Mon pays

Back to school

Today is the first day back to school after the break! Hooray! I’m feeling good about it. Things are actually going well for me for right now. Here’s all the good things happening to me that I can think of:

• I got a notice saying that the paper I helped to write last year made it past 2 of 3 rounds of cuts for the journal Science, and so it stands a good chance of making it in and being published.
• Also, there are now curtains in my bedroom, so I will be able to sleep better!
• The weird red patches of skin on my face and hands have pretty much disappeared. I attribute their existence to dry skin and their disappearance to the turning on of the humidifier in my apartment.
• The School of Nursing at McGill assures me that the OIIQ situation will be resolved, and that I don’t need to do anything about it. McGill is probably not a cash-for-degrees scam.
• I’m starting two brand-new clinical rotations! Anything could happen!
• OSAP has formally apologised for their treatment of me last semester.
• Actually that last one was a joke. They still haven’t sent me my student loan yet, but I have been given every assurance that they will.

I have decided that this semester is going to be wonderful, and that none of the bad things from last semester will happen. I’m going to enjoy my new bunch of classes and I’m not going to stress out over money.

January 9, 2012 | 4 comments | Tags: Bioethics Grad school Nursing The apartment

How being gay is like being Batman

If you have friends who are evangelical Christians, you may have noticed that they are generally fine watching television shows or movies with characters who are gay. This may seem difficult to reconcile with the fact that often it’s the same evangelicals who have a hard time dealing with gay people in real life.

After discussing this with Pickles, we decided that this is similar to their attitude toward Batman. Evangelicals like watching Batman on the television, but if a friend starts experimenting with being Batman (i.e. going out at night wearing a spandex outfit to punch criminals, etc.), they get concerned.

January 4, 2012 | Leave a comment | Tags: Culture Funny

My computer is messed up

Computer is messed up

Meet my computer, Fermat. Fermat is an old computer. I bought it in 2006, and it’s been through a lot. I’ve started to notice a number of funny things that it does. I like to think of them as quirks of old age, rather than as bugs.

For example, I noticed recently that the green light that normally indicates when the camera is on sometimes turns on even when the camera is off. In fact, it will stay on even though I restart the computer in an effort to turn it off. See attached photo.

It’s kind of creepy, like Fermat is watching me, even though I tell it not to.

January 2, 2012 | Leave a comment | Tags: Weird

How to turn a car covered in a white tarp into a Super Mario Bros. ghost

Boo car

There is a car in the garage in my apartment building that has had a white tarp over it for the last few weeks.

Yielding to temptation, my little sister and I taped eyes, mouth and wings to it, to turn it into a ghost from Super Mario.

We’ll gauge how much the owner of the car appreciates it by how long it stays up.

You too can turn a car (or anything really) covered in a white tarp into a Super Mario Bros. ghost!

Step 1: download and print eyes, mouth, and wings.

Step 2: affix to tarp with tape.

Step 3: take photos.

You have now committed the perfect crime.

December 31, 2011 | Leave a comment | Tags: Beautiful Culture Making friends The apartment

Is McGill a “cash for degrees” scam?

Today I received the following letter in the post from the OIIQ (the Order of nurses and man-nurses of Québec) which I will quote at length.

Le 22 décembre 2011

Monsieur Benjamin Gregory Carlisle,

Subject: Return of your registration certificate

Your name did not appear on the lists of students registered in nursing that we received from the educational institutions. Accordingly, please return your registration certificate as soon as possible in the enclosed return envelope.

Conversely, if you are still registered, contact your educational institution without delay so that they may confirm that information to us.

For any inquiry, please contact the Registrar’s Office.

We thank you for your cooperation.

Regards

This sort of thing makes me wonder at what point I should start thinking that I fell for one of those “cash for degrees” scams. On the one hand, the classes that I took were held in buildings on the McGill campus, but on the other hand, I don’t think I ever asked my teachers for proof that they work for McGill. In fact, if I wasn’t actually enrolled at McGill, that might explain the terrible difficulty I’ve been having with Financial Aid at McGill and with OSAP.

I sent an email to the administrative assistant for nursing at McGill, but she is out of the office until January 9th. I guess I’ll find out then what’s going on.

December 28, 2011 | 3 comments | Tags: Frustrating McGill Nursing OIIQ Sketchy Why is this so hard?

Visions of sugar plums

Last night I dreamed I was a student nurse in an acute care hospital and discovered a velociraptor outbreak cover-up but no one believed me because I was just a student.

(By the way, Pickles says that “velociraptor outbreak coverup” are the three words that every nurse hopes she never hears together.)

“Mike! The dinosaurs will eat you for sure! You’re so tall!” And the next thing I remember is holding a crying classmate.

It was pretty vivid. I still remember the moment when the head nurse suspected that I knew what was up. “Hey, these bites sure don’t look self-inflicted.”

