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Elections, News, SSMU

Muna Tojiboeva wins SSMU presidency

by Holly Cabrera & Cherry Ng on

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On March 16, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) elected Muna Tojiboeva as SSMU President with 53.1 per cent of the vote. 21.8 per cent of the student body participated in the election compared to the 17.5 per cent turnout during the last year’s SSMU election.

Vice-President (VP) Operations Anuradha Mallik, VP Internal Maya Koparkar, VP Finance Arisha Khan, VP External Connor Spencer, VP University Affairs Isabelle Oke, and VP Student Life Jemark Earle will join Tojiboeva on the executive team.

“It feels a bit too unreal,” Tojiboeva said. “I’m super happy obviously. I’m a bit surprised [and] I’m super excited for the upcoming year.”

Looking forward to next year, Tojiboeva will prioritize mental health, implementing a sexual assault policy, and reforming the Judicial Board.

“I want to implement the sexual assault policy,” Tojiboeva said. “It’s one of the more urgent manners. I’d [also] like to see the budget and talk to [McGill Counselling and Mental Health Services] to see what can be done. I was an outsider to SSMU so I’m sure there will be things that I’m not aware of […] but definitely my priorities are mental health, the sexual assault policy, and the Judicial Board.”

Presidential candidate Helen Ogundeji, who received 38.6 per cent of the votes, shared her thoughts on the election results.

“I think the election outcome reflected what the majority of the students who voted wanted but not the desires of all students (since [presidential candidate] Lukas [Shannon] and I both garnered votes),” Ogundeji wrote to The McGill Tribune. “So for next year I’m going to continue to work on implementing my projects […] and hope that it all works out well.”

All three of the presidential candidates’ platforms addressed recent events at SSMU–including allegations of sexual assault raised against two now-resigned executives–and restoring students’ faith in student government.

“I’m looking forward to [rebuilding trust]. I think it can be done and I can’t wait to start,” Tojiboeva said. “I’ll talk to all the [incoming executives] and try to see what their vision is and how we can work together. Obviously there’s been a lot of disconnect between SSMU and students. I would need to talk to the other people in order to see what they want to do [….] Hopefully it’ll be a better year for SSMU.”

Unlike this year’s SSMU executive board, which had only one female member, women will fill six of the seven positions in the 2017-2018 academic year. The previous board also lacked diversity, but will now have executives from various ethnic backgrounds.

“I think it’s going to be a very interesting [executive] this year because it’s mostly women and people of colour,” Koparkar said. “As a woman and person of colour, I’m really excited to represent students’ different perspectives and I think they will welcome the difference from this year.”

Spencer said that she will likely begin to assist with the responsibilities of the VP External, a position that is currently empty, before the official turnover in May.

“I think that it’s important that I can use my position to represent their interests to make sure real changes happen, especially around sexualized violence,” Spencer said.

The executive team will officially transition into their new positions with help from current SSMU executives.

“This is a portfolio I put my life into so I’m grateful for [being elected],” Koparkar said. “I really just want to get settled. [Daniel Lawrie is] going to be transitioning me until my contract gets started. I’ve been working with [Lawrie] already so [the job is] something I’m used to.”

Earle expressed his enthusiasm to learn about his position with the help of VP Student Life Elaine Patterson.

“[Being elected] feels great, to be completely honest,” Earle said. “It was my dream to be a SSMU executive [….]  Over the summer, I’m looking forward to shadowing Elaine and really seeing what the job has to offer and to really start to implement ideas from my platform.”

 

Vote breakdown

VP Operations Anuradha Mallik: Yes, 89.8 per cent.

VP Finance Arisha Khan: Yes, 92.7 per cent

VP Student Life Jemark Earle: Yes, 90.1 per cent

VP External Connor Spencer: Yes, 84.1 per cent

VP Internal Maya Koparkar: Yes, 90.7 per cent

VP University Affairs Isabelle Oke: 58.4 per cent

President Muna Tojiboeva: 53.1 per cent

Basketball, Sports

The McGill Tribune’s 2017 March Madness Bracket

by Joe Khammar, Aaron Rose on

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Player to watch: Lonzo Ball-UCLA Bruins

The UCLA Bruins will go as far as their freshmen stud point guard Lonzo Ball can take them. Ball leads the NCAA with 7.6 assists per game—a PAC-12 freshman record—and is a dangerous scorer to boot. His ugly-but-effective shot has taken the basketball world by storm. Despite being labelled as “wrong” by many experts, Ball’s eccentric form is paying dividends for the Bruins. His 41 per cent three-point rate is one of the best in the country and his 71.7 per cent two-point conversion rate is mind-boggling. Despite being a first-year, Ball has done more than any other player in the nation to carry his team to March Madness. With him on the court, the Bruins tout the tournament’s most dangerous offence by a significant margin. They have the best effective-field goal percentage of any team in more than a decade and lead the nation in points per game. Despite being the third seed in the South, Ball’s presence makes UCLA one of the trendy picks to win it all.

