[CCIP]

In Canada, prestige of schools is really pretty relative, and oftentimes it matters more what department, rather than what university, you actually went to. This is a bit contrary to the US' formal prestige of schools as such.

I started off at Brock University - nice school, my best memories are actually of hanging out in the library building perched atop the Niagara Escarpment, from which you could see for dozens and dozens of miles across Lake Ontario on a good day. I started off in Linguistics, but really picked up a whole range of subjects in my two years there - including programming, geography, and a number of history courses.

I then moved to Ottawa due to family circumstances, and transferred to Carleton University. Much the same - nice school, good circumstances to study. I had to commute from far away so my social life was slow and in fact it wasn't until I was about to move away from town that I discovered that I really liked life in Ottawa.

I graduated with a major in Linguistics and minor in History, and continued on to a Masters in Applied Language Studies. Outstanding program - very small, like a well-kept secret, there is just an amazing bunch of faculty working in that department. It was a very different experience from my undergrad studies, where I really learned to think with a practical mindset - not just what I could learn from something in theory, but how I could apply it to real data and real people-to-people communication problems. That still informs my thinking to today.

I graduated and got into the PhD program at the Department of English here at University of Waterloo, a big school further south in Ontario that is famous for its Engineering and Computer Science departments, but not so much english. So far, my experience here so far has been... well, disappointing, really. I won't go into too much detail, but although I found some fantastic people to work with in the university, it's been an uphill battle. I've become very disillusioned with the education system here, and Waterloo as such - despite its massive student population and apparent concentration of wealth and brains in town - is, well, boring. There's really not much to do in town. Fortunately, it's a good environment to work in, and by far the safest and quietest place I've lived or am likely to ever live in. But that's about all I can say for it - and in the last year or so, I've turned to saving as much as I can and traveling out of here regularly to hang out with friends elsewhere. I can work here, yes, but staying here really sucks the life out of me in the long run.

I still like what I do though. Both teaching and working in research fields like medical communication is, in the end, extremely rewarding.