After that, it was all running and hiding in the hospital. This is what nursing students dream about on Christmas Eve, apparently.

December 25, 2011 | Leave a comment | Tags: Dreams Nursing Weird

Reflexion on Quidditch World Cup V

McGill Beaters

The final results of Quidditch World Cup V were released on Monday of this week. McGill placed 15th! (I have to say I’m proud of our team. Is there any other sport in which McGill University can claim a spot in the top 15 in the world?)

Looking forward to future seasons of Quidditch, there’s something that happened at the World Cup that I would like to have clarified. It’s not the seeker floor controversy, or even the new gender ratio rule that I’d like to discuss. I’m worried about a beater strategy that I saw one particular team use in a number of games at the World Cup.

Here’s a crash course in being a beater, for those of you who are less familiar with the position:

• A beater’s role is to regulate the flow of the game by “knocking out” players of the opposing team using a bludger
• There are four beaters on the field at any one time—two from each team
• There are three bludgers on the field at any one time
• A beater cannot handle more than one bludger at a time (this means holding a bludger and kicking another one would be illegal)
• If one team has two bludgers, they cannot guard the third bludger

Here’s what the team was doing. If they had possession of two bludgers, one beater would drop his bludger at his hoops, and the second beater would guard it. The first beater would then try to take the third bludger from the other team, effectively removing a bludger from play. (In fact, I also saw occasions where the second beater kicked the guarded bludger while still holding her own if the other team tried to recover it.)

Bludger-kicking aside, this seemed like a dirty strategy to me. I always thought that the spirit of the third bludger rule is that there should be three bludgers in play at all times, and this sort of tactic flies in the face of that. I’d like to have an authoritative word on whether this is legal or not. The official IQA handbook (v. 5) does not mention this sort of strategy at all, so it might be legal, but then the point of the third bludger rule seems to be that all three bludgers are in play. If this sort of strategy is allowed, it effectively removes beaters from the game, making it an all-chaser game. I’m not sure that anyone would want that.

It would be nice to know whether this is legal—one way or the other—for training purposes as we look forward to World Cup VI. If it is legal, we can start training for teams who use this strategy, and if it’s not, then we can continue to focus on other beater tactics.

December 23, 2011 | One comment | Tags: Quidditch

Antibiotics and antivirals

More and more often these days, I come across articles about new anti-viral drugs that look really promising. Further, I’m sure we’ve all read or heard about the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance—strains of bacteria who acquire the ability to survive treatment with antibiotics which would otherwise kill the bacteria and cure the patient.

Since the discovery of antibiotics, bacterial infections have been relatively easy to treat, whereas viral infections have been something that can’t be treated directly. The treatment for a bacterial infection is penicillin, but the treatment for the common cold is bed-rest.

What I find interesting about these developments is that we may be entering an age where this is reversed: Bacterial infections may become difficult or impossible to treat directly, while viral infections can be simply and easily cured with drugs.

December 22, 2011 | Leave a comment | Tags: Medicine Nursing Weird

OSAP

The following is a long and angry post. To get some of the back-story, you might also want to read my post from September, Gambling with OSAP. Basically, this is a timeline of many of the ways that OSAP, the National Student Loans Centre and McGill Financial Aid have been screwing around with me all semester.

Email from me to Financial Aid at McGill, October 19, 2011:

Hi there,

I came in last week to speak to someone about the state of my OSAP. I repaid a $2222 loan overpayment in September, and I was told over the phone by the NSLC that they would let OSAP know that the overpayment was dealt with.

When I went in to see someone in person at McGill Financial Aid last week, I was told that someone would email OSAP to find out what’s going on with my student loans, and that I would be emailed as soon as they send an answer.

Could you advise regarding the status of this inquiry?

Benjamin Carlisle
MSc(A) Nursing Student

I never got a response to that email. I went in to see them in person on October 24th, and demanded to know what was going on with my student loan. After much confusion, eventually they told me that the information I received from the National Student Loans Centre was inaccurate. It turns out that I had to get them to fax a proof of payment to McGill, who would then fax it to OSAP for processing.

I would like to emphasise at this point that I phoned the National Student Loans Centre on September 15th, 2011 to ask them specifically if I needed to do anything so that OSAP would know that I dealt with the overpayment. They explicitly told me that, no I did not have to do a blasted thing. This was a lie.

Two days later, on October 26th, I received the following email from Financial Aid at McGill:

Hello Benjamin,

Just wanted to give you an update on your OSAP status. The following message is the one I received from OSAP when I inquired about your file.

Documentation was received Sept 21, but has not been reviewed.

With regards to LOP [Loan Over-Payment] the student must provide a letter from NSLSC indicating the amount that he repaid and the date of repayment. This should be sent to the ministry marked clearance.

Please note I have received your received your proof of payment and the copy was faxed to OSAP today.

While your file is being sorted out, please note should you require emergency funds kindly meet with one of our financial counselors and we will be happy to process a loan to assist you with emergency aid.