 

Biggest disappointment: Baylor Bears

Led by junior forward Johnathan Motley, the Baylor Bears started the season 20-1, including a blowout victory over the then fourth-ranked Oregon Ducks. Since then, the Bears have gone into hibernation, losing five of their last ten games. Things didn’t get any better in the Big 12 tournament with the Bears falling 70-64 to the Kansas State Wildcats in the first round. The team ranks second in the nation in offensive rebounding, but turnover problems have spelled disaster for Baylor. If they can make it past the New Mexico Lobos in the first round, they’ll find trouble against the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Mustangs. Unlike the Bears, the Mustangs enter the tournament riding a 24-1 winning streak and with lights out three-point shooting—meaning Baylor could be in trouble. After being upset by the Yale Bulldogs last year in the round of 62, the Bears shouldn’t be trusted to go far in this years tournament.

 

Sleeper: Maryland Terrapins

The Maryland Terrapins are possibly the biggest boom-or-bust team in this year’s tournament. With 13 contests this season ending within a two-possession margin, they have experience playing in close games. They have impressive wins against teams like the Purdue Boilermakers, but also some too-close-for-comfort victories against low quality opponents. As a result, they haven’t been able to solidify status as serious contenders. Fortunately for the Terps, they have one of the nation’s most clutch guards in Melo Trimble and face a relatively easy path to the Elite Eight. While the loss of power forward Michal Cekovsky hurts the team on defence, the ice in Trimble’s veins and Maryland’s fourth-quarter grittiness makes them a dangerous sleeper candidate in this year’s tournament.

 

Champions: Duke Blue Devils

Led by five-time national champion Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski, the Duke Blue Devils are perennial title contenders. Small forward Jayson Tatum and guards Luke Kennard and Grayson Allen make up Duke’s scary triple-headed scoring monster. When they’re on the court together, the Blue Devils are almost unstoppable. They clinched the ACC championship with notable victories against the Louisville Cardinals, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Notre Dame Fighting Irish. If Allen can control his emotions and kick his known tripping habit, the junior guard has the skills to take over any game. Senior forward Amile Jefferson will have to control the paint for Duke, but the team’s lethal three-point scoring makes up for their lack of inside strength. Though the Villanova Wildcats could give Duke trouble in the Elite Eight, Coach Krzyzewski and company have the pieces to come out of the East. The Gonzaga Bulldogs have become a powerhouse, but having played an easy schedule in 2016-17, the Bulldogs might be more bark than bite. The finals are always a toss up, but with an experienced team and the NCAA’s best coach, the Blue Devils should oust the UCLA Bruins and cut down the nets in Phoenix.

 

News, SSMU

Elections SSMU invalidates ballots

by Holly Cabrera on

More in News:

On March 13, Elections SSMU invalidated votes cast on the first day of the election period. Since the preferential voting system required by Internal Regulations and Referenda, Section 6.1 was omitted in the service, students whose ballots were cancelled will have to vote again. The aforementioned clause ensures a winner in the event that no candidate wins a majority of the vote. Initially, a plurality voting system was used, meaning voters were unable to rank their choice of candidates in order of preference.

“We missed a crucial detail in the Internal Regulations,” Chief Electoral Officer Alexander Nehrbass wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “A preferential voting system has to be used for 3+ candidate races to ensure we can calculate a majority outcome. I cannot emphasize how sincerely sorry we are [….] It has been a hectic week culminating in a truly unfortunate mistake.”          

Following the error, presidential candidate Muna Tojiboeva expressed her dissatisfaction with the election oversight.

“I think it is unacceptable but there is not much we can do at this point since it is an [Internal Regulations] IR issue,” Tojiboeva wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “I am disappointed and discouraged to say the least but pleased that the democratic process is being upheld in accordance with the [IRs].”

In spite of the mistake, Vice-President (VP) Operations candidate Anuradha Mallik explained that students should not be dissuaded from participating in this year’s election.

