There’s still two weeks left to vote for the Webware 100 for this year, celebrating the 100 best Web 2.0 sites as decided by you, the user. What the folks at Webware have done is come up with a list of 25 nominees in ten different categories — Browsing, Communications, Community, Data, Entertainment, Media, Mobile, Productivity, Publishing, Reference — and you can vote for one nominee per category. The top ten vote-getters in each category make up the Webware 100.

What you vote for is up to you, but here are a few of my thoughts about some of the nominees on the list:

• Greasemonkey (Browsing): Want to know why I carry my Macbook with me everywhere? Because I can’t stand using the internet without my twenty-seven Greasemonkey scripts: the web just isn’t as hospitable without it.
• OpenID (Browsing): It may not have reached ubiquity just yet, but OpenID is going to revolutionize identity management on the web. As soon as Facebook introduces OpenID logins, we’re set.
• Twitter (Communications): Need to get in touch with me quickly? Forget the phone, and definitely forget about email: Twitter me. My favorite presence indicator on the web, by far.
• del.icio.us (Community): I might have abandoned del.icio.us (for now), but that doesn’t mean it’s still the best social bookmarking site on the web. Just browing random del.icio.us profiles can provide enough links for days of entertainment.
• Facebook (Community): With the addition of external applications, I think Facebook may soon become not only a MySpace-killer, but the premium destination for web users. Google, watch out.
• Line Rider (Entertainment): I usually hate gaming, I have no manual dexterity, and am clueless when it comes to physics. All that aside, Line Rider is so simple that I have (literally) spent hours drawing lines on my screen.
• Upcoming (Entertainment): While most of my event planning happens through Facebook, all the cool kids still use Upcoming, and with good reason. The interface is clean, it’s extensible, and just works well.
• Flickr (Media): Flickr is the darling child of social applications on the web, and though it is now a senior citizen in the domain of Web 2.0, the popular photo-sharing site continues to innovate.
• Pandora (Media): Blocking Pandora in Canada was a blow to music aficionados across the country. The leader in internet radio, Pandora has revolutionized the way we experience music.
• Google Docs (Productivity): Who needs Microsoft Office? Once Google comes out with Spreadsheets, the document set will be complete. Then Facebook will duplicate it and kill Google.
• Blinksale (Productivity): I don’t write many invoices, but when I do, it needs to be an easy, painless process. Blinksale is easy and painless. And pretty.
• Google Analytics (Publishing): Once, it was robust but clunky. Now, with the new Veen & Co. design, it not only looks pretty, but it blows other stat applications away when it comes to features.
• Tumblr (Publishing): My new favorite application on the web, after Twitter. Blogging has never (and I do mean never) been this easy and this fun.
• Wordpress (Publishing): Tumblelogging isn’t for everyone, so for those of you who can’t just settle for a bare-bones Tumblr blog, there really isn’t any better hosted tool than Wordpress. That’s why I use it for this blog.
• Yahoo! Maps (Browsing): Say all you want about Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps just looks nicer and works better, once you get used to the interface. I’m serious.

Okay, that’s enough from me. Now go vote. Better yet, go use stuff.

There are very few movies that are amazingly enjoyable while still having an undecipherable plot for the first two hours. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, the third installment of the Pirates franchise that made Jack Sparrow a household name, does exactly that. And while it may make a lot more sense the second time you see it, this pirate movie doesn’t get any less fun the more you watch it: it is truly the first great summer movie of 2007. Now, I may not have loved it as much as Matt Brown (who calls it the best movie he has ever seen), but I do agree with him on many accounts, so I’m just going to lift entire parts of his review to fill out my own. I’m sure he won’t mind (right Matt?).

First, for those of you who may have been living under a rock for the past five years, At World’s End is a movie about pirates. Lots and lots of them. In fact, Matt explains it best:

Are there pirates? Is the Pope Polish? (Uh, German?) You bet your sweet a** there are pirates. There are man pirates, woman pirates, dog pirates, bird pirates, monkey pirates, real pirates, impostor pirates, huge pirates, tiny pirates, mute pirates, sane pirates, insane pirates, Chinese pirates, Indian pirates, French pirates, Persian pirates, fish-man pirates, man-fish pirates, pirates who are part boat, living pirates, dead pirates, kid pirates, adult pirates, lord pirates, internal psychosis pirates, external projection pirates, lover pirates, hero pirates, villain pirates, trickster pirates, competent pirates, incompetent pirates, goddess pirates, Daddy pirates, son pirates, and when every single f**king pirate in the long history of pirateology has gathered in one place to talk about how they’re going to continue to be pirates, there’s even a rock legend pirate.

