Post-secondary students are unable to juggle the expectations of their studies,
part-time jobs and social lives; there are too many demands on their time.
A post-secondary education is an expensive thing, the cost of which rises dependant on the length of the program; the longer a student works to get a high-paying career the farther in debt the student goes. The solution a part-time job.
It’s a Tuesday night and Nichole Bunn, a first year accounting student at Thompson Rivers University, rings customer’s items through her Shoppers Drug Mart till. She yawns, stares blankly at the clock, and waits for another customer to enter the vacant store.
Bunn, like many University students, is forced to spend her spare time working to pay her way through school. She works an average of 15 hours a week, yet there are students out there that work two or three part-time jobs on top of school, others hold full-time employment.
“I work because I like to be able to pay my rent, buy food, and save up for good stuff,” said Bunn, “Mainly rent”
“Sometimes it is overwhelming to go to school and have a job…you have to do homework but don’t have time,” said Bunn, “basically the first couple months I didn’t have time to sit and focus on it…I was working all weekend.”
Bunn is not alone, students have bills, and the money to pay for them has to come from somewhere.
“I work so I have spending money…so I don’t feel like I’m going in debt,” said Kevynn Ma, a third year business student at Thompson Rivers University
“I just quit my job,” said Ma, “I was working 16 hours a week…I didn’t have enough time to do my school work and my grades were suffering.”
“I had to think about what was more important to me,” said Ma, “my part time job, or my future career.”
The education students are receiving is not as enriching as it should be, students just don’t have the time to concentrate on their studies if they wish to pay their rent, a solution would be more government funding towards post-secondary education.
In France for example post-secondary education is paid for entirely, an education is something that should be accessible to all.
“I think it would be a waste of money to fund all of it,” said Ma, “If you do well your first year they should fund the rest of it”
“I think they should at least pay for books,” said Bunn, “it’s really expensive.”
The Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation's study on student debt, released Nov. 1 2006, reports that among undergraduates who graduated with debt in 2006, the most indebted hail from Atlantic Canada, where students owe an average of $29,747. British Columbia has leapt into second spot after seeing the fastest three-year increase in the average student debt in the country, from $19,917 in 2003 to $26,675.
Among graduates who borrowed in Quebec, where tuition fees are the lowest and the grants program the most generous, the average debt is $12,992, by far the lowest in the country; the average debt in Ontario is $22,589, and $22,787 in the Prairie provinces, just below the national average of $24,047.
Since then the foundation says national student debt levels have risen with recent changes to the federal and provincial student loans program. As a result many students entering the work force after graduation are burdened with the knowledge that their first years paycheques will go towards paying off their debt, for many this could take decades.
A separate study by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, released in the same year, warns of the possible dangers of student indebtedness. It found that debt affects persistence, meaning students who borrow more are more likely to drop out.
According to the study 57 per cent of students reported borrowing some funds to use towards their college education, 29 per cent had borrowed more than $15,000.

I am a member of Generation WWW

I am quite aware that as a journalist I should be checking my sources, be aware of where my content is coming from and be curious about whether it is truth or not. Yet as a member of Generation WWW, It is of little concern to me, or at least according to Ken Alexander it is.
When I am surfing the internet it is of little concern whether a 40 year old, with an English degree, wrote the article that is taking up my time, or a 13 year old with an in depth vocabulary wrote it.

If it entertains me, solves the dilemma I am facing-even if that dilemma is what kind of seasoning I should put on my honey mustard chicken- or makes logical sense I will likely be understanding of it and be quite capable of taking in what is presented before me.
It may be truth, it may be fiction, it is up to me to decipher my path, along with all those surfing this wave known as the web along my side.

Now I understand that for most of us we wish to have an educated source writing what we are reading, but how does one become educated in certain areas, I do not believe that years of experience, related to the aging process known as life, or a University degree are the only ways to achieve an education. As I once read on a birthday card “age only matters if you are a cheese.
When I am perusing internet gaming sites for tips or reviews, I have a few places I check to begin with. The bungee web-site would be an obvious place, as the makers of bungee games would be educated video game programmers who created the games, and in essence would be capable of giving me a decent amount of information about them. The fact that they may be biased is obviously in the back of my mind.

The next step is to Google a review, which I do suppose shows just how deep in the internet our generation is. “To Google,” has not only become a verb, but one that is recognizable to the majority of the people in the world.

At this point I will review multiple reviews by multiple users. I have the ones that are the most useful to me are the ones written by 15 year old kids, who spend hours, days even weeks without breaks, playing a game.

In my opinion this kind of experience makes you an expert, and as a result you have the right to review and post whatever you wish on the internet in regards to a game you are that familiar with. I, like many other gamers, will suck in your every word, all the while ignoring the fact that you haven’t yet hit puberty.

There is an exception, An Australian journalist known simply as “Zero Punctuation,” who reviews games for an on-line magazine known as the escapist. Every word this man speaks is pure genius, his reviews are to the point and absolutely brilliant. He trashes every game his editors put on his desk, tares apart anything he possibly can, yet at the end of the day you still want to play the game. The thing is he puts engaging anecdotes into his stories that force you to think, I want to play this just to see how stupid it is.

I do not know this mans actual name, I do not know where he is from, he may not even be Australian, though he does speak with an accent. I do not know what this man looks like, how old he is, what his references are, or how reliable of a source he is.

The same could be said for this “Alexander Ken” fellow. What kind of a name is The Walrus, it sounds like a fishy publication to me, yet I am reading what he writes.

I do know this however; they both entertain me, is that not the purpose of the internet?