Ss Student Life January 23rd 2013 * Over the Edge TOP 8 PLACES 10 HIT THE BASES LEILA MAHEIDDINIBONAB STUDENT LIFE EDITOR 1. The Honey Badger Den, Building 6 The windows looking into the hallway are always blocked, and the door can be locked. Can it get much easier? I think not. 2. The unused hallway where the old Tim Hortons used to be, Building 5 There are people around but almost no one bothers to go down this hallway. No doors to close so it’s a little risky, but the rewards are much better that way. Pro tip: the library student assistants travel this hallway to get to the elevator, so watch out. 3. The Rotunda Gallery, Building 4 Where better than in the middle of an Art Gallery? There are 2 spots worth the risk: Right in the middle of the floor there’s an acoustic sweet spot where the sounds reverberates back to you 4 fold; A bit more secluded this spot under the stairs has cushioned seating that most people walk right past. Pro tip: this place is deserted moming, noon and night, but the first few days after the exhibit changes the foot traffic sees a spike. 5. Canfor Theatre, Building 6 The projection room when classes are in session. Adds a lot of risk to any base. 6. Stairways, Building 10 Any of these stairways will do, the majority of the students have no idea where they are because they all use the two elevators. In some stairways there are little windows into a nice garden like area so the ambience is good, but then again, who’s looking out the windows? 7. The Wintergarden The Wintergarden is another place where there’s more than one location. The most fun is the sitting area between the set of stairs. The places that’s just visible enough to make it dangerous? The upper level sitting areas near the lecture theatre doors. The safest place? Past the seating area there are doors that lead to the roof, no one really knows = Photo courtesy: The Lion's Den University about them and there are two escape routes in case you get caught. 8. Geoffrey R. Weller Library, Building 5 So here’s the sitch: it has to be in the first week of classes, and it has to be on the second or third floors, near the back corners. It’s out in the open but no one’s there in the first week of the semester except the librarians and the student assistants. Keep quiet and you’ll hear them coming with plenty of time. Pro tip: the newly built media rooms are more secure and can be used semester round. Be sure to fit some time in for studying too... GRAD STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: MATEUSZ (MATT) PARTYKA Who is Matt? I’m in the second year of my MA in English here at UNBC. I did my BA with a joint major in English and History here as well. I was born in Poland and grew up in Prince George and I do a lot of poetry events around town. Every year I organize Post North, an annual reading (it’s coming up in February), and I also work for the City of Prince George as a Life Guard, so people can see me at the pool. Hobbies? I’m interested in writing and I’ve been playing soccer since I was 4 or 5. I grew up swimming in the swim club because my dad is the head coach but I don’t do that anymore. Favorite quote? Frank Sinatra had this quote that says “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink because when they wake up in the morning that’s the best they’re going to feel all day.” Either that one or Tom Waits has one that says “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” I hear your Masters is on pornography or Pornographic Literature as it is more formally called. Why did you choose this topic, and how did you learn about it. Why porn? I guess porn is a weird way of saying it. When most people think about porn they think about the stuff they see on the internet; videos and the industry production. The way I’m looking at pornography is in a broader scope of how pornography has evolved and how it’s always been around since ancient times and how sexually explicit materials functioned in society. I kind of got thrown into it. At the end of my BA I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I was thinking about a MA but wanted to take a year off to think about it. I went to talk with Dee Horne (I was thinking of potentially wanting to do a thesis with her) and she said don’t wait, put in your application now. So I scrambled really quickly to get all my things together and I sort of knew who I wanted to write on. I put in my request in in 2 weeks and I’ve just been kind of going. I’d never done any research or studies on pornographic literature before so it was a whole new field for me. What do you find the most interesting or unexpected about it? I really like it cause it breaks open the boundaries of what we can talk about. Like for several of my essays for an Erotic Literature class, I was referencing porn websites and talking about different genres of porn and how these things function in relation to classical texts. It’s taking the traditional literary analysis that we use on a novel or poem whatever and expanding it to a cultural analysis directly focused on sexually explicit material. It’s just cool cause no one else is talking about this stuff. What are you focusing on for your thesis? I’m doing it on Michael Turner’s book The Pornographer’s Poem. He’s Vancouver author of Hard Core Logo which got turned into a movie that’s become a cult classic. [Editor's note: Billy Talent took their name from a character in this film] Recently he wrote a book called 8x10 and he’s got a couple of books of poetry, one called Kingsway. His stuff is different from most of the things I’ve read in Canadian literature. It’s a lot more explicit and graphic, but also a lot more energetic and racy and it really tried to experiment with the form of the novel. The Pornographer’s Poem is more of a novel/screenplay/poem/memoir so it has a bunch of different things going on in it. I’m looking at how gender ties into sexually explicit materials and how it’s portrayed in those fields. I’ve taken a lot of common scholarship on gender studies looking at gender as a performative role and how that is made present in sexually explicate stuff, specifically focusing on masculinity and how it is construed. So really anything in that masculinity meets sexually explicit material realm like how desire works, and how sexuality and specific pomographic conventions work. What are you going on to do after your MA? I don’t really know if I want to do anything in this field specifically. I would like to teach. I’ve been teaching for a long time, I grew up coaching the swim club and teaching lessons and I really like it. | have TA-ships right now and I like it a lot and want to go into that. The MA ties into what I do on the side with my creative writing and poetry. I’m transferring skills over to my personal projects like being able to work on a project in amuch larger scope than what I had been before, work on longer poems and putting together cohesive works What’s your word of advice for future MA students? I don’t know if I have advice... I guess know what you’re getting into before getting into it.