“While it may further discourage students from engaging with SSMU, I laud the elections team for fixing the voting rollout issue so speedily,” Mallik wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “Democracy works best when rules are followed and although it can be inconvenient, it's best to stay true to it. I encourage constituents to engage in the political system at McGill regardless and have their voices heard!”

The voting period will last until March 16 at 3 p.m. and results will be announced at 5 p.m. on the same day.

Science & Technology

McGill Defi Ecotech Challenge hosts Women in Cleantech panel

by Julia Briand on

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The hosts of the McGill Defi Ecotech Challenge commemorated International Women’s Day on March 8 with a Women in Cleantech panel. Clean technology, coined “cleantech,” reduces environmental impact via innovation in any product, process, or service through increased efficiency and sustainability. The panelists, Myriam Bélisle, Solenne Brouard, Diane Leboeuf, and Victoria Smaniotto, are entrepreneurs and leaders in the cleantech industry. Their insight into the expanding sector of cleantech and success in a predominantly male industry was not only informative, but empowering for the audience.

Brouard is the CEO of Polystyvert, a leading company in the waste management industry. Polystyvert uses innovative technology to recycle polystyrene—the main component in styrofoam—more efficiently, thereby increasing profit and decreasing waste. While working in the industrial business sector, Brouard became aware of excessive polystyrene waste due to high transportation costs impeding the recycling process. The high cost rendered the current recycling system unprofitable. Brouard saw an opportunity and took it, building Polystyvert into the successful company it is today, but not without first overcoming some challenges.

“It is difficult to explain to investors that they need to invest in something that won’t make money right now,” Brouard explained.

Ultimately, investing in future efficiency pays off. In fact, Polystyvert’s polystyrene is even more marketable than virgin polystyrene because of its low cost, a result of process efficiency.

“Only two per cent of my clients buy the product because it is green,” Brouard said. “This means that 98 per cent of the clients buy my product because it is cheaper.”

Bélisle is Cleantech director at Sherbrooke Innopole, a corporation dedicated to the economic development of the city. She spearheads Sherbrooke’s development with respect to cleantech and its green economy. With an academic background in biology and forestry, Bélisle was able to observe the resilience and importance of the cleantech sector first-hand, deciding to support cleantech companies in her current position.

“[During] the 2008 economic crisis, what saved my small consulting company was its use of cleantech because […] clean technologies are the way of the future,” Bélisle said. “Where you have scarcity, you have innovation.”

Leboeuf serves as the president at Soaz Inc., a consulting firm. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a large role in her work. She currently develops business strategies and creative commercialization tools for Ecofixe Solutions, a cleantech SME in the water sector. As a woman who has worked in the cleantech industry for some time, Leboeuf understands the dynamics of operating in the sector.

“What’s great about cleantech is you can bring in your own background,” Leboeuf explained.

Smaniotto works as the director of branding and internationalization at Ecotech Quebec.

While Smaniotto’s classmates at HEC Montreal were entering the workforce and selling products for brand-name companies, Smaniotto felt it was more important to commercialize a sustainable product.

“I had trouble thinking of myself as a leader of international business and marketing, while helping to sell more shampoo, for example,” Smaniotto said.

Smaniotto’s initial work in the cleantech sector was as a business and development analyst and marketing coordinator at Carnot Refrigeration, a Quebec SME that develops refrigeration systems free of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). She now coordinates partnerships with the Canada Cleantech Alliance, a newly created alliance of regional cleantech hubs with the goal of providing improved access to market and capital to cleantech companies.

Cleantech is one of the most rapidly growing sectors in the green economy industry today. The panelists agreed that a mental shift towards reuse and reduction of product, accompanied by cleantech, is the inevitable future–and these women are at the forefront.

Hockey, Know Your Athlete, Martlets, Sports

Know Your Athlete: Melodie Daoust

by Holly Cabrera on

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“I’m going to miss being part of a big family,” McGill Martlet Hockey captain and centre Mélodie Daoust said, looking back on her five years with the team.

Daoust hasn’t always seen McGill this way. She knew she wanted to pursue higher education at a top Canadian school, but coming from Valleyfield, QC, the transition to living in Montreal was tough.

“When I got to university, I knew it was going to be a challenge because I didn’t speak English at the time,” Daoust said. “Learning English was a challenge, and [balancing] hockey and school was another.”

After five years with the Martlets, including her 2013-14 redshirt season, the four-time RSEQ all-star has become a key cog in the team’s machine. Now, as the captain, Daoust has a role to play in maintaining McGill’s ice hockey dominance.

