Happy Holidays

Have a great break. We'll be back on January 3rd.

Rich Student, Poor Student – Post #4

Step 4: Be thrifty

Let’s get this out there right away, being thrifty does not mean being cheap. A cheap person will sit at the bar with friends all night and avoid their turn to buy a round. A thrifty person will do their best to make sure they buy their round during power hour, but they will still buy the round. There is a fine line between saving money and losing friends.

It’s difficult to tell people how to be thrifty because everyone has different ways of saving money. The most important thing is that you are aware of what you are spending and of what that money is worth. The best way to do this is to make comparisons when you buy things. Ex. If you see a pair of shoes that you want to buy and they are $100, ask yourself what else you could buy with that $100. If you don’t really need the shoes then you might realize that you would be better off using the $100 to buy groceries or save for a vacation. Some people save money by making their own clothes, bringing lunches from home, shopping at thrift stores or not buying text books (the last one isn’t recommended), but it all comes down to what you are capable of doing and how much energy you put into it.

Some places you should know about if you are trying to save money:

Value Village – Bayer’s Lake/Dartmouth
This is not only a good place to get clothes but also good for furniture. There are a couple of bus routes that will take you right to Value Village but there is also the possibility of getting the Student Union to rent a bus if enough students want to go.

The Grawood – Student Union Building
I don’t know if you have realized this yet but from 9-10 and 11-12 Wed. – Fri. The Grawood is the thriftiest place in town.

Winners – Halifax Shopping Center Annex/Bayer’s Lake
Hop on the #1 or #14 buses and they will take you right to Winners. If you like to save money when you shop but don’t like wearing clothes that were owned by other people then this is your Value Village.

XS Cargo – Bayer’s Lake
If you’re a shopaholic that that likes to buy things you will never use (autobiographical sentence), but only if it’s on sale, then you should head to XS Cargo.

Walmart – Halifax Shopping Center Annex/Bayer’s Lake
Once again the #1 or #14 will get you there. This is the cheapest place to get stuff for the home (with the occasional exception for Canadian Tire), and it’s not all bad quality. You can’t beat buying an iron for $5.

Of course this doesn’t even come close to mentioning all the great thrift stores, and other places that you can go to get stuff on sale. It also doesn’t give even a fraction of the ways to save money. The one thing that you will hopefully get out of this though is that you should be conscious of how much you are spending and what that is worth, and you should always look for a bargain. If you have any good places to shop for deals then please post them for people to see.

If I was a cow today, I would be one of these cows.

Today I wrote my last exam, well really it was my first and last exam as I am only taking one class right now, but that is besides the point. What I really want to talk about is cattle. It has always struck me while standing in front of the Dalplex with 200 of my peers waiting anxiously for the doors to open so we can file into our neatly arranged seats, how similar we are to cattle being led to slaughter. Each one of us makes our way up the walk way, pressed shoulder to shoulder while shuffling our feet, and then single file, we pass through the revolving doors with the hiss of escaping air. Then the sensation of ears popping from the pressure inside the field house where we each find a stall for the next three hours of our lives. Our herder is not a cowboy with his whip, but instead we are forced in by the cold December air, and 0ur own personal quest for knowledge. We are herded in by the possibility that we might find the answer to what we are going to do with the rest of our lives. However our slaughter differs from the cattle, it is not a bullet to the head, but a civil academic affair involving a pen and paper. All that stands between us and the supermarket shelf is the "knowledge" that we were able to cram into our heads while staying awake on coffee the night before. But what gets me every time I find myself waiting to file into the field house is that unlike cattle we made the choice to be standing in that herd and filing up that walk way. Of course, most of the year I would not be comparing myself to a cow, but that is what a couple of sleepless weeks at the end of term will do to a person.

Dal Blogs: Planet Dal CS

One of the things we'll be doing with this space is highlighting some weblogs written by Dalhousie students. What better place to start than with the Faculty of Computer Science's weblog aggregator Planet Dal CS, described as "a window into the hearts, minds, and possibly a few other body parts of the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Dalhousie Computer Science."

