Sometimes the Good Guys Win

If you received Quebec student loans for the 1997-1998 or 1998-1999 school years, you were probably screwed. I mean, everyone on student loans has been screwed, but you were screwed a little more than the rest of us. Apparently during these years, the Ministere de l'Education backtracked on their agreement with students not to charge them interest or request payment until six months after their graduation. They started charging interest immediately upon graduation, just to get that little bit extra out of you. Quebec say fare. Or Quebec sait faire, as my Dad would say... although I was never sure in what language. They didn't account for the fact that not everybody on Quebec student loans gets a useless degree like a BFA (I can say that because I have one- you holders of BAs or BSCs, by the way, are not much better off, so be quiet). McGill law school graduate, Harry Dikranian, recipient of said screwy loans took the government to court in 1999 and has finally won his case. Good thing he was a lawyer and could book himself some 'free' (except for that nasty student loan) legal aid. In June 2008, some
80 000 Quebec students should be receiving checks for as much as 1200$. The government expects to dish out about 30 million dollars in interest repayments. So if you happened to be a loan recipient those years in Quebec, visit http://www.mels.gouv.qc.ca/ministere/info/index.asp?page=communiques&id=144
and sign yourself up to get your money back. The government claims they'll be mailing out letters to these students, but I'm sure many of them will be lost in the mail. And good luck finding this information on the ministry's English site, or in the English newspaper. Apparently only the French deserve to know about this reimbursement. I'm surprised they didn't post it only in English to minimize the number of payments!

Snow Day II

Monday I enjoyed my second snow day ever. I always thought that phone calls at 5:30am could only bring bad news, but as it turns out, they can also bring very good news. Not having slept well Sunday night, I was particularly happy about being able to stay in bed all morning. Part of me wanted to pack up my bag and head for the mountains- another part of me realized that since I hate winter, most of me is throughly unprepared for a good snow day. I don't own a toboggan or a pair of skis, or even skates for that matter. And what I've come to call a mountain is little more than a hill with a T-bar. Even if I owned skis, that would have made for about ten seconds of excitement.

Sadly I haven't posted lately because I have nothing new to report. It seems substitute teaching is in full swing now- I look forward to my weekdays off, only to see them quickly snatched up one by one. Which is a good thing, I guess. In January I'll be starting my Bachelor of Social Work at the University of Victoria through online studies. It seems like a perfect match. Three years at Bishop Carroll High School taught me to loathe sitting in a classroom, so this seems like the perfect way around two years in a cold, dark and dingy classroom with eight hundred other people. I know what it's like. I took a class once. The 8am Psych 200 class at University of Calgary. I think I lasted three weeks. After successfully falling asleep in an exam worth 25% of my grade, I decided to drop out while I was ahead. A W on my transcripts qualifies as ahead in this case. I wish the person sitting next to me had woken me up. I mean, I fell asleep on the guy's shoulder, it's not like he didn't notice.

Hopefully more news soon... although winter usually makes me want to lounge about on my new couch enjoying our 148 satellite channels (10 of which are CTV, 8 of which are CBC and 6 of these are Global). At least I'm sure never to miss House again- we get it in five different time zones.