If that alone isn’t reason enough to go and watch the movie, the film is action packed and wonderfully shot. On top of that, the entire movie is a result of meticulous crafting: the score is stunning and the art direction and costume design is better than Oscar-worthy. Matt, again, says it well:

Significantly darker than its predecessors, At World’s End is also often surprisingly, achingly beautiful, as the travelling squad moves through landscapes fierce and dense, oblique and mad, through a world that is threatening to up-end them clean off the boat and into the wake of history. There is an awareness of this passing of an age that invests the story with unexpected emotion, where previously there was none. To mark the occasion, Hans Zimmer concocts a gorgeous counter-argument to the original Pirates theme, which fits on the musical structure like the tail fin on a Porsche — in other words very, very well, giving moment and lift to the always-zesty Pirates symphonics that serves to remind musically throughout that we are, truly, in deeper waters.

In my eyes, of course, At World’s End is far from perfect. The entire storyline involving Calypso feels contrived and unnecessary, and I still never really felt the chemistry (as I have complained about for the first two films) between Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner — except, maybe in that last bit on shore — but criticizing the film based on those aspects seems nitpicky when examining the visual mastery of the movie.

Sure, the film looks great, but it’s also laugh-out-loud funny. Depp shines again, and Geoffrey Rush is nothing short of brilliant, but the true star of the film is Jack the Monkey, who not only is wondrous comic relief, but turns out to be one of the most essential characters to the plot. For those of you who might struggle understanding what’s going on with said plot for the first half of the movie, do not despair. The second half’s payoff is more than worth the wait. Again, Matt tells us why:

There’s no single quest to be won here (Aztec gold / Dead Man’s Chest); there’s just the future of pirating itself, and a big sucking vortex that does, indeed, pull all the narrative threads towards it like so many rubber duckies towards the drain. What is perhaps most endearing about At World’s End, particularly in its final hour, is the degree to which it actually does achieve on the promise of capitalizing every single arc that screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio have been carefully (and often, not very carefully) setting up for the past two and a half films.

As someone who loves the simple, minimal, and slow-paced come-dramas of Jim Jarmusch and Wes Anderson, it might seem strange that I loved this big-budget, high-intensity, swashbuckling smorgasbord of convoluted plotlines and visual effects. But I must take my hat off to Verbinski and Bruckheimer: they’ve redefined the concept of the “fun summer blockbuster” by actually making Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End tons of fun to watch.

Jim Goldstein, who is not only a fantastic photographer but an excellent blogger, recently posted a photo project on his site asking photographers to choose their favorite photo and write the background story behind the shot:

One of the great things about photography is that there are often some great hidden background stories. Seldom are they ever heard though unless you’re a close friend of the photographer.

I’ve known about the project for a little while, but I haven’t gotten around to writing up my story for one simple reason: I didn’t know what photo to pick. I’m not much of a photographer, despite the 2,000 or so photographs in my Flickr photostream. I have some indications as to what other people consider as my best photos, but I had to think long and hard to figure out which exactly would be my favorite photo. Not my best, but my favorite.

I’m still not sure I made the right choice, but it’s the right choice for me right now. But here goes.

I took this shot with my old camera — a simple five-year-old BenQ point-and-shoot before I even knew what shutter speed was — and while it’s not the most technically sound photo I’ve ever taken, it resonates with me very closely.

Every summer, from the ages of 11-15, I bought a season pass to Canada’s Wonderland. For five straight summers, I would spend my summer days (when I wasn’t working, of course: I took academic enrichment classes during the summers of my youth) hanging out with friends, living out summer love (ah, teenage heartbreak), eating overpriced food, carrying out pranks (that got us kicked out of the park a few times), and riding the roller coasters in the July and August sun.

These days, I don’t get out to Wonderland all too often. When I hit sixteen and started spending my summers working part-time jobs in order to earn money for school and life, I stopped buying season passes and stopped going to Wonderland almost entirely. One day in August 2005, however, I had the chance to visit the theme park with my coworkers. It was then that I became intensely enthralled with Psyclone, a simple-yet-exhilarating thrill ride. I knew at once that I wanted a photo of the ride, so I pulled out my camera and snapped a shot while the contraption was in mid-swing. The result was the photo above.