Read about living in Halifax, learning at Dalhousie, and how to stop your AMD64 binary Xen kernel packages from panicking on boot. I have no idea what that means.

Check it.

Interest What?

In a previous post I mentioned that most students don’t know about interest relief on their student loans and therefore do not end up using it. On that post we got a comment confirming that problem. Here is all that you need to know to get the most out of the Student Loan System.

When you get a student loan through your provincial student loan program, a portion of that loan is from the federal government (Canada Student Loan Program) and a portion of it is from your provinces of residence (e.g. Nova Scotia Student Loan Program). To make it even more complicated, some provinces such as Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland have an integrated loan that is fully administered by the National Student Loan Service Centre (NSLSC) once you enter the repayment period. If your loan is not integrated, the NSLSC only administers the Canada Student Loan portion of loan. All this means you really have to confirm any advice that I give in this post with the regulations for your province. You can do that be checking out the CanLearn website.

Interest relief allows you to defer the payments on your loan, six months at a time, for up to thirty-six months. During the interest relief period, the government pays the interest on your loan until you no longer qualify at which point you must start repaying your loan (interest and principle). To see you if qualify for interest relief contact the NSLSC at 1-888-815-4514. They will ask you a number of questions such as how much money you make and if you have any dependents and provide you with a preliminary assessment as to whether you qualify or not. If you do, they will send you some forms to fill out and you will have to provide proof of your income, dependents, ect. You can find all of the debt management measures for Nova Scotia here.

One of the biggest problems with the repayment period of student loans in Canada is that if you don't qualify for interest relief, or have used up your thirty six months of interest relief you have to start repaying your loan. It doesn't matter if you are not making enough money to start repaying your loan or even if you have a job or not. If your loan is $24,000 you will have to pay around $320 a month. Last January, the Nova Scotia Department of Education announced that they would be creating a program they called the Repayment Assistance Program (RAP) which would address this problem. This program would compliment the interest relief program, but only on the Nova Scotia portion of your student loan. Let's say that the threshold for a student with no dependents to qualify for interest relief is that they have to be making less than $1200 a month. If you made between $1200 and $2000 a month (again just hypothetical numbers) RAP would kick in. This means that between $1200 and $2000 a month the amount of money that you would have to repay would be calculated on a graduated scale depending on the amount of money that you make. The real bonus to this program is that during RAP, the government would still pay your interest, so any money that you pay would go towards decrease the principal of your loan. Of course, we have not been able to confirm the status of this program, or its start date.

Rich Student, Poor Student - Post #3

Before I start with tip #3 I would like to ask any of you out there that feel you have some good advice for students when it comes to saving money to write a comment and I will read it and include it in the tips. I admit that I don’t have all the advice that there is and some of you would have vastly different experience, and therefore some different advice, so please let me know. If you don’t have any advice then feel free to read along or write on your own Blog about how I don’t know what I am talking about and that the advice of “Invest Your Student Loan” is bad (even though I haven’t written that part yet).

Step 3: Milk the system

Take advantage of any little bit of money that you can get your hands on. If there is a chance that you could get a grant, bursary, scholarship, or student loan, then take it. I know what you might be thinking – I don’t have good enough grades to get those things – but you have to remember that not all of these are given out based on grades. There are a lot of things that you need to keep in mind when trying to get your hands on this money, so I will lay it out by category.

Grants/Bursaries – A grant (or bursary) is essentially money that you get for free. There are a number of different ways to get grants, places to get them from, and reasons to apply for them. Of course the main reason to get a grant would be that you need help with tuition. The university has needs based grants that are awarded through the registrar’s office twice a year. Other grants (such as the Millennium Scholarships) are given out by the government and the way that you apply is by getting a student loan. In fact the only way that you can usually get any sort of grant or bursary is if you have applied for a government student loan every year that you have been in school. You can find the application forms for these grants online. Another reason that you could apply for a grant is to go on a conference or attend an event that is pertinent to your academic field of study. These grants are awarded by the student union and also by you’re A level society. Generally the amount that you can apply for is not that much ($100 from the DSU) but every little bit helps.

