Pictures Say a Thousand Words
I use to have a picture frame hanging over my TV, not actually over my TV but on the wall above and behind it. It's not there anymore. I've taken down the frame because I need to replace the photographs. The photos are... well out of date with what I want to remember.
I was sitting on my bed the other night going through my photo albums trying to find the pictures that I want to take with me to university. I think this is an important goal. However as I searched through my albums I came across the terrible realization that I'm not a picture person and I don't really have many pictures that I want to take with me.
To fill the picture frame I need seven pictures and after looking and thinking about it for two hours I only found three. How disappointing.
While I sit here I figure I'll bring up something else, I recently got a hold of a MACLEAN'S magazine. Before I give you the story itself I wish to share an anecdote. When I went to my first university open house I subconsciously and then consciously made an observation. There were a lot of women around. Ok, ok, not rocket science or deep analytical thought but I noticed.
At the time I asked a male student you attended the university in question. He replied that the school had something like an 80:20 ratio of women to men. My dad and I made a face at each other that only men I think are capable of making to each other upon hearing such information regardless of age.
This brings me to the MACLEAN'S article, the title is...
Two Girls and a Boy
(I'll type out some of my favourite passages and paragraphs. Summation, there's roughly 60% female to 40% male enrolment at the average Canadian university.)
Sean McNamara, a third-year communications major at WLU, cracks a toothy grin when asked if he's noticed a gender split on campus. "It comes and goes with the weather," says McNamara, 22. "As soon as it gets warm outside, I swear, the population of girls on campus at least triples."
- Well done Sean. What a hero. In the same paragraph...
On the flip side Melissa St. Amant says the gap has become frustratingly evident - especially since she and her boyfriend broke up last year. "Now that I'm back on the dating scene, it's hard not to notice the lack of options," says St. Amant, a biology major at Laurier. "It's slim pickings out there."
-Later...
Even though the gender shift has turned post-secondary education into more of a woman's world than ever, some aspects of the university experience itself have changed very little from its all-boy's club past. A few years ago, when heading west in September from Toronto to Windsor along Highway 401, a stretch of pavement linking half a dozen universities, it was common to pass giant hand-painted signs hanging from highway overpasses greeting nervous frosh and their parents. The most memorable - written in giant block lettering - read: "THANK YOU FATHERS FOR YOUR VIRGIN DAUGHTERS."
- LMAO! I think that's hilarious, disagree if you want, but the image of an uptight father driving his attractive daughter to university and seeing the sign and the reaction he would have is too funny.
The campus meat market, says Sax, boils down to Economics 101. "It's supply and demand," he says. "Whenever there is a gender imbalance, the gender in excess will work harder. At a majority of colleges in North America, where you have something close to 60/40 ratio of women to men, the women are well-groomed and the men are slovenly, unkept, unshaven and don't smell very good. When there are three women for every two men, the men don't have to try as hard - at least socially. Women may resort to strategies that 20 years ago they would not have resorted to - some eomen may take the 'Girls Gone Wild' approach."
- Well said Sax, also cheers for having a cool name.
This relates to the pictures as follows, the magazine is filled, not only in this article, but elsewhere with pictures of university life, and one can't help to notice after reading the article that in any group picture the men look like an endangered species. I mean, 60/40 doesn't sound that dramatic, but when the pictures look like they do the dramatism does stand out more. It's quite literally a 'Where's Waldo?'
Oh well.
I was sitting on my bed the other night going through my photo albums trying to find the pictures that I want to take with me to university. I think this is an important goal. However as I searched through my albums I came across the terrible realization that I'm not a picture person and I don't really have many pictures that I want to take with me.
To fill the picture frame I need seven pictures and after looking and thinking about it for two hours I only found three. How disappointing.
While I sit here I figure I'll bring up something else, I recently got a hold of a MACLEAN'S magazine. Before I give you the story itself I wish to share an anecdote. When I went to my first university open house I subconsciously and then consciously made an observation. There were a lot of women around. Ok, ok, not rocket science or deep analytical thought but I noticed.
At the time I asked a male student you attended the university in question. He replied that the school had something like an 80:20 ratio of women to men. My dad and I made a face at each other that only men I think are capable of making to each other upon hearing such information regardless of age.
This brings me to the MACLEAN'S article, the title is...
Two Girls and a Boy
(I'll type out some of my favourite passages and paragraphs. Summation, there's roughly 60% female to 40% male enrolment at the average Canadian university.)
Sean McNamara, a third-year communications major at WLU, cracks a toothy grin when asked if he's noticed a gender split on campus. "It comes and goes with the weather," says McNamara, 22. "As soon as it gets warm outside, I swear, the population of girls on campus at least triples."
- Well done Sean. What a hero. In the same paragraph...
On the flip side Melissa St. Amant says the gap has become frustratingly evident - especially since she and her boyfriend broke up last year. "Now that I'm back on the dating scene, it's hard not to notice the lack of options," says St. Amant, a biology major at Laurier. "It's slim pickings out there."
-Later...
Even though the gender shift has turned post-secondary education into more of a woman's world than ever, some aspects of the university experience itself have changed very little from its all-boy's club past. A few years ago, when heading west in September from Toronto to Windsor along Highway 401, a stretch of pavement linking half a dozen universities, it was common to pass giant hand-painted signs hanging from highway overpasses greeting nervous frosh and their parents. The most memorable - written in giant block lettering - read: "THANK YOU FATHERS FOR YOUR VIRGIN DAUGHTERS."
- LMAO! I think that's hilarious, disagree if you want, but the image of an uptight father driving his attractive daughter to university and seeing the sign and the reaction he would have is too funny.
The campus meat market, says Sax, boils down to Economics 101. "It's supply and demand," he says. "Whenever there is a gender imbalance, the gender in excess will work harder. At a majority of colleges in North America, where you have something close to 60/40 ratio of women to men, the women are well-groomed and the men are slovenly, unkept, unshaven and don't smell very good. When there are three women for every two men, the men don't have to try as hard - at least socially. Women may resort to strategies that 20 years ago they would not have resorted to - some eomen may take the 'Girls Gone Wild' approach."
- Well said Sax, also cheers for having a cool name.
This relates to the pictures as follows, the magazine is filled, not only in this article, but elsewhere with pictures of university life, and one can't help to notice after reading the article that in any group picture the men look like an endangered species. I mean, 60/40 doesn't sound that dramatic, but when the pictures look like they do the dramatism does stand out more. It's quite literally a 'Where's Waldo?'
Oh well.