IMC@SLC

IMC@SLC (Integrated Marketing Communications at St. Lawrence College) is a focus program in the Limestone District School Board. Students in this focus program come to St. Lawrence College and, with their classroom as a MacLab room, get team-taught by both college professors and a high school teacher to gain 4 high school credits (one is a co-op) at the same time as gaining 3 college credits. Students in this course take part in a co-op the entire month of May where they go to a business in the community and become their official marketing person during that month.

So far I am really enjoying this course. Learning about marketing is much more interesting than I thought it would, and may actually use this in the future as a job to make money – not necessarily a career, though.

As far as the experience in this course for getting to know how college is; I think that is by far the most valuable lessons we can learn here.  Being in the actual college, being taught by real professors, and having the college expectations applied to your work, deadlines, etc, is a great way to get prepared for college. And the best part, I think, about it, is that because students ARE technically still high school students while in this course (but also officially part-time students at SLC and have full access to everything but the gym membership) if you have extreme issues with work, or meeting deadlines; their is a high school teacher to buffer a little bit and help mediate any issues you may have and advocate for you. So you are not completely overwhelmed by being thrown into college because you do not have to move from classroom to classroom and get lost, or have all the expectations with absolutely no room to move those; you get to “safely” have a backup, but are still being “baptized by fire”.

I think IMC@SLC should almost be a mandatory part of high school, or a course similar to it should be made; because high school just does NOT prepare students enough for post secondary.

Rant: Mental Health Stigma

Sometimes media can be a useful tool for teaching.

But other times it can be a harmful stigma-creating machine.

Mental illness is heinously portrayed inaccurately.

Things like making horror movies where the serial killers have Dissociative Identity Disorder – or D.I.D (previously Multiple Personality Disorder) – and one of the alters committed the crimes and they have no clue. Shows that have school shooters with Bipolar, etc. These types of things create misconceptions and breed fear around mentally ill individuals; because of course they are a danger to society, right?

Eating disorders are glamourized, and self harm is usually only shown as suicide attempts. Eating disorders are not what the  UK`s version (which came before the American version) of Skins shows. People with eating disorders do not smile and giggle a lot and say “Oh wow, how lovely!” all the time. They are not “cool” things to have and will not make you beautiful. They are also not chosen. Eating Disorders are serious mental illnesses that have been proven to have some genetic origins in many cases. Self harming is not necessarily a suicide attempt; it is just a misguided – and addicting – way of coping with extreme pain, distress, or other things.

Depression is not simply “feeling sad” or being “down” all the time – and it is not always so obvious as the commercials about “Depression Hurts” seem to say that there are so many physical symptoms that make depression something anyone can see in an individual  It’s a chemical imbalance in the brain, and often the most depressed people seem happy and normal because they pretend they are O.K.

Why do people with mental health issues (of any form) pretend they are alright, you ask?

Mostly because of the stigma. For example, someone who has DID may be scared to tell people because people are misinformed and do not understand it. Humans are afraid of things they do not understand; and when the media heightens this fear – it has ugly repercussions for suffers of mental illnesses, and how they are treated.

Media needs to quit creating harmful stigmas and use its power for healthy education instead.