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Yo yo yo, you’re reading Things You Otter Know! And I’m Ottavia Paluch. And it’s a Tuesday. AGAIN. But this is also the second Otterbiography that I’ve written in the last three weeks. See, I never fail to come up with an excuse!
Welcome to the July 2022 edition of Otterbiography, the monthly column wherein I spend half the time complaining talking about my extremely boring and unimpressive life as it currently stands and then spend the other half sharing media that I have been consuming in sort-of-large amounts. (The name was suggested by some guy on Twitter I don’t know.)
Quick Damkeeping to show you a sketch I wrote for the workshop on rejection that myself and two of my writer friends-turned Incandescent mentors put on for the Incandescent Studio. It was a blast to put together. Enjoy.
Let’s start with the poll!
What poll? you ask. Well. Last month, to mark the six-month anniversary of TYOK, I asked my Otters to fill out a survey about their journeys as Otters. The responses might surprise you!
83% of you have been reading Things You Otter Know since its’ inception. Thank you!
The vast majority of you also found out about this thing through my Twitter.
I left a space where people could tell me what they liked about the newsletter and I got some great responses:
Lots of people like the hockey stuff. One person told me that they managed a full conversation with someone about the Leafs entirely using what they remembered from this newsletter. That is the best compliment EVER. Honestly, guys, if you’re ever in this situation and have to talk about the Leafs for some reason, just say something along the lines of “yeah they’re gonna lose again” and everyone will nod their heads and agree with you.
One person said they loved the sections on what I’ve been reading, even though said section has been empty for months. MONTHS. Until today…
The 2 Significant Otters columns got a lot of love. As they should! (I might be able to sneak another one in this month but I’m not sure.)
Also got a bunch of messages about my puns. Which is weird because I don’t actively try to put puns in these posts. If they’re in here it’s because I thought adding them in would be hilarious.
The section on what people didn’t like was interesting because most of you told me everything was fine. Except for a few people who said they didn’t like the hockey stuff. I have no idea what to do now because half of you like it and half of you don’t.
Speaking of sports, one person said that my skating newsletter revealed me to be a Nathan Chen stan, which is fake news because I actually prefer Yuzuru Hanyü by a significant margin. Nathan’s skating left me cold. Yeah everything is perfect, but…I don’t know.
The last question was me asking what you all wanted to see from me over the next little bit. One person wanted more figure skating analysis. We’ll see. If I have time in the fall/winter I might watch. Another person wanted an advice column from me, which I found hilarious because you and I both know that I know LITERALLY NOTHING.
Hockey!
Free agency started this month. This top-ten player in the league, Johnny Gaudreau, decided he wanted to stop playing in Calgary (I understand, Alberta sucks) and chose instead to play in COLUMBUS???? Makes no sense to me.
The Leafs replaced their great starting goalie…with two piss-poor ones.
I also watched the NHL draft. It was very entertaining, actually. Montreal hosted it and you know Montealers love their hockey. They did a great job putting everything together. They made some big trades AND they had the first pick which they used to select a Slovakian (first time that’s happened before). Anyways, I hate the Hats, so let’s move on.
Pitchfork Fest!
The infamous music criticism site Pitchfork holds a festival every year and they livestreamed it on YouTube this month. I was busy packing boxes so I only managed to catch a few sets but they were quite good.
Japanese Breakfast had a good one. She did “Be Sweet,” of course. That song is my eternal summer jam. And near the end of her set she brought out the dude from Wilco to sing “Kokomo, IN,” one of her songs, and “Jesus, Etc.,” the one Wilco song everyone knows. As you can tell, I don’t listen to Wilco. Those sorts of bands, like the Mountain Goats and Animal Collective and Modest Mouse, I just can’t seem to bother to listen to. Music critics fawn over them, though. It’s weird; I would lump Death Cab for Cutie into that subcategory but they’re a band that I friggin LOVE! I can’t wait for their new album.
You know who else I would lump into that subcategory? The National! And yet I love the National, and they crushed their Pitchfork headline set. Played all the hits. Not too many sad slow ones. Matt Berringer is the Geoff Rickly of indie rock in that he cannot sing live but yet commands your attention. They’re not really a band I would want to see live but now that this livestream has happened I wouldn’t feel obligated to go anyway!
OT the emcee!
This year I’ve been acting as a co-Director of Content at Ink Movement, a youth arts nonprofit based in my city. Every year we put on a poetry slam and people read poems and fancy poets from around the city judge and it’s fun. I got asked to co-emcee the event with another director on the team, which I was very honoured by and stoked to do. We spent a solid week putting the script together and I snuck in a few jokes here and there. I brought out my inner Vince McMahon during the judge introductions. At one (totally improvised) point, I also told two of the judges to play rock-paper-scissors. Which got a big laugh. AND THEN THEY ACTUALLY DID IT! Best night ever.