Student Loans – As mentioned in the Grants/Bursaries section it is to your advantage to apply for a student loan every year that you are in school, if just for the fact that you are then eligible to apply for more bursaries and grants. Another reason that you should be applying for a student loan every year is that the loans have 0% interest until you are out of school, that is free money. I challenge you to get a loan from the bank for that level of interest. Later on in the tip about investing your student loan I will point out why it is important to get a student loan even if you don’t need one. The main thing you need to realize is that just because you get a student loan doesn’t mean you have to spend all of it, if you don’t need it, don’t spend it. In my first year I somehow burned through an $8000 student loan and I am regretting it now.

Scholarships – Everyone knows what a scholarship is, but a lot of people think their grades are too low to apply. If you have extracurricular activities, are a minority, have a disability, or are from a certain geographical area you could get a scholarship based on that, and there are a number of other distinguishing factors that could come into play. I am not saying that there is a scholarship that you will get just because you are disabled, or are from the North End of Halifax and have Irish decent, but it could help. Apply for everything and just cross your fingers, you would be surprised how many scholarships people don’t apply for.

I’m sure there are some things that I am missing here, and I know I didn’t go too in depth. If you have any more ways to ‘Milk the System’ then please comment on this post and let everyone know. I would encourage everyone to look online for information on the Canada Student Loans program and be informed about their provincial loans and also to look on Dal’s website for more information on Grants and Bursaries.

Tuning Your Bull Shit Barometer

First, let me make one thing clear – I’m not an avid blogger. I don’t have any particular beef against those who are. Rather, I’m quite fond of the many blogs that share my spare time. As my roommate and co-workers will attest, I pander to Student Union tittle-tattle, Canada’s political scandals and, most importantly, Grey’s Anatomy (America’s Next Top Model is a close second). The list of self-interests goes on but I wouldn’t want to out myself as a die hard Oprah fan so I will stop with the above three.

As the VP Internal, I have the thrilling task of being the Chief Communications Officer of the Union. The DSU Executive work hard at putting out consistent and informative communications to our members and community stakeholders. Occasionally, we misstep and fall victim to student reprimand. I wholeheartedly believe that this blog will only perpetuate our communication blunders. Inside 6136 University Avenue will provide students with a personalized look into their Student Union by their elected student representatives. For this reason, I’ve jumped on the blog band wagon.

The irresponsibly warm weather on the east coast has conjured up the familiar summer time scent of crap. Actually, I’m not sure if global warming is to blame or the past US elections, the recent Liberal Leadership race, the looming Dalhousie Student Union elections or the foreseeable Federal one. Most likely, all of the above. Either way, we’re constantly being served a Big Stop-sized portion of bull shit, hereafter referred to as ‘BS’. A side not if you will… when reading this post I encourage you to read ‘BS’ as ‘bull shit’. Sound it out. You’ll have way more fun if you do (at least I did). While each exec has their own interests and I can only assume will post accordingly, I will be here to fine-tune your BS barometer. If there is a pressing issue on campus that you want addressed I invite you to email me your questions and thoughts. I only promise one thing: my weekly responses will be both subjective and biased – I will not glaze my responses with a spin-doctoring/media-manipulation/image-management frosting. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to call this series of postings “Ask Chris Ide – tuning your BS barometer”. Let's begin.

Dear Chris Ide: When hosting a Society Grawood Night we were asking for a $3 cover charge from all attendees. The proceeds were going to a great cause (which will remain nameless to maintain anonymity). Some individuals approached demanding that they get in for free because they are Varsity Athletes. To which I responded, “at Dal?” Why do Dalhousie “Varsity Athletes” receive such courtesy’s from the DSU? I call BS. Sincerely, a concerned academic student.