“[My role is] to pass on my knowledge of the game and to give [my teammates] confidence,” Daoust said. “I want them to know that everyone can get their job done and understand that they’re good enough for all of this.”

Daoust’s leadership skills have shined through this season and she leads the squad with 56 points. However, it’s the team’s overall success that matters most. After clinching her third RSEQ title in a two-game series win over Concordia, in which Daoust registered five points, the Martlets are now getting set for the CIS national tournament beginning on March 16.

(Noah Sutton / The McGill Tribune)

 

While the time on the ice is certainly important, it’s spending time with her teammates that the Martlets centre really enjoys.

 “The beauty of being on a team is that all your friends are on the team,” Daoust said. “It’s because you do everything together […] you end up seeing them more than your own family.”

After two years with the Martlets, Daoust took the 2013-14 season off to pursue her dream and play for team Canada at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games.

“We were 27 players to try-out then they cut us down to 21,” Daoust said. “We had about 60 games to play in seven months. All the games were against the [Midget AAA] boys team so it was pretty intense.”

In Sochi, Daoust helped lead Canada to an Olympic gold, scoring her first international goal in a 3-1 semi-finals victory over Switzerland.

Following the win, Daoust was forced to take nearly 18 months off after tearing her anterior cruciate ligament and undergoing surgery in June 2015. 

“When I got injured, it was a big let-down,” Daoust said. “2015 was really hard on my part. At the same time, I was working really hard with my physiotherapist for strength and conditioning and I was able to be back in 2015.”

Driven to return to peak form after her injury, Daoust rarely takes a day off. She has continued to work tirelessly, putting in the effort both on and off the ice to help her team.

“We go to school, […] workout from 3 to 4, go on the ice from 4:30 to 6, cook dinner, study, and go to bed,” Daoust said. “We have so much passion for the game, it’s because we like [it] that we do it.”

When she does have a break, Daoust has found herself a new hobby: Colouring.

 “I always liked drawing and I am an artsy girl,” Daoust said.

She’ll have plenty of time to work on her artwork next weekend on the team’s long bus ride out to Napanee, ON for the CIS tournament. Regardless the outcome, Daoust has cherished all of her time at McGill and knows whatever the future has in store, she will always remain a Martlet.

Science & Technology

McGill researchers develop new model for Zika virus experiments

by Andy Wang on

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The spread of new and emerging viruses poses a constant threat to public health and presents a concern to developing and developed countries alike. Population growth, climate change, and the increasing ease and speed of travel have exacerbated the transmission of these viruses.

Overpopulation results in the construction of homes in previously unsettled areas, providing zoonotic viruses—viruses that normally infect animals—with the opportunity to transmit to humans. The original case of the most recent Ebola outbreak was a two-year-old boy in a newly-built village in Guinea who came into contact with fruit bats, the natural reservoir for the virus.

Rising global temperatures are giving mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever, chances to infect naïve populations, which were previously protected from these diseases by cold temperatures.

The Zika virus (ZIKV), a previously mild infection endemic to central Africa and Southeast Asia in the late 20th century, spread with the aid of modern travel and mutated to cause fetal microcephaly. Microcephaly is the name of the condition where infants are born with an abnormally small head.

Among recent emerging viruses, ZIKV is especially insidious as pregnant women who become infected exhibit mild and nonspecific symptoms, which often cause the infection to go undetected.

There are currently no drugs or vaccines for ZIKV, and treatments are usually aimed at alleviating symptoms. Additionally, the first diagnosis of a Zika infection often stems from the tragic realization that a newborn is afflicted with microcephaly, which poses significant developmental and behavioural consequences.

A number of challenges exist to produce an effective ZIKV vaccine, the chief of which is a lack of a suitable model to conduct experiments on the virus. Another difficulty is the virtual absence of any previous scientific knowledge on ZIKV. Before the epidemic in South America, the virus did not cause any severe symptoms and was thus not labelled as a top candidate to secure research funding.   

Recent research conducted by Dr. Martin Richer and Dr. Selena Segan, assistant professors in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, could be a critical step in producing a suitable mouse model system for ZIKV study. The paper, published Feb. 23 in PLOS Pathogens, outlined a procedure to analyze ZIKV infections in mice with fully functional immune systems.

Previous studies have focused primarily on immunocompromised mice, since researchers were interested in the mechanism that caused the disease. However, the development of a vaccine against infectious pathogens requires intimate knowledge of how a host responds to infection. Not only did the paper outline an immunocompetent mouse model for ZIKV, it also characterized T cells—a type of white blood cell—as they responded to the virus.