In addition, I strongly encourage you to fill out the continuation of interest free form found at the following link https://osap.gov.on.ca/prodconsum/groups/forms/documents/forms/tcont003388.pdf and return it to me by fax or as a scanned email attachment. Please note this will prevent you from going into re-payment mode as of November 1st.

Our fax number is 514-398-7352 and my email address is [removed].

Best regards

I went back in to the office and asked how long I should expect to wait for an answer regarding my loan. The answer at the desk: four to six weeks. Six weeks later, on December 7th, I went back in to the Financial Aid Office and asked them what the status of my loan was. I was told that the only person who could possibly help me with this would only be available on Tuesday, 6 days later.

Keep in mind that I have been waiting for fully 3 months, not knowing whether I should expect any financial assistance at all. By this time, I had actually received my bill for next semester’s tuition. I was getting very antsy about this.

Tuesday, December 13th rolls around, and I receive the following email:

Hi Benjamin,

We re-faxed your proof of payment to OSAP today.  The Financial Aid counsellor also provided you with a tuition deferral for fall and winter.

Regards

I would like to note a couple of things at this point. This email was worse than unhelpful. It raised more questions than it answered and it illustrated clearly that the people at Financial Aid had no understanding of my situation.

First, there is no explanation of why my proof of payment was re-faxed. Did OSAP say they never received it? Did McGill fail to fax it in the first place? I emailed twice to ask, and they have not responded.

Second, a tuition deferral at that point would have been of absolutely no help to me at all. Tuition deferrals are helpful only if you know that you have some money coming, but you need some time for it to be processed. Tuition deferrals are not helpful in the slightest if the NSLSC, OSAP and McGill have been collectively screwing around with you for the last 3 months, and you have no guarantee of any kind that even a single penny will be coming in the form of student loans. It’s not like OSAP told me that they would be sending me a large sum of money, and I just didn’t know when. I was still waiting for them to assess me for eligibility for a loan. If OSAP decided not to give me money, or if OSAP decided to give me an amount that isn’t enough for me to live on, then a few more weeks to pay my tuition would not have helped—I would have needed to drop out of school to find a job!

I went in to the Financial Aid Office to explain this to them. I told them that the tuition due in January was a sum greater than my current total assets in the world. The person at the desk said that she would see if she could encourage OSAP to work on this faster.

On December 15th, I received the following:

Hello Benjamin,

Please note I have been following up with OSAP and have asked them to expedite your funding and provide me with an update on your OSAP application, the latest email I received from them is as follows:

I have just processed Benjamin’s file. I am unable to determine what his assessment will be. Please have him check back at the end of the week.

If I hear anything further I will let you know. In the meantime if you need emergency aid feel free to come by to schedule an appointment with an advisor and we will assist you until your funds come in. In the meantime I have processed a fee deferral for the Fall and Winter tuition fees.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards

What’s surprising about this email is the offer of “emergency aid.” In September, I asked about “emergency aid” from McGill and received the following email:

Hello Benjamin,

We are unable to assist you at this time. Please contact us later on in the semester. Remember to update your Financial Aid Profile if your situation should change.

That email, by the way, was in response to a request for a meeting to discuss my financial situation. That’s right. Financial Aid at McGill declined even to meet with me about this.

I did check back at the end of the week as the email suggested, and I was told by the person at the desk that she couldn’t find any notes about my case, and that there was no reason for me to have come in. I stayed and insisted that I received an email telling me to come in at the end of that week, and it was only after I showed her the email on my phone that she asked one of her colleagues about it.

Finally, I was told that on Wednesday the 21st (today), my loan documents might be at McGill for me to pick up, and I could expect my loan to be processed by early January.

I’ll believe it when the money is in my bank account.

December 21, 2011 | One comment | Tags: Angry posts Frustrating Money OSAP Sketchy Why is this so hard?

Misunderstanding the lyrics to “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”

I make it no secret that I have a hard time understanding the lyrics to most music. Usually, Christmas music is an exception. Christmas songs are the same, year after year. Even more helpful, if you’re in a choir or if you attend church, often the lyrics of Christmas songs are printed out and handed to you so you can sing along. Even with all that help, though, Walking in a Winter Wonderland is a song that took me a long time to figure out.

One part of the song goes as follows:

In the meadow, we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Parson Brown
He’ll say, “Are you married?”
We’ll say “No man!
“But you can do the job when you’re in town”

As a child, I thought “Parson” was some guy’s first name. I figured he was some famous person I hadn’t heard of in other contexts. Clearly I didn’t think about it too hard.

But if you don’t realise that “Parson” means “member of the clergy” and “do the job” means “officiate your wedding,” you might think that the singers of this song were a bunch of floosies, and that they had another “job” in mind for him to “do” while he was in town.

December 20, 2011 | One comment | Tags: Culture Sketchy