hello friends, readers, internet stragglers, spambots (shoutout to our all-time most frequent commenters, we see and love you)–

have you accessed the aska site in the last few days and been FLOORED because you thought you made a wrong turn? have you made a quick search for ‘can’t get into my poST heLp’ and been met with minimalistic black-and-white nothingness? what about clicked on a link and been transported to a different dimension?

i mean, probably not, because so far we’ve just been trying quick things. BUT this is your heads up that the askastudent website is, as of now, beginning the long and laborious process of being brought out of the early aughts! time travel is real, people. yeah, i know, i’m a little attached to our quirky banner and strangely dark colour scheme too. but all good things must pass.

we’re gonna be fiddling with things for a while, possibly til the end of the summer, so i’ll post another update when the changes have been solidified. what will it look like? wish i knew, i am indecisive as hell.

herewegoooooo,

aska

my beloved fans, friends, and family,

i’m so excited to announce that our comment section is FINALLY open again!

for those of you who don’t know, our comment section has been down since march because of an issue with our site, but GUYS, THE WAIT IS OVER.

while i slave away through all of your questions (there are so many, it’s not even funny) you can finally tell me how you really feel about my posts. make it good.

cheers,

aska

hello my darling fans,

aska here. just wanted to post a quick message letting you know that we are working on responding to all your questions! if you haven’t received a response, sit tight- you’ll be graced by one soon enough! it’s been a hectic couple of weeks what with our office renovation and frosh week, but please don’t lose hope! we are working on it!

if you do have urgent academic matters, we recommend that you visit your registrar’s office for any questions you might have!

cheers/ sorry/ much love,

aska

this post is prompted by me not updating the site for literally a week and receiving an e-mail from someone saying “don’t know if this website is still running but,”. i mean, COME ON, people. it’s not like the last update was in January. i’ve been here! look! here i am! updating! you bloodthirsty beasts! web 2.0 has become so viciously fast-paced that poor ol’ aska can barely keep up anymore. my back hurts, y’know. i am an OLD FOGEY. where’s my knitting. this is why i don’t have snapchat.

to be fair, i did stick updates on twitter and facebook. it would’ve been a bright idea to make an update here, too. hindsight is 20/20, i guess. also, sometimes i feel like i’m just talking to myself on here. is there anyone out there, really? has the same bot just been asking me whether they’ll get into uoft over and over again for the past 17 years?

anyway. the point is, aska is moving servers, which means we will soon run FASTER and BETTER and CRASH LESS. we should start updating regularly again early next week, once that process is over. so you can all CALM DOWN. in the meantime, snapchat me @askastu*

cheers,

aska

* just kidding lol. or am i? no, i am. i am.

this blog has just passed 2000 posts, so i thought i’d go ahead and reflect a little bit on aska past, present and future.

(i wanted to make this post the 2000th one, but i’m not nearly organized to pull that off, so this is post 2003 or something.)

askastudent has been around since 1999. it’s been through many incarnations, not the least of which was moving to the internet from phones. that’s right; aska’s been answering your pesky questions since back when Google wasn’t even a thing. imagine how annoying that must’ve been. there have also been many askas throughout the years, some of whom are real adults who live adult lives now – though still with their caustic sense of humour and blisteringly powerful good looks intact.

askastudent’s been a horrible, horrible static webpage, it’s been updated to a wordpress blog, and it might even be getting another facelift sometime soon (oooo!). aska has sassed and belittled first-years who are now university grads with accomplished careers! probably would’ve ended up as criminals if it weren’t for us, tbh.

to put it another way, aska’s been here since sonic the hedgehog was released on sega dreamcast all the way until sonic became a meme.

here’s to the next 2000 by which point, hopefully, Warner Bros will have released a live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie. i live and breathe for the day, guys.

yo homeskillets,

this is your once-in-a-blue-moon reminder that askastudent now has a tumblr page. WoWOWOWowowowoWOWOWowowoW!

i know that not everyone has tumblr, and in fact, that some people are really against tumblr, ’cause you think it’s a black hole of gifs and pictures of girls holding starbucks cups. fair point. but if you do have it, it’s an easy way to keep up with aska, because i post a notification on there every time this site’s been updated.

also, you don’t need a tumblr account to view aska’s tumblr. you can see it all without having to sign up.

along with notifications of answers posted on here, i’m also putting up tips, making people aware of deadlines, posting cool uoft pictures, and just generally jamming with other uoft kids. it’s a fun time.

check it out if you want. if not, hope you have a rad day and get to see a bunny or something else cool like that.