In particular, the group discovered a conserved region of ZIKV’s envelope protein that these T cells respond to, called an epitope. It is conserved in 103 of the 104 published ZIKV gene sequences. The paper states that this finding could be an important step in the development of a vaccine against Zika.

However, virtually all currently approved vaccines use antibodies to generate protection. Antibodies are produced by B cells—another subtype of white blood cells—and the epitopes they respond to are often not the same as those of T cells.

“It’s very difficult to create a T cell-mediated vaccine, mostly because we don’t yet know that much about them,” Richer said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “We need more basic research into cell types, such as cytotoxic CD8 T cells.”

Cytotoxic CD8 T cells are white blood cells involved in the killing of infected cells and are one of the cell types analyzed in their publication.

There is certainly a long road ahead for the creation of a ZIKV vaccine, but the development of an immunocompetent mouse model is a major step in this process. The analysis of B cell and antibody responses, as well as the discovery of new epitopes in different mouse strains, and whether the same epitopes can be found in humans, remain open and exciting avenues for further investigation.

Arts & Entertainment, Books, Private

‘How to Murder Your Life’ paints unapologetic portrait of addiction

by Sophie Brzozowski on

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One can only imagine the relief felt at the Simon and Schuster offices the day Cat Marnell announced she had finished her book. Conspicuously titled How To Murder Your Life, the work in question had cost the company three years and a $500,000 advance—most of which Marnell had reportedly spent before she’d even begun to write. Even so, the publishing company must have known what they were getting into.

In 2012, Marnell quit her job as the contributing beauty editor at the popular website, xoJane—started by media mogul Jane Pratt—where Marnell quickly gained notoriety as the “unhealthy health and beauty writer.” She chronicled her hard partying lifestyle in New York City, occasionally pausing her drug-fueled narrative to mention a beauty product or juice cleanse of some sort. Her pieces became the primary source of traffic to the website—with provocative titles like “I spent two weeks in a mental institution and left with better hair.” It seemed like Marnell was destined for her own brand of Internet gonzo greatness until she quit her job to write a book, telling the New York Post that she was simply not cut out for the 9-5 working world.

How to Murder Your Life hit the shelves on Jan. 31. From the opulent, Kennedy-grade boarding school where she spent her high school years all the way to the seedy, squalid streets of Alphabet City, Marnell’s stories read like the diary entries of a girlish ingénue. The hallmark of her writing has always been its brazen, lowbrow quality. Even the darkest among her stories were told in the same breezy manner.

“They were all nightcrawler vampires who raged until dawn and slept until dusk,” she wrote in her memoir, describing the sinister cast of characters she’d meet in nightclubs. “This is terrible for the soul but great for the skin—no sun damage, you know? So everyone looked good.”

Marnell began her publishing career auspiciously enough, working as a beauty editor for Lucky magazine, one of Conde Nast’s biggest publications. Contrary to her trademark druggy antics and general lack of conscientiousness, Marnell has endless respect for the industry.

“Magazines are what I love,” Marnell confessed in an interview on Feb. 29 2016 with Gavin McInnes, the founder of Vice Media—a publication she’d written for briefly. “I hated books like the Devil Wears Prada, when those Conde Nast bitches crack their whip, you should be honoured to fucking jump! That’s the glamour industry!” When Marnell was 28, she was forced to resign from her job. Later, she went to work for Pratt—a job she never took quite as seriously.

How to Murder Your Life was added to the New York Times bestseller list not two weeks after it was released—an impressive feat for a non-celebrity memoir. The book is as tragic as it is trashy, full of heartbreaking anecdotes about a young woman very much alone in the throes of addiction—not exactly easy reading. Perhaps one could attribute its success to the fact that such a sensational downward spiral will inevitably attract a crowd, but her long-time readers insist it’s more than that.

Near the end of her days at xoJane, Marnell published a piece on Whitney Houston’s death in 2012—which was rumoured to be drug related—where she also responded to criticisms about her own use.

“So many of you have expressed your disgust about how much I talk about drugs,” Marnell wrote, “I really tried to stop for a while, but you know what? No one else in women’s magazines or websites is writing about this stuff, so there’s nowhere for a female community to read it… It would be wonderful if we lived in a world free of drugs and drug addiction, but we don’t.”

