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Upsides of living in Guelph: City with a smaller town feel, university oriented, friendly and environmentally-conscious people, and lots of opportunities to get involved.

Downside of living in Guelph: Perks of Being a Wallflower doesn't play at the Cineplex!

Although I was not able to see Perks on opening day, I came home to Toronto this weekend to volunteer at the Ontario Universities' Fair (OUF) and took the opportunity to see both my family and Perks!  I'll talk about the OUF a little too, but most important is Perks.

After years of anticipation, the movie arrived and lived up to expectations!  For anyone who has read the book, you'll definitely see the parallels as Stephen Chbosky was the director and screenplay writer.  There were some parts that were not developed as they were in the book (such as Candace's relationship with her boyfriend, Charlie's relationship with Patrick, and the poem Charlie gives to Patrick at Christmas), but it still made for an emotional and hard-hitting film.   I found that the minimizing of the darker elements was for the best as it is difficult to balance a film with drama.  In a book with more room for imagination, all of the ghosts are up to the reader.

For those of you that haven't read it, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an epistolary novel (a novel written as a series of letters) through the eyes of Charlie, an introverted freshman in high school that discovers the world outside his own mind alongside Patrick and Sam - two seniors that befriend him.  A "wallflower", Charlie prefers the sidelines to "actively participating" in social situations.  He come to terms with some tough issues with the help of those that accept him and all of his quirks.   

SUPER BONUS: Emma Watson speaks in a non-Brit accent (trailer here).  It's kind of really awesome.

Now back to Friday, the OUF is rather exciting for someone that loves their program as much as I do.  A proud ASCI, I was glad to spread the word about our small program, and hopefully convince some grade twelves to join us at U of G.  I highlighted the perks of being an ASCI, like the ability to combine anything (I really mean pretty much anything) as a degree.  I had some students ask if they could take Chem & Music or Music & Computing.  And the answer was of course yes.  

I also took some time to poke around the other booths and chat to students about graduate programs in Environmental Psychology.  This did not succeed in terms of finding such particular programs, but it did in terms of me finding out a little more about graduate studies applications and feeling pretty good for once about where I am in my university career.  I'll be sure to update on that once I wrap my own head around the excitement of it all.

I'll try really hard to keep up better with posts from now on.  We had no internet at my house for the first few weeks of September, and then school insanity began.  Things are settling down a little, and now that Perks finally got released, I think I can swing it.

I'm off to be infinite for a little while.

-Kamelia