NEVER GONNA LET YOU DOWN. NEVER GONNA RUN AROUND AND HURT YOU.

i’m sorry, i had to do it. they give me too much freedom at this job.

happy april fool’s day don’t hate me okay xoxo,

aska

two announcements in a row??? darnit, aska, we just want a constant stream of informative questions about the minutiae of uoft’s academic rules and deadlines, not your shameless self-promotion!

i know you’re all just hot for bureaucratic university regulations, but this is gonna be a short one.

just wanted to let you know that askastudent is NOW ON TUMBLR! WHOO! go to askastudentuoft.tumblr.com if you would like to keep up with aska there. i don’t know what we’ll be doing there yet. maybe there’ll be cake? who knows! it’s an exciting adventure!

what i do know though is that questions are still going to be posted here on this blog for the time being. the tumblr will just keep you up to date with deadlines, uoft administrative tips and short, frequently asked questions, and that sort of thing. think of it the aska tumblr as collard greens – it’s not the main meal, it’ll just go nicely with your steak.

alright, that’s all. tomorrow we will return to our regularly scheduled programming. peace out dudes,

aska

something alarming happened to me earlier today. i was reading back on this website (aska is incredibly self-absorbed and likes to read her own writing), when i realized that a bunch of the links i’d linked to weren’t working! “zut alors!!” i gasped in horror. “what are the chances that i never realized that half the stuff i linked to was broken?” i asked myself, incredulous. “surely i can’t be that absent-minded when i’m at work,” i said, brandishing my arms in distress and knocking over a bookshelf in the process.

well i did some investigating, and, as usual, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation which proves that this was in no way, shape or form, aska’s fault, and that aska continues to be a perfect, benevolent and infinitely gracious being.

all the links to the 2013-2014 calendar for the Faculty of Arts & Science UTSG, which includes links about courses and various subject POSts, will now be broken, because that calendar has been taken down and archived here?for perusing purposes, in case any of you crazy cats are looking for something wild to do on a friday night.

the 2014-2015 calendar will be published on March 21st, and all questions related to programs will defer to that calendar after that date. for all you nervous grade 12s, that means that your calendar, with all the courses you’ll be taking next year, will be up in under a week.

i have to say i was pretty distressed to find all those links suddenly broken, but i guess that’s life, isn’t it? nothing can last forever. sometimes, the very people who create something are the ones who end up taking it down, you know? they fly too high and they get shot down, like icarus. but that’s you too, my friend; you too are icarus, flying up ever closer to the light of knowledge, until one day, you’ll inevitably have a nervous breakdown, marathon 2 seasons of Breaking Bad, eat so much ice-cream you make yourself physically ill, and fall into a self-pitying stupor for two days.

anyway…calendar stuff. yeah. take note.

cheers,

aska

people are getting creative with their viruses, i see. or maybe someone really wants me to have a weird car USB thing.

on that note, i hope you’re all having a lovely valentine’s day. (you’re all my valentines, in case you didn’t know.) and also remember to have a super-rad reading week, askees. i won’t be answering questions this coming week, so if you do send one, bear in mind it won’t be answered until next monday. otherwise, stay swagular.

also, don’t send me viruses or i will eat you alive. fair warning.

cheers,

aska

hey there,

this is just a quick bit of advice for those of you who may be browsing this blog for some GENERAL UNI LIFE ADVICE. there are a lot of super-specific (and frankly weird) categories of post on this blog, but a lot of questions come up quite often, and if you wanted some different opinions from various askas throughout the years, or just a lot of information about a certain topic, then there are a few tags that are helpful to browse. wordpress tells me (me and wordpress are tight. we chat all the time) that these ones are the most commonly used:

• admissions
• courses
• subject POST
• UTM
• residence
• grades
• colleges
• first year
• commerce

so definitely take a gander through those (they’re all on the left-hand side of this blog in a drop-down menu labelled CATEGORIES), but there are lots more. if you’re in grade 12, you might consider the first year and admissions tags. the subject POST tag is kind of a catch-all for program information of all sorts. st. george and transferring have a wealth of info and OPINIONS about the differences between campuses. finally – as always – colleges is always worth a browse for any of you perpetual worrywarts out there.

happy browsing!

aska

hey there,

just a heads up – this isn’t a question, so feel free to continue on your merry way if you’re not up for some casual reading. if you’ve got nothing better to do (like myself), then please, read on.

so, it’s getting close to the holidays, and that may or may not excite you. it might make you cringe in weary anticipation. you might be one of those people who thinks Christmas has been secularized and commercialized past the point of no return, and that the overcrowded malls and five-year-olds asking for a new iPhone for Christmas are the last straw in a year full of disappointments. fair enough.

or maybe the holidays are really rough because you’ve lost someone or you’re being forced to spend time with a family that is unsupportive or abusive. if this is the case, then i’m incredibly sorry for you, and hopefully i can help make the holidays a bit more bearable.

either way, i’d like to give you a list of AWESOME THINGS about the holidays to remind you that the holiday season isn’t just for despising.

1. holiday food. this time of year is the only time when people are shoving warm and chocolatey food at you left, right and centre. i mean, they’re being so forceful about it that it would be almost RUDE to decline, don’t you think? so go ahead. buy that apple pie. and the vanilla ice-cream. and the starbucks pumpkin-spice-cinnamon-nutmeg-reindeer-snowflake-happiness latte for the ride home. why not? it’s the spirit of the season!

2. i know winter sucks, but snow doesn’t. and i also know there’s this kind of 180 degree turn that happens sometime in adolescence when, one day, snow stops being for playing and becomes a background for romantic activities, but you don’t have to be engaged in a romantic relationship to enjoy the snow! you can take pretty pictures of the snow, you can watch it fall out the window snuggled up in your house (or studio or library or residence or whatever), you can shake branches of snow onto your friend’s head (never stops being funny), AND snowmen are always appropriate.

3. driving (or walking) around your neighbourhood and looking at the ridiculous light displays on different houses is super-fun. doing this with friends is great because you can take lots of crazy pictures together, but it’s nice to go around on your own and enjoy it by yourself, too.

4. radio stations start playing christmas music around this time, which is awesome because you either a) like christmas music or b) hate christmas music, in which case you can sing along to it in really bad warbles and have a whale of a time making fun of all these second-rate artists’ holiday albums.

5. shopping spree. you deserve a few presents of your own, don’t you? if you bought something for your annoying coworkers, then you sure as heck should buy something for yourself. and if you want to avoid the christmas present shopping madness, i’d recommend shopping in boutique stores instead of malls, or staying home and shopping online.

6. school’s out. need i say more?

7. lots of really cute holiday-themed books come out around this time of year, and even if you’re being forced to spend christmas at your mom’s house and she won’t stop bugging you about your future, you can always bring a novel along with you that’ll make you feel all warm and fuzzy (i’d recommend David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice?and Let It Snow).

finally (and this is when i get all lame and my gooey, sentimental interior oozes out of my cynical outer shell), whether or not you care about the birth of Christ or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or ?Hogmanay, this is the time of year when everyone’s just a little more cheerful. it’s the time of bonuses and family and even if you don’t have those, they exist in the world and so there’s just a bit more kindness in the world too, i think.

plus, you may not have part of your biological family with you, you may be spending christmas far from home, but you have an adoptive family, and that’s your friends, and if you don’t have those either, then it’s this university, and this city, which will never abandon you and will always keep on pulsing and giving and welcoming you. and you’ll always have me, ready to answer all your questions and sass you as much as my gif folder will physically allow.

and most importantly, you’ll have yourself, and i think that’s what the holidays should really be about: appreciating yourself, and all the amazing things you’ve done, and revelling in the fact that you’re alive and kicking. so good on you.

have an awesome holiday season.

aska