I’ll tell you something funny. Emceeing is something I’ve kinda always wanted to do, which is weird because I tend to talk too fast and mumble too much. But I remember back in fifth grade when me and a friend I am still friends with went to a meeting about a talent show that the school was putting on. The teacher had a list on the board of all the roles she needed to fill, which included 2 emcees. Those roles were reserved for older kids in like 7th or 8th grade, but I remember thinking to myself that it sounded cool and one day I was going to get to do something like that. It was such a cool full-circle moment to have that dream come true almost nine years later. I’d love to do it again sometime. I love making people laugh.
Course selection!
First-years at UTM got to pick their courses on July 20 at 8AM. I know this because I set an alarm for 8:00AM that morning, which I promptly snoozed through.
Course selection is very complicated here. The course enrolment workbook PDF they sent to first-years is 18 pages long. But I’m going to explain it to you like you’re five, because IDGAF.
The thing with this stupid school is that new students apply to one of twelve admission categories, which is how the admissions office groups similar programs. At the end of your first year (or when you complete 4.0 credits), you choose your POSt (program of study).
Not sure how it works at other schools, but here your POSt combination can be one of three things: a specialist and a minor; two majors; or a major and two minors. As you’ll soon see, I am going for a double major and am therefore a total psycho. We’ll see if I ditch this plan once uni starts.
A lot of POSts require you to take certain courses in order for you to declare that you are a student in said POSt. In order to determine which prerequisites you need, you have to visit the Academic Calendar and search for your program. Some POSTs require you to have a certain GPA before you can officially declare it—we’ll get to how this affects me in a second.
Unfortunately for first-years, well, remember those admissions categories I told you about a minute ago? Those categories bar you from enrolling (for a certain time, at least) in many courses that are not attached to your admission category! Take me for example. I’m a humanities stream student, so I had a wait a whole entire week to enrol in a few first-year CCIT courses. (What is CCIT? We’ll get to that.) By the time I was able to enrol, there was barely any space in the lecture slot I wanted, and all the good tutorial times were taken, save for one at 7pm and another at 8pm. There were 17 tutorials for both of these courses and within a week 15 OF THEM HAD BEEN FILLED UP. THAT IS NOT FAIR.
And then of course you have your electives. Depending on the POSts you want, the number of electives you get varies. (The poor math and science kids probably aren’t gonna take another elective ever again for the rest of their lives.) I had to take 2 courses for one program and 3 courses for another, which left me with a fair bit of leeway.
On top of that you also have to take 1.0 credits, meaning two half-year or one full-year course, in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. I’ll get the latter two checked off pretty easily, but the science ones? We’ll see. Someone on Reddit said you should get the science ones out of the way in your first year. I…partially did this.
UofT was nice enough to create a timetable builder for us poor little students (try it out yourself here!) I spent a thousand years determining everything and making sure there were no conflicts. I aimed for one class each day because I figured having two two-hour lectures back-to-back would make me super overwhelmed. I’m also taking four courses a semester instead of five because I want to preserve my sanity.
I’m not going to leak my schedule for the sake of privacy, but I'll give you the gist. Like I said earlier, I’m trying to see if I have the brain cells for a double major.
One of these majors is Professional Writing and Communication (PWC), which is a part of the Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (CCIT) program. In order to make this my POSt, I have to take three prerequisite courses, pass all three with a 77% or above, AND hit a certain GPA that they don’t tell students about, which is ridiculous. I had been pretty set on an English degree for a loooong time but when I learned about this program a few weeks ago it seemed like a better fit. I am a fake book nerd in that just thinking about writing essays on Chaucer makes me want to puke.
The other one is….political science???? I initially did not think this would be a thing that I would do. But I took a look at the six first-year courses they’re offering this year, and it turned out that I wanted to take…all of them???? In order to declare POSt you have to take exactly 2 first-year courses, get a 65% in both, take a mandatory course on writing in university, AND have a GPA above 2.0. There is one course on politics and social justice that I REALLY wanted to take but had to part with because it was somehow only offered at ONE TIME during the ENTIRE WEEK and of course had to overlap with one of my PWC courses. Such is my luck.
In conclusion, I am a sicko.
As for what I’m taking this year:
Fall: science course + that one writing in university course I have to take for Political Science + PWC requirement + PWC requirement.
Also an optional not-for-credit course where first-years learn about uni and attempt to make friends, but I heard on Reddit that it was the opposite of stressful so I figured I’d give it a shot.
Winter: criminology (elective - I wanted an intro to sociology course but it was full when I logged on) + PS requirement + PS requirement + PWC requirement
And there you have it! Orientation starts in a few weeks, gross. And then the fun begins for me on Thursday, September 8. Get ready for that, Otters. It’s gonna be a wild ride.
OTTERFUL THINGS OF THE MONTH!
Books I have been reading!
You guys. I read actual books this month. Books with an S, goddamnit. I know, I can’t believe it either! Let me tell you about both of them:
Beatles ‘66: The Revolutionary Year by Steve Turner
If you’ve learned of me recently you might know that I have turned my disinterest in reading books over 350 pages into a personality trait. But wouldn’t you know it, I destroyed this 464-page behemoth.