Not only does this photo reflect a stroke of luck that the only photo I happened to take of the ride that afternoon came out to be somewhat decent, but it is a reflection of the many summers of my youth where I stared up at these rides alongside best friends, schoolyard crushes, and complete strangers while I waited in line to have my own chance to soar.

Thanks to Posterwire, I recently learned that the Key Art Awards announced their nominations for excellence in movie marketing this past week. You’re all aware of how much I love movie posters, so I figure it’s only fair for me to share some of my comments on the nominees this year.

While the nominees include television spots and trailers, today I’m going to focus simply on posters. I might write another post later about the trailers. So here’s a quick look in images at my personal winners in each category. Read more after the jump for my thoughts.

Action-Adventure Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for Crank, Superman Returns, Poseidon, Apocalypto, and V for Vendetta. While the movie itself was mediocre at best, I must admit that the poster for Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is perfectly suited for the mood of the film: dark, foreboding, and with a sense of hope clouded in desolation.

Animation Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for A Scanner Darkly, Renaissance, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Monster House, and Cars. Seeing the trailers and the posters for Renaissance made me want to see the movie so much that I ended up hanging out with director Christian Volckman before the screening just to make sure I got there on time. The movie may have been a bit of a disappointment, but the marketing was fantastic.

Comedy Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for Running With Scissors, Borat, Thank You for Smoking, Nacho Libre, and Little Miss Sunshine. Thank You for Smoking gets everything right when it comes to design — from the title sequence to the awesome toy smoking babies they handed to the press — but in the poster war, it gets nudged out closely by the simple but so effective poster for Little Miss Sunshine.

Drama Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for Clean, Hard Candy, Little Children, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. As one of my favorite movie posters of all time — and not surprisingly the winner of Posterwire’s poster of the year — Hard Candy says everything you need to know about the movie. The plot, the mood, the tone: it’s all there in that small image.

Horror Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for Descent, The Hills Have Eyes, Pulse, and two posters for Saw III. I’ve never been a fan of horror movies, and I always felt that horror film marketing really tried to appeal to a very different audience than myself, so it’s shocking that I was so quickly drawn to the poster from Saw III. Unlike other horror posters (including the other Saw III poster) my choice in this category is subtle enough to be truly creepy.

International Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for The Black Dahlia, The Prestige, Paris je t’aime, and two posters for Borat. There is nothing Paris je t’aime could do wrong in my eyes: the film itself was a masterpiece, and the poster reflects the cosmopolitan nature of the movie perfectly with the mish mash of Europe’s city of love into a heart. Go watch this movie. Then, go buy me a copy of the poster for my birthday.

The CBC just recently launched a new show to try and come up with the Seven Wonders of Canada. While I still feel the number seven is pretty arbitrary — would they have not been better trying to come up with the Thirteen Wonders of Canada to reflect every province and territory? — I do think the exercise is a good one. Trying to find the most emblematic physical icons of the country is not an easy task, but it forces Canadians to look at the world around them with more interest.

The judges have narrowed the list to 52 nominees, and are now asking Canadians to vote on what they feel best represents the Seven Wonders of this country. I’ve already gone and voted, but before you do, here is the criteria that the CBC lays out:

1. Essential ‘Canadian-ness’ - historically significant, character filled, valued.
2. Originality/uniqueness of the pitch and place.
3. Spectacular physical site or amazing human creation.
4. Ability to inspire.
5. Range within the final seven - diversity of location, type of wonder.

It may be easy to simply vote for the places in your region or the most renown places, but it’s worth going through every pitch to really make up your mind before voting. Here’s a couple of notes I jotted down for myself on some of the nominees (and do note that these do not necessarily make up my final seven votes) while I was trying to decide what, if any of these, were the Seven Wonders of my Canada.