Most addiction memoirs have one thing in common—in the end, the writer realizes the error of his or her ways and cleans up. But not Marnell. Instead, she writes that she is conflicted—why, she asks, should an addict have to be recovered in order to tell her stories?  After all, Hunter S. Thompson—the pioneer of gonzo journalism and with whom she is often compared—carried on the same way for decades without ever having to publish a sanctimonious book about the evils of substance abuse.

How to Murder Your Life is lauded as an insightful look into the addiction epidemic just as often as it’s accused of being nothing more than a transparent attempt at shock value. Ultimately, it’s neither. It’s a story about a lonely girl who never quite grew up—and it might just be the most honest piece of writing to come out in a long time.

 

Commentary, Opinion

Good grades, good friends, good money: McGill’s work-life balance only lets you pick one

by Tara Allen-Flanagan on

More in Commentary:

This winter semester, I have been on exchange at the University of Edinburgh. As a student at McGill, I was heading towards either a breakdown or a new level of being. Two part-time jobs, two extracurricular activities, a volunteering position, and a full-time course load had me sprinting from place to place and spending any free time I had studying. Despite overloading myself with activities, I still felt like I was underachieving and under-participating in comparison to my peers.

McGill students thrive on stress and sleepless nights: They can often be heard on the 3rd floor of McLennan at midnight on a Wednesday bragging about who got the least sleep while getting the best grades. So when I arrived in Edinburgh, I was surprised to find the student lifestyle was entirely different—and exchange students from other North American universities agreed with me. The amount of work that McGill University expects out of its students, without even taking the recommended CV-boosting extracurricular activities into account, takes up all the time that students abroad spend working and partying.

With more limited contact hours between lecturers and students, the education at the University of Edinburgh is less intense than that of McGill University. Three courses at the University of Edinburgh are equivalent to 15 credits at McGill. These courses are each two hours a week, and only have one paper and an exam to complete as requirements. Whether this is a better educational model is up for debate, but six hours of class per week allows for a more reasonable schedule than fifteen. In the Scottish educational system, high achievers thrive, whereas students who put in minimal effort get minimal results—yet, due to the infrequent class hours and minimal workload, anyone can keep up with the requirements. The qualifier for good grades is the time and effort put into creating a single piece of quality work for three classes, instead of trying to come up with multiple perfect papers for each of your five. Students have fewer assignments to complete, and more time to complete them.

While there are students struggling to achieve a work-life balance at universities worldwide, there must be a way to find a balance between the low contact-approach at the University and Edinburgh and the high intensity demands of McGill.

The situation at McGill is a stark contrast. According to a recent survey conducted by the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) at McGill, 74 per cent of undergraduate engineering students cite academic workload as the most stressful aspect of their major. Despite students’ awareness of the stress of their programs, they continue to prioritize grades over mental wellness—they say that they have little time to take advantage of the mental health services on campus due to academic demands. This degree of distress about the high workload at McGill cannot be blamed on poor planning and laziness. If 87 per cent of surveyed students felt physically exhausted by their workload, something in the academic system here is flawed.

While there are students struggling to achieve a work-life balance at universities worldwide, there must be a way to find a balance between the low contact-approach at the University and Edinburgh and the high intensity demands of McGill. Surveys, like one conducted by the EUS, bring attention to the problem of work overload at McGill; however, students need to continue talking about this issue. Further, both McGill and students should be aware that this amount of work is not normal everywhere. If it is committed to the wellbeing of its students as well as their GPAs, the university should accept responsibility for the adverse effects of its intense workload on students and work on finding ways to reduce it.

In the meantime, there are some solutions to the problem of balancing work and life. Students should consider taking fewer credits per semester, to ease the mental burden of a full-time student course load while trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle. This allows more time for non-academic activities, such as a job or participating in extracurriculars. McGill fosters a competitive environment where doing less academically is sometimes viewed as a failure—I have heard people say that taking less than a fifteen-credit course load is basically “nothing.” Feel free to remind these people that it is important to care for your mind and body instead of just your grades.

No number of tips can help some students cope with the sheer amount of work McGill expects from their students and the all-or-nothing environment that the university fosters. McGill needs to reconsider its curricula if it wants to see well-functioning alumni who remember their time at McGill fondly instead of with heart palpitations.

 

 

 

 

Tara Allen-Flanagan is a U2 Art History and English literature student who enjoys beekeeping but does not enjoy getting stung by bees. In her free time, she likes to explore the multitude of vending machines around campus and cuddle with her friends’ cats.

 

@McGillTribOp |

 

 

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