Dear Academia,

Yes, BS, I agree. First, Dalhousie does have a Varsity Athletics program. Don’t laugh. Upon further inspection you’ll find that we kick ass in several areas. Which ones? I’m not entirely sure but Cross Country and Swimming come to mind. I encourage you to refer to the sports section of the Gazette or DSU Now (every Monday at 3:30pm) on CKDU 88.1FM where Joey Ryba delivers our weekly Varsity Athletics sports report. Is Dalhousie going to see a football team or make Wickwire field an indoor soccer stadium in our lifetime? No. Let’s get serious, there are a few more pressing issues at hand – namely an affordable and accessible education. Dalhousie is first and foremost an academic institution and one in which I am proud of being a part of. For this reason, it’d be more fitting to give Rhodes Scholar’s this VIP status at The Grawood. While the DSU does a lot to support Athletics on campus there is much more that that the Dalhousie community should be doing. Allowing our athletes to bypass charitable donations does not make that list. This organization and it’s members need to make a concerted effort to support Athletics. Before we do that demand your $3! I’ll see you at the next swim meet.

Thanks for asking, Chris Ide.

Stéphane Dion on Education

Stéphane Dion is the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. He ran on a platform focused on environmental issues and sustainable development, but he has expressed some thoughts on post-secondary education during the campaign as well.

His convention speech on Friday included the following:

"But it takes more than tax breaks. The sustainable economy is, above all, a knowledge economy. We need to invest in the skills and talents of all Canadians, in our colleges and universities, in our students. We need to better link the lab and the market. We need to get Canadian ideas into the marketplace more quickly."

As Paul Wells notes, Dion explained his idea of the knowledge economy in more detail in a speech he delivered in Vancouver last May.

I was going to link to a video clip of Dion speaking about his time as a university professor, but when I checked the source code of his video conversations web page, I found a hidden file, not visible on the website itself, in which Dion answers the question: "What is you [sic] policy on post-secondary education?". I copied the video clip and put it on youtube so it can be viewed below. I don't know why this is hidden on Dion's official site.

Rich Student, Poor Student - Post #2

Step 2: Get a job

Where should you work? If you know what you want to do in life then start doing it. This is easiest for people in professional programs, or in something like Accounting, Kinesiology or Finance, but you all have interests and skills and you are all capable of getting a job that you enjoy. This might not happen right away, if you’ve never worked before you might need some work or volunteer experience in order to get the job you want. If you can’t get the job you want then don’t be picky, you need to work now in order to be of value to future employers. If you think that your degree is a guaranteed job then you are fooling yourself. Employers like a person disciplined enough to take a job that might not be ideal, and they will rarely hire someone with no work experience. One of the best places to get a job is with the DSU. It’s on campus, your working with students, the work schedule is flexible so you can get to your classes, and there are lots of jobs available. There are also a good number of jobs with the university.

How do you get a good job? You need a good resume and good references, but most important is that you need to be persistent. There are lots of excellent resources at Dal to help you out with this. There is Career Services on the 4th floor of the SUB, the Student Employment Center (also on the 4th floor of the SUB), and some programs have their own career centers. These services are there to help you in every stage of your job search, and your paying for them, so use them. The one thing that you need to remember in a job search is that it is a lot like dating, some people will get action right away but others will have to beg to get what they want, don’t be ashamed to beg.

What if you don’t have time for a job? Hahahahaha. Okay, there are some people that are taking the six hardest courses and getting straight A’s, but they don’t need a job because they have a full scholarship. There are also some people that have to study a lot more than average in order to get decent grades, the rest of you are lying. I have been in three different programs at Dalhousie, and although I will admit that I did really bad in Engineering, I always had time to work a few hours a week. I understand that some people may only be able to work a little bit and that won’t pay the bills, that’s what the summer is for. If you aren’t able to hold a job and get good grades then that is fine, but you should be working hard during the summer to make up for that, and as I said before you should do your best to get a job during the summer that is relevant experience for what you want to do in the future.