• Manitoulin Island: The fact that one of the largest islands in the whole world is actually in a freshwater lake in Ontario says a lot about how the amount of fresh water in Canada, and how the ‘culture of the lake’ has influenced of every Canadian, particularly the many cottagers in Ontario.
• Niagara Falls: Sure, it’s overdone and cliché, but there are few natural landmarks in the world that are as iconic as Niagara Falls. Plus, it’s only an hour or so away from home.
• Northern Lights: If you’ve actually had the opportunity to experience this natural phenomenon in person, there would be no question that it is one of the most awe-inspiring natural wonders that anyone could ever experience. It doesn’t quite fit with criteria number three, but it is still truly amazing..
• Sleeping Giant: I spent a good chunk of my summer (for the Canadian Scout Jamboree) when I was fourteen across the lake from the Sleeping Giant in Thunder Bay, and it’s impossible to shake the image of the massive but beautiful natural wonder from my head. Plus, they made a song about it that is still stuck in my head after all these years.
• The Canoe: My fondest memories in my life are the times I have spent on water: kayaking in the Pacific or canoeing and portaging in Ontario’s provincial parks. The canoe was instrumental in the founding of Canada, and continues to be one of the best ways to travel through the lakelands of this country. No one in any other country that I have spoken to has such fond memories of a piece of watercraft.
• Montreal Bagel: My preference for the New York bagel aside, I must admit that I quite enjoyed a nice smoked meat sandwich on a Montreal bagel. And while I would argue that a poutine is more indicative of Canadian food, the Montreal bagel is still unique.
• The Rockies: The best (yet expensive) way to escape the Toronto smog? Take a trip to the mountains. The Rockies are breathtaking and mind-blowing, and provide some of the best views of the whole country. With a wealth of great mountain towns and amazing sports opportunities, visiting The Rockies is like disappearing into a small, and normally cold, Garden of Eden within Canada.
• Trans-Canada Highway: When we first departed Victoria at Mile Zero on the Trans-Canada Highway with the goal of following the highway all the way to the other end, I didn’t realize just how expansive the trail would be. Stretching across all ten provinces, the Trans-Canada Highway represents not only an achievement in road-making, but also connects people of different cultures, languages, and lifestyles from across the country.
• CN Tower: You might not think much of Toronto’s clichéd phallic symbol, but it’s hard to argue that’s its not one of the premier images of Canada. It’s what tourists come to see when they come visit — hopefully sticking around to see all the other amazing things we have here too.
• The Stanley Cup: You want to know why this trophy is emblematic of this country? Because nobody outside Canada really cares about it. Sad, but true: Canada’s obsession with hockey is a bit excessive at times, but because of it, the Stanley Cup really “belongs” to us.
• Confederation Bridge: You know that game where you lift your feet off the floor of the car for as long as you’re driving on a bridge? Well, you can’t do that without destroying your leg muscles on the Confederation Bridge. Spanning over 13km, the bridge crosses the gorgeous waters between PEI and New Brunswick, and as you drive over it, you can’t help but marvel at the redness of PEI soil and the shimmering ocean surrounding both provinces.
• Haida Gwaii: Before I had seen the nominee list for this CBC endeavor, the first place the popped into my head was the Queen Charlotte Islands. I may be biased because I studied anthropology out on the west coast, but there really is no better visible reminder of this nation’s rich native history than Haida Gwaii. If you’re up for a visit, let me know: we’ll grab some kayaks in Victoria and paddle up that way.
• Nahanni National Park: The fact that Nahanni is a World Heritage Site should almost assure it as a shoe-in for one of the wonders of Canada. Sadly, not enough people make the trip north to the Northwest Territories to check out one of the most stunning places in the country: the Mackenzie Mountains are a sight to behold and provide ample opportunities to explore them by canoe and watercraft. Nahanni truly has everything: glaciers, forests, lakes, mountains, hot springs, waterfalls, and a remarkably diverse eco-system. If you’ve never been there, make sure you visit, but first be sure to vote for the national park as one of the Wonders of Canada. Trust me on this one.

Okay, I’ve said my piece. There’s so many more places I wanted to comment upon, and there’s even more places I haven’t yet had the chance to visit, but my fingers are getting tired from typing. Your turn to go vote. And if you do end up voting for the CN Tower, head over to blogTO and tell them why you did.

It’s funny how one of the most-asked questions when you meet someone regards your employment. For some reason, nobody goes around asking people “what’s your favorite color” or “what is your favorite thing to do on a rainy afternoon.” (Though those questions could come off as creepy, I now see.) Instead, the question that always gets asked upon meeting someone new is, “so what do you do?”

I’ve always had a bit of a problem explaining my career to people — especially to my dad’s friends, to whom the only acceptable professions are engineer, doctor, lawyer, or accountant — but I never realized just how tricky it was until I came across Heather Armstrong’s post on her similar troubles:

Over the last few weeks several neighbors have stopped by to introduce themselves, and invariably they are older than we are, more established, and have careers in medicine or law. And when they ask what we do, both Jon and I sort of flinch and exchange a quick look that says IT’S YOUR TURN TO LIE. We’re web developers, we say, and that is never enough, they just can’t leave it alone, and one of us will try to explain that I have a website. This thing. That I do. And because we’re being all coy about it I just know, from the very worried expressions on their faces, that these neighbors think that we run a porn site.

