The (Uni)verse

Being good at interviews doesn't just happen naturally for most of us. It is a learned skill that will have an impact in your professional and personal lives (even meeting the in-laws! ;-)) Listen to Janet, Laura and Joela, who impressed me so much they should honestly run a workshop! I learned a lot myself, never having been taught any of these skills and never having done an online interview (the horror!). Their insight trul...

Happy Valentine's Day!! ❤️ Whatever a person's work or hobbies or studies, sometimes something can happen that makes us fall out of love with what we do. What keeps us in love what we do? Where to find the joy and passion in our professional lives? Listen to The (Uni)verse discuss about what sparks us into carrying on loving what we do.

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at Podcasttheuniverse@g...

This episode ran in April 2024 and is one of our most listened to episode. We think revisiting it could help new listeners as midterm season has already started or help second time listeners reflect on their progress handling test anxiety. It seems the entire world as cranked the stress levels to greater heights, so here is our little grain of salt to help deal with anxiety.

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write ...

Throughout our lives, as students and professionals, we are constantly under the pressure to perform and deliver (as it should be, within reason). So it is good when you can find something to unwind and relax, perhaps doing something with little cognitive demand, something entertaining, or something that connect us to the people in our lives or even nature. What do you do to relax?

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions,...

Generative AI like ChatGPT have been around for a year or two now and made quite an impression in education and other professional spheres! Most students use generative AI in one way or another, and generative AI tools are definitely not going away! The (uni)verse co-hosts talk about their experience with generative AI and how they wished they knew how to use it, underlining concerns about their ethical use too. How do you use gene...

As midterm season is well under way, we take a cheeky look at student behaviour when taking exams. Some students speed through exams, some very carefully dissect each question, some stare into space, some shake their legs so much the whole room seems to shake with them, some have each emotion written across their face, and much more. Which type of exam takers are you? 

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us ...

Welcome to the (Uni)verse! Last year we asked 1st year students what they were looking forward to starting university, and what they worried most about. We then had 4th year students talk about their experience and answer back to some of the worries 1st year students might have. This year, our 3 podcast co-hosts, Joela, Janet and Laura, are entering the 3rd year of their program, and I was wondering how it felt to be an upper year ...

Welcome back! The cost of living has increased quite a bit in the last couple of years. Many students are living on a tight budget and all the tricks in the basket should be applied to save a bit of money. We discuss a few tricks and suggestions we have used to budget wisely.

Do you have any tricks to share? Please let us know! See email address below.

To contact the co-host for comments or suggestions, write to us at Podca...

Final  exam season is officially on! Exams always bring a certain amount of stress. For the most part, stress is great and useful. It keeps you alert and focus and can be turned into excitement rather than anxiety. But for many students, too much stress can lead to test anxiety, with varying consequences on exam performance and distress.

In the last episode of this series, we talk about how to recognize test anxiety, how ...

Going to university is a social experience for many students. You meet so many new people and make new connections, whether these are professional or personal. It is a time of change, when new friendships may arise and old friendships peter out. As you progress through your degree (or change it), interests are in constant flux and the people that revolve around these interests come and go. It can also be a time of loneliness, perha...

Midterm season is well under way and perhaps you are feeling a little burned out? You are not alone and without any resources! During this reading, listen to yourself if you need to take a break. You can also listen to our podcast for a bit of inspiration on what sort of break might work better for you or simply commiserate on how hard life can be as a student.

Should you need help, here are a few resources:

• Good 2 talk...

After pondering the meaning of being an adult, we wonder if students are and want to be treated as adults at university. No one here is an expert, defining what it means to be treated as an adult is work in progress, but we do have a few comments and ideas that may resonate with faculty and students alike. What do you think? As a student, do feel like you are treated as an adult? As a faculty, are you treating your students as adul...

This is a question that sneaked itself into our conversation as we listened to comments made by 4th year student way back in September 2023. As you will hear, our thoughts about being an adult and whether we considered ourselves adults were pretty much all over the place. So we dug a bit more into the literature on adulting (yes, that is a word) and discussed it further. Not that we'll write a Nobel prize winning essay about t...

There has been much talk about whether Smartphones are good or bad for learning. All students use their Smartphone in class either for non-academic related purposes or for their learning during class, using polling apps, looking up vocabulary, Google searches, etc. We do not have the answer to whether phones are good or bad for learning per say, but we can talk about what students do to manage their phone use strategically. In this...