you feel important, but that involves a hobby; something that doesn’t feel too much like work, but makes you feel needed. This will give you something to look forward to when things are rough at home.

  • Tips for Taking a Test

    Tips for Taking a Test

    As an elementary school student, your teachers use different strategies to help you learn. Whether it’s a classroom activity or a field trip, there are various ways for you to participate and engage with the material. But what happens when your skills are put to the test?

    Test-taking is something you will have to get used to. It is especially important in high school and university, where tests are worth more and more marks and can have a big impact on your final grades. Beyond the number on your report card, tests are valuable because they challenge your skills. They require you to apply what the teacher has taught you to make sure that you know your stuff.

    It might be more stressful to write a test than to participate in an activity or a field trip, so it helps to go into the process prepared. Here is some advice for taking a test at each stage of the process.

    BEFORE

    When a test is announced, pay close attention to the instructions given by the teacher. They will probably explain how the test will be structured, what material might be on it, and other hints that will help you when you’re studying. Make sure to mark the date well in advance, and designate some time in the days leading up to it for review.

    Studying is definitely about quality, not quantity—you can study for hours and not register anything useful if you are distracted, pay attention to the wrong concepts, or try to memorize everything verbatim. Keep this in mind when you’re going over your notes, and ask your teacher for help if you need it.

    DURING

    Stay calm: remember, you came prepared. When you get the test, look over all the questions and take a few minutes to come up with a plan. You only have a limited amount of time, and some questions will be more lengthy or challenging than others. Do you want to tackle those first, or get the easy ones out of the way instead?

    The test environment can be very stressful and distracting for some students. Try to stay focused on your own paper and pay no attention to what others are doing. Feel free to take tiny breaks to refocus if you need them, but keep one eye on the clock. You don’t want time to run out before you finish!

    AFTER

    Reflect on how you felt during the test. Was it easy, difficult, or somewhere in between? Were the questions what you expected? Consider what you did well this time, and what you can improve upon when the next test comes around.

    Many students choose to compare opinions about tests, or grades after they are handed back. You can definitely do this if it’s productive for you, but don’t feel pressured to disclose anything if you don’t feel comfortable. Sometimes, talking about grades can make students anxious or self-conscious. Focus on yourself: don’t spend too much time worrying about how everyone else did.

  • Career Profile: Meat Cutter

    Career Profile: Meat Cutter

    If you eat lunch meat like bologna or salami, you might notice that it sometimes comes already sliced and sometimes not. Have you ever thought about who cuts the meat? In small shops, it might be the same person who sells the meat to you and your family. In many places, however, the job of meat cutter is a special one that requires a lot of skill and experience.

    Working as a meat cutter requires no special education other than a high school diploma. However, people in this trade need to know about mathematics to be able to weigh and measure the meat and to calculate prices. They need to be able to work with other people in the store or factory and to be skillful in dealing with customers. Depending on where they work, they might spend a lot of their time dealing with people or almost none at all.

    One of the most important aspects of being a meat cutter is to know a lot about the product. Sometimes, this might include knowing about the nutrition in a piece of sausage. At other times, this might include knowing about the different cuts of meat and how they are used. Do you know the different kind of steak or what kind of meat is best for using in soup? How long should a turkey be in the oven before it is done? These are the kinds of questions that a meat cutter might have to answer.

    Jobs for meat cutters can vary. They can work in processing plants, butcher shops, small grocery stores, large supermarkets, or anywhere else that deals with meat. Some of them might spend their days cutting up large chunks of meat in factories or feeding it into grinders to make sausages. Others might work in restaurants or small shops where they cut small amounts of meat for sandwiches.

    The special skills that meat cutters need and the working conditions depend a lot on the specific job. People working in factories or slaughterhouses might have to deal with very harsh conditions as they work with cold freezers, sharp tools, and heavy animals. However, people who work in small shops might be very busy dealing with customers but have much more comfortable working conditions. Wages vary from about $14 to about $30 per hour, depending on experience and the difficulty of the work.

    Like many other tradespeople, meat cutters have a special organization to help members. The Canadian Professional Meat Cutters Association Helps members develop their skills and to deal with any problems that they encounter. Becoming a member of an organization like this can help people find others in the same trade and can help with education and apprenticeships. If you are interested in becoming a meat cutter, you should find out about what the trade association is doing in your area.

    Do you like working with food? Maybe you should consider becoming a meat cutter.

    Bibliography:

    BC Tourism. “Meatcutter Program.” https://www.go2hr.ca/training/meatcutter-program.

    Canadian Professional Meat Cutters Association. Training & Education http://meatforce.ca/training-education/.

    Payscale.com. “Meat Cutter Salary (Canada).” http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Job=Meat_Cutter/Hourly_Rate

    Sample Job Descriptions. “Meat Cutter Job Description.” http://www.samplejobdescriptions.org/meat-cutter.html.

  • What is Empathy?

    What is Empathy?

    You sit at your desk. Your nerves get to you. The teacher is handing back that major test. Whether the mark is a pass or fail, it hits with assurance when the paper lands in front of you. But you are not alone. There are two dozen other students also at their desk, also nervous, also about to get struck with a grade.

    The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com ) features the word sonder: The realization that everyone around you is living a life just as full and complex as yours; you might only notice students in the hallway from the corner of your eye, but that is also exactly how they notice you.

    If you focus on the latter part, the thought is a somber one. However, by focusing on the notion that every life around you is just as complex as your own, you can work on a skill often sorely lacking and rarely taught: empathy.

    Part of empathy is to know what a certain person is feeling. When a fellow student misses the ball in gym class and everyone laughs, you can understand that they are embarrassed. You learned the word at a young age and have experienced it for yourself. However, because our emotions are so hardwired to our own experience, we need to go a step further to fully empathize with that student.

    The other part of empathy is to understand why a certain person is feeling the way they do. This requires trying to figure out their perspective. That student woke up that morning with hopes for the day just like you. They said goodbye to their parents just like you did, and have plans for after school just like you. They did not plan on this moment to arise and torment them.

    By putting this into practice, you will react better to the behaviours that affect you. When you are doing a group project, it is easy to get angry with the partner who is not doing their fair share of work. If you can figure out their perspective, and see how they are struggling with the material, or have personal issues at home distracting them, you can find more effective ways to work through the problem.

    Now, back to that major test; if it is a subject you excel at, the mark may make you want to brag. If it is not, you may want to cover it in shame. Meanwhile, the mark of the student next to you may evoke feelings of envy or mockery. Remember to challenge your perspective. You may dominate classic literature, but that student who failed next to you may dominate when measuring angles. The smartest person in the room always depends on what room you are in.

    By practicing empathy, you can feel better about your own faults, and more easily work through issues with others. By making it a habit, it will help you through school and beyond.