Now, unlike Heather, my website is not my career (I’m definitely not close to being that popular), but I do make a living doing “stuff” on the web, and I’ve always had difficulty in describing to other people — and sometimes, to myself — what it is exactly that I do. So here’s my feeble attempt:

My current employment is working with content on the web. Within that framework, my expertise (and current work) lies in two domains: content design and content conception. In the domain of content design, I currently work in interaction design and information architecture, building the backbone for the effective presentation of content on the web. In the domain of content conception, I currently work in creating strategy (PR-related) for clients in order to make sure their message gets delivered accurately, and also do a fair bit of writing and editing of web copy as well.

Wow, that was a mouthful. The problem is, while many of those terms might be standard for some of you, many of the people I speak to draw a blank. So the explanation turns into a multi-paragraph essay, or I just resort to the easy cop-out: I’m a web-writer. Easier that way, I guess.

Anyone whose daily commute takes them through the BCE Place Galleria in the Financial District has undoubtedly had the opportunity to see the wonderful photo exhibition, The Celebrity Persona, presented by Ryerson University as part of Contact 2007.

Presenting digital reproductions of photos in Ryerson’s Black Star Historical Black & White Photography Collection, The Celebrity Persona showcases images of famous icons throughout history that are unmediated and natural. In a society where celebrity is ‘constructed’ through premeditated photo-ops and unquestioned airbrushing, the exhibit is refreshing in the way it captures celebrities in an unprocessed and genuine manner.

There were two things that resonated with me while experiencing the exhibit: the first, obviously, was the raw nature of the photographs. While all the photos were well-taken and professionally crafted, there was a sense of genuineness and unpretentiousness that permeated from the exhibit. Instead of standard biographical excerpts about each celebrity, the blurbs that accompanied the photos reflected the content of the photo itself and told me a bit about the personality of each of the pictured icons.

The second thing that piqued my interest was how the exhibit dealt with the concept of celebrity itself. Instead of simply putting forward photos of the Lindsay Lohans and Paris Hiltons of the time, the exhibit meshed together scientists, politicians, actors, singers, royalty, inventors, dancers, painters, and authors from various time periods over the past century. Names like Janis Joplin and Erno Rubik sat next to Ernest Hemingway and Jacques Cousteau, making the conception of celebrity one that is fluid and diverse; The Celebrity Persona not only recognizes the difficulty in identifying what exactly makes a famous person, but forces the viewer to consider the question as well.

Next time you’re heading for a quick dinner at Richtree Market Restaurant or just passing through the district to visit your bank, be sure to check out the exhibit.

The Celebrity Persona
Allen Lambert Galleria at BCE Place
181 Bay Street, Toronto
April 30 - May 25, 2007
Daily 8AM - 10PM

There’s no surprise that for television, Friday night is effectively known as the graveyard. People have better things to do — like go out and have fun — than stay inside and watch television all evening. Networks have been known to put television shows that they plan on retiring (giving them one last gasp of air before eventual cancellation) on Friday nights so they can consecrate prime time slots from Monday to Thursday on series that rank high on the Neilsen ratings, and thus, bring in more advertisers.

Now, I’ve been clamoring for NBC to save the excellent serial Friday Night Lights for quite some time now, and it seems as though they listened, to a certain extent: the show has been extended for another season. Sadly, NBC seems to have taken the name of the show a bit too literally and has left it to rot in the dreaded Friday 10pm slot.

Despite all the critical acclaim, Friday Night Lights never really found its place in the ratings but grew a very large and vocal fanbase. The decision to renew the show for a second season was supposed to give FNL the chance to get some legs and climb the ratings, while not hindering NBC’s plans for extending its programming. Sadly, by putting the show in a non-lucrative time slot, what NBC has done has effectively destroyed any chance that FNL had to gain viewers and climb in the ratings. More and more people will now be forced to download (or TiVo) the show — including its loyal viewers — because of other commitments on Friday nights, and by the end of the season, NBC will have no choice but to cancel the show.

Instead, NBC could have committed more money to marketing this excellently-written show that appeals to a much larger target audience than simply football fans or high school students, and bumped it to a later slot (9pm?) on Wednesday. The extra episode of Deal or No Deal is a novelty, while FNL could have anchored the night, surrounded by two new shows (Bionic Woman and Life) that were already gaining buzz and would mean additional viewers for the renewed season of the football serial.

As a true fan, I’ll be watching FNL every week, but I’m sad that NBC doesn’t realize the caliber of programming they are throwing away by moving the show to Friday.

