Tag: social

Categories
Community Student Life

Book Club at Concordia

Carleen Loney/THE CONCORDIAN @shloneys

Hit your reading goals for 2023 with the Concordia Book Club

Are you a bookworm and don’t know what book on your TBR list to attack first? I have a perfect solution for you: Concordia’s very own book club. 

Journalism student Alexandra Blackie started the Concordia Book Club this winter semester and is looking forward to welcoming many new students to the club. 

Blackie wanted to join a book club when she started university in September, but the only book-related club was Concordia’s comic book club. “No hate to the comic book club but that’s not really my niche,” she said jokingly.

The lack of an actual book club was Blackie’s motivation to kickstart the initiative and form Concordia’s official book club. 

“It did take a little bit of a long time for it to get started. There were a lot of back and forth emails with the CSU,” Blackie explained.

Blackie wanted to create a social space that did not feel like school. She wanted a space where book-lovers could come together to read novels that are either popular right now or ones that not a lot of people know about.

In this club, Blackie doesn’t dictate the books that the club members have to read. 

“I don’t actually choose the books, I gave them a stack for the first meeting that they chose from. We just go through a TBR jar. Everyone sent me titles that they want to read and we go from there,” Blackie said.

In terms of how the club functions, Blackie came to a mutual agreement with the other club members that they would read one book for the entire month. At the end of the month, the club regroups in a meeting.

“We picked our first book at our first meeting over Zoom out of a pile that they chose from. For the next book that we read, we are going to pick from a TBR jar,” Blackie explained. 

This month’s read is The Guest List by Lucy Foley. 

The club currently has 22 members.  As the weather warms up, Blackie hopes to host in-person events like picnics where the club can discuss their current reads.

For interested participants, you can go through the CSU active club portal and email a_blackie@icloud.com.

Categories
Student Life

BYOH: Be your own host the next time your friends plan a get-together

Graphic by Jennifer Kwan

You’ve finished all of your assignments, you’re sitting down to enjoy a budget-friendly bowl of instant ramen and you get a text: huge party at one of the hottest (and most expensive) clubs in Montreal and all of your friends are going.

Graphic by Jennifer Kwan

You check your bank account, realize you don’t even have enough money to buy a Red Bull and come to the sad realization that you won’t be attending the night’s festivities. As students, we’ve all been in that dreaded situation.

However, there are student-friendly ways of getting together with all of your friends that will cost little to no money at all. The solution? Throw a dinner party.

Gone are the days when dinner parties were reserved for awkward family get-togethers and your great-aunt Ruth’s bridge club. Dinner parties are cheap, effective, and more intimate than a bar setting, and I’m going to guide you through the steps to have one of your own.

1) Planning

Every good party takes a bit of planning, and dinner parties are no exception. Make a guestlist and stick to it. Easiest way to send out invitations? Electronically, of course. Because it’s eco-friendly, free and effective. Ask a couple of your closest friends if they wouldn’t mind helping you out in order to make your party a hit. Adding a theme makes it more fun for your guests and helps with your decoration choices. A simple black-and-white theme can transform a dull party into an elegant night with friends.

2) Decorations

With more and more websites like Pinterest and Craft Gawker popping up every week online, making simple decorations for a party has never been easier. Paint twigs and sticks you find outside and put them in a simple water glass with a coloured ribbon wrapped around it for an easy centerpiece. If you have a couple of Mason jars lying around, throw some tea lights, which can be found at a dollar store in a pack of 25, in them and place them around the dining area and kitchen to create a mellow mood lighting. If you’re worried about messes and want to add a little panache to your seating area, cover your furniture with cheap cotton fabric, in keeping with your theme, and all of those little crumbs and spills will be that much easier to clean up. Decorate plastic cups using nail polish — it comes prepackaged with its own brush and dries quickly.

3) Food

I’ve always been a fan of a good, old-fashioned potluck. With a potluck, you don’t end up going over budget making sure all of your guests have full tummies. Make a list of the courses you intend to serve — appetizers, salad, soup, main course, dessert — and save them in a Google Doc that everyone attending has access to. This makes it easy for people to see what others are bringing and also cuts down on an inevitable abundance of chips. All of those black plastic Chinese food containers can suddenly be put to good use by displaying appetizers or holding cutlery. If potluck isn’t your style, there are still ways to keep your dinner fun and have your guests feel like they’re doing their part. A make-your-own-pizza party is a great way to allow guests to be as creative as they like. Pick up a package of frozen, pre-made pizza crusts, some veggies, pepperoni and cheese at the grocery store, lay it out on a table or counter and let your party experiment with different toppings.

4) Drinks

The easiest way for you to satisfy your guests’ needs in regards to drinks is to ask them to supply their own. There’s nothing wrong with a good old BYOB. If you want to serve wine with dinner, pick up a box of wine — they’re not all bad, but if it’s undrinkable, turning it into a spritzer with some Sprite or carbonated water is a good way to save the day. All of a sudden your cheap wine becomes a bit classier. Always have options for people who don’t drink alcohol; whether it’s a couple of bottles of soda, ice water or a homemade punch.

There you have it! A couple of elegant ways to throw a party on a student-friendly budget.

Categories
Student Life

False claims say millennials have replaced good old-fashioned dating with casual sex

Millennials, also known as Generation Y, have been taking more and more criticism lately. The Time’s article entitled “The Me Me Me Generation” and various articles by both The Globe and Mail and Huffington Post are questioning the way this generation comports itself.

Photo from Flickr user DavidMartynHunt

With this, too, Millennials have been given the label of the “hookup generation;” the generation in which dating is dead, and all that they are interested in is instant, casual sex and endless one-night stands. But is this generation really having more sex than the last?

Two recent studies, one by Miriam Hospital’s Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine (focusing mostly on female undergrads), and one by the American Sociological Association at the University of Poland, have revealed that this generation is in fact having just as much casual sex as the last.

These two studies surveyed up to 1,800 college students on their sexual behaviour, ranging from the students’ frequency of one-night stands, to sex being had with a significant other.

What was found was that in comparison to the responses from a previous survey of the 1988-1996 generation, the amount of sexual partners of the Millennial generation was shockingly similar to those of the previous generation.

According to these studies, 31.9 per cent of the earlier cohort reported having more than one sexual partner in the past year compared with 31.6 per cent of contemporary college students.

So then why are Millennials still perceived as being a culture of hookups and casual sex?

With apps like Tinder and sites like OkCupid.com, it certainly has become easier to find more and more “sexy singles in your area.”

It’s possible that previous generations were having as many one-night stands, they simply did it the old fashioned way—meet someone in a bar and stumble home together. These apps and websites are simplifying the “hook-up” process.

What was found quite definitively in both studies is that the Millennial generation is “more likely than those from the earlier era” to report their sex lives. And, with the boom of Twitter, Facebook, and various other social websites that condone detailing every aspect of one’s day-to-day life, it’s certain that this generation has greater means and opportunity to advertise their having of casual sex.

But are we dating less? The Miriam Hospital study showed that “slightly more than half, 56 per cent, engaged in sex with a romantic partner,” at one point during the year, suggesting that students are still going through the somewhat committal dating process.

According to the study, it is also true that this generation is “coping with a new set of norms in which marriage occurs later,” and so it would follow that they are also talking before dating and getting into serious relationships.

Looking solely at the study results from Miriam Hospital and U of Poland, is seems that the claims that Millennials are the hookup generation are false.

Whether or not this generation has submerged itself into a hookup culture is debatable however what can be said is that we are certainly more quick to flaunt it our “action” than previous generations.

Exit mobile version