I feel like I should mention that yesterday was the 20th anniversary of 9/11. It seems like I'm talking more and more about world events on this blog, which I didn't used to do. To be fair, a lot of relevant world event stuff has been happening lately.
Anyway, other than being the 20 year mark, this is a significant anniversary because the US finally pulled out of Afghanistan. It was messy and the Taliban took control of the nation very quickly, undoing most of the work that had been done over the past two decades.
Major mixed feelings about all this. The US presence in Afghanistan was initially understandable, because such a significant attack on their nation couldn't be ignored. But then 20 years of war with no real takeaway. Doesn't seem like continued war was going to suddenly yield a positive result. Two Presidential administrations with a popular consensus that the war had outlived any utility, but I guess neither wanted to deal with the inevitably ugly fallout that would come with withdrawal. Then, the troops finally get pulled, the government collapses, people are getting punished by the Taliban for their involvement with the US-instilled society.
I see a lot of people criticizing how evacuations weren't prioritized before the military withdrew. I had similar thoughts, but I'm not a military strategist. It would have been ugly no matter what, though.
The thing that has made me feel oldest has to do with 9/11. For what feels like the longest time, you could ask anyone "Where were you" and the rest of the sentence could be assumed "when you heard about 9/11"
For the record, I was in middle school, it was lunch break, and a kid who goes home for lunch came riding in on his bike and told me and a friend of mine what had happened. I didn't know what the World Trade Center was. But for some reason, everyone seemed to have the memory of when they learned ironed in.
Anyway, I was working in the Summer Program, in 2018, at 28 years old. My coworkers were talking about when they learned about 9/11 and the times they were referring to weren't when it happened, but when a teacher or parent taught them the event as a part of history. My adult coworkers!
Anyway, this is all I'm going to talk on this subject.
I'm a week into my online course. It's an English class that I should have been exempt from through transfer credits, but U of W requires all students to take it even if they have the credit from another program. I hear that this is because so many of the students have English as an additional language, and they can't make exceptions for native English speakers because that could be seen as discriminatory. Don't know how true this is, it's not an official position by the school, but it's what everybody says.
I had taken the course in my first semester last time I did Uni, but I didn't understand how to use their online class system. When I got on, I saw that I had missed the mandatory assignment "Introduce yourself" due on the first day. I panicked and dropped it.
Next semester, I got a fiery email through my student address saying that I needed to sign up for an English course within three days or I would be expelled. At that time, there were only courses designed specifically for people with English as an additional language. I sent them an email explaining the situation and offering to take one of the remaining courses even if it wasn't targeted to me, and they were like "Nah, just take an English course whenever you feel like". Real mood whiplash.
One time I got officially expelled from my social work program because they tried to notify me of a clerical error through snail mail and by the time their letter arrived, the response period they gave me within the letter had expired. When I contacted them, they were similarly chill and just reinstated me in the program. Post-secondary schools really need to relax with expulsion.
Anyway, so this time around, I'm starting with the English course. I took the same exact one in college, but that's fine. It's a good way to brush up on my academic writing after a lengthy break. This time around I know how to use the online system. I managed the "Introduce yourself" assignment. This time they gave a week instead of a day, and it wasn't mandatory. I did a test that was more like a contract. It was a description of expectations with the questions being between "I agree" and "I disagree". I won't be providing the answers here, but you can probably imagine that it wasn't very difficult.
Oh, and there's a federal election coming up. On the 20th, a day before my birthday. It's an unusual time for one, since the current Prime Minister had about another two years in office, but he called for one. In Canada, we have four year terms, but it doesn't cap at 8 years like the States. If you can keep pulling votes, you can remain in power indefinitely. Elections can get called early however, like this one.
It's a curious move on behalf of Trudeau, though. Like, he's already got power, so why would he risk losing it two years early? The only reasons I can think of are, he either a) thinks he's more likely to win now than he will be later, or b) he wants to transition from a minority government to a majority.
In Canada we can either have minority of majority governments, with majority being the one all candidates would prefer. Trudeau's got a minority right now, and apparently the Liberal government is especially popular right now, so he's striking while the iron is hot.
I don't see why the Liberals would be more popular now than other times. I've heard that it's because Canada is in crisis, and in times of crisis popularity spikes for the governing leader. People want to believe that whoever is in charge will be able to save them, right? But Canada isn't in crisis, not really. We still have COVID and we're probably moving into another wave, but we've been through this three times before. We have to worry about our economic recovery, but that's not a fresh anxiety at this point. So I don't get it.
We had a debate specifically surrounding disabilities, which was cool. All five major parties had representatives. The exchange of ideas was not very inspiring, but it was still cool that they had it since it's an often-overlooked topic.
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