The Guardian has yet another list to share with the world, but this time it has been voted on by readers. Coming after a remarkably strong pool of foreign film in 2006 (the five films nominated for the Oscar in the foreign film category were all among my favorite films of the year), The Guardian asked their readers a simple question:

What are the greatest foreign films of all time?

Now, I know the concept of ‘foreign’ depends on where you are, but lets for this purpose assume that a foreign film conforms to the Academy’s definition of the category. In that case, I do feel as though the readers of The Guardian actually did quite well.

I’m happy to say that I’ve seen 39 of the 40 films on the list — and I’ve added Pather Panchali to my Netflix queue already — and I will agree that they all deserve to be honored as fantastic foreign movies, despite the fact that many of them never got released in North America and most of them never had any real box-office success. However, if it was up to me, there would be a few movies added to that mix that were, in my opinion, egregious omissions:

• 8 1/2 (1963): Sure, the list includes La Dolce Vita, and rightfully so, but Fellini didn’t stop making wonderful cinema after that movie. 8 1/2 is just more proof of the director’s absolute brilliance.
• Before the Rain (1994): I don’t know much about Macedonian film or about director Manchevski, but the circular rhythm of the film and the intense emotion it captures makes it stand above many other movies that came out that year.
• Through the Olive Trees (1994): Kiarostami is a master of capturing the landscapes that make up strong characters in his movies, and this is a perfect example of the Iranian director’s skill.
• Children of Heaven (1997): It’s no surprise that Majid Majidi is one of my favorite film-makers, and this film is one of the major reasons of my appreciation of his work. This, along with Color of Paradise, are easily two of the greatest foreign films of all time.
• The Celebration (1998): If I’m not mistaken, Vinterberg’s movie was the first certified Dogme filim and was such a departure from film-making at the time that it stands to be remembered as ground-breaking.
• Amores Perros (2000): Inarritu’s most genius piece of film-making was also his breakthrough to the Hollywood film scene. Working with Arriaga’s stunning script, Inarritu ties together three seemingly separate stories seamlessly.

Of course, this is only my humble opinion, but I do find it interesting that the above films, each critically acclaimed in their own right, were overlooked by the Guardian readers. I wonder what that says about them…

I hear it all the time: “nothing I learned in university prepared me for the harsh realities of the real world.” And while it makes me cringe, I can understand where the sentiment comes from; learning in academic institutions differs greatly from the learning most of us undertake in our daily lives.

I’m not saying that institutional learning as it is right now should be abolished, like some people are saying, because I know there is value in the academic institution for many people. What I am saying is that the over-importance that society places on the university is a bit bothersome. Want to be a graphic designer? Go to a design school. Want to be a writer? Go and write. University isn’t required.

All that aside, university can be a place where you gain valuable life skills, but it does require the help of mentors and peers who are willing to share their knowledge with you. In a recent post on Lifehacker, a professor asked:

Some of my students will finish the university this year and leave the dormitory. We’ve spent 5-6 really fine years together and I’d love to give them some tips before they enter life. What is the thing you wish you’d been told when you just left school?

There are some great tips and pieces of advice in the comments of that post, so I won’t regurgitate them here, but I will admit that I was lucky going through my school career. Instead of listing what I wish people had told me before I graduated, here’s a quick list of what I did actually learn while in school that keeps helping me today.

• “Learning doesn’t happen in the classroom, it happens when you connect with people.” (Nico Bethel, High School Anthropology Professor)
• “Literature isn’t just the study of stories, it’s an examination of who people are and who they could be. In essence, literature is the study of life.” (Alvaro Ribeiro, University English Lit Professor)
• “Forget what’s directly in front of you: search for the motivation behind every decision.” (Sarah Salih, University English Lit Professor)
• “If you really want to learn something, do it, experience it, live it. And never stop learning; never stop living.” (Matt Rise, High School Biology Professor)
• “Letting other people down is not good, but can be fixed. Just make sure you don’t let yourself down.” (Ami Mehta, Friend)
• “Don’t think what you learned in school only applies to your future career. Instead, everything you learned in school will help shape your every experience of your life.” (Joshua Barker, University Anthropology Professor)

Those are a few I picked up, and there are more. I feel blessed to have had great teachers, mentors, and friends. And before I stop, here’s a great quote that I just heard in a poem by Shane Koyczan that I felt sums it all up pretty nicely.

I’ve got three separate degrees from different universities, but the most valuable thing I ever learned was to believe people when they say please.

How so very true.