This thing chronicles, month-by-month, week-by-week, the year that was 1966 for the Beatles. They were only a thing for, what, eight years? So to simplify things for you, 1966 is especially significant for them because it was the year they 1) quit touring, 2) dropped Revolver, which a gazillion music writers say is one of the best albums ever; and 3) really started writing songs about things other than love. Not to mention that John also met Yoko. AND the fact that they started work on Sgt. Pepper’s that November. Also George went to India for the first time, which was a very big deal for him. Has any band ever had a more consequential 12 months?
The whole thing is just so detailed and breaks down not just the songs but how the people who made them were faring at the time. Plus all the shows that they were playing around the world during the first half of the year. Let me tell ya, Steve Turner—the dude who wrote this book—he knows his stuff. The dude will be going on about how they were recording “And Your Bird Can Sing” and then just insert something like, “oh yeah, so when I interviewed Paul McCartney in 2009 he said yadda yadda.” What a FLEX.
There’s lots of things in here that I didn’t know before. Paul was consuming an incredible amount of music and art and culture at the time while John was fed up of doing nothing while also lacking motivation at the same time. It was that kinda lackadaisical approach that allowed Paul to dominate for the rest of the band’s tenure. Now, I’m a Paul person through and through, but it’s honestly nuts how whenever John did have a crumb of motivation, he’d just casually churn out something eternal and brilliant and powerful like “Strawberry Fields Forever”. There really was no one else like him. And there never will be.
Hell of a Book by Jason Mott
I had a note in my Notes app about this book but I seem to have lost it. So I don’t have a lot to say on this book, other than the fact that it really WAS a hell of a book.
There’s a reason this won the National Book Award not too long ago. The protagonist is so flawed, SO flawed, and yet you root for him anyways. The first chapter is honest-to-God one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read and made me quite emotional. It’s a very honest and powerful book. It pulls no punches. It’s 300-something pages but I couldn’t put it down and read it in a day. Jason Mott is a bad man. I can’t wait for his next book.
Other things I have been reading!
My stupid face is technically in a newspaper!
Was unaware of Nathan Fielder until this month.
My friend Bianca wrote this! FFO Elif Bautman, whose work I have never read but probably totally should.
"When Morissette uttered the lyrics, 'All I really want is some peace, man,' I vividly remember crying because I desperately yearned for it at that age."
Rayne Fisher-Quann is the essayist I wish I was.
Great stuff from Alec Harvey.
I don’t listen to MUNA but I like that song of theirs about the silk chiffon. Also this profile of them in the LA Times.
Radiohead is officially on hiatus, according to Ed O’Brien. Damn! Hopefully they have one last record left in them.
Here’s a depressing article on the state of the music industry here in Canada from the Globe and Mail.
The dude who worked on Pink Moon talks about Pink Moon.
We’re all so lucky to be breathing the same air as Jane Goodall.
Remember my Glastonbury post from a few weeks ago? Some guy actually WENT to Glastonbury and wrote all about it.
Bookstores are making a comeback! As they should.
Leila Mottley is 20, Booker-nominated, and has already read more books than I will ever read.
Keanu friggin Reaves. (Can’t wait for John Wick 4!)
A new addition: here are some Substack posts I enjoyed this month!
Poems!
“Sean” by Leslie Sainz
“Search Party” by Steven Espada Dawson
“Bock Rottom” by Sam Herschel Wein (just won a Pushcart)
Oh yeah, and one of my favourite poets ever is the new poet laureate of the U.S.! Could not think of anyone better to tell people to read poems.
Songs I have been listening to!
I actually only have one song for this month. But that’s because once I found out about it, I listened to it an inordinate amount of times. Here it is:
I have to preface this by saying that I do not listen to Sarah MacLaughlan, I really only know, like, two songs of hers, and also the fact that she’s Canadian. But holy SHIT, this song is unbelievable. It’s from her debut album, which came out back in 1993.
Rick Beato, one of the few YouTubers I still bother to watch and whom I highly HIGHLY recommend if you’re a music nut like me, made this great video on examples of surprise in famous songs, and this was one of the songs in that video that I didn’t know. He brings it up in a section about how adding harmonies creates surprise and he plays the chorus. And I heard that chorus once and I was like, “oh my god.” Because, if you listen, she has one harmony going throughout the chorus, and then she adds these super high ones on “I’ll take your breaaaath away” and “just close your eyyyyyyyes, dear.” And they just completely make the song. I have replayed that bit over and over. It is so tasteful, so perfect, so beautiful.
Maybe the rest of you won’t feel the way I do, but I think “Possession” is going to remain a fixture of my music library until the end of time. The whole thing is so trip-hoppy and mysterious. Those synth pads add so much atmosphere and haunt. It’s like Portishead, but Canadian. And Sarah sounds aching and passionate and trapped in yearning. Even though she IS singing a song about some stalker loser douchebag who stalked her. Man, I hate men.
Tweets I loved that may or may not have come from me!
That’s it for July’s Otterbiography! I appreciate the fact that you read it. This Thursday I’m off to watch some third-round National Bank Open tennis in Toronto. Might tell you about it on Monday. Cause I totally understand where tennis players are coming from. I also love hitting things.
🦦—O—🦦