First j-fellow fun

After months of anticipation it's finally begun.
We had our first journalism fellow lunch today in the private dining room at Massey College today with the master, John Fraser, and the college administrator Anna Luengo. My fellow fellows (har, har) are Elizabeth Church from the Globe and Mail, who's written most recently about post-secondary education, Susan Mahoney from CBC Radio, a senior producer for Tapestry and Ideas, and Jeff Warren, a freelancer who's written books and was a founding producer for CBC Radio's The Current. We're joined by associate fellow Yong Ho Kim of the Kookje Daily News in Busan, South Korea. In a special treat, Ann Dowsett Johnson, freelancer but formerly of Maclean's (think university rankings, which was her baby if I've understood it correctly), who is this year's Atkinson fellow, has an office here at Massey College and will be joining the j-fellows at our lunches and other events throughout the year.
As the only fellow (aside Yong Ho, who moved to Toronto with his wife and family) who was not working in Toronto, I am the only one living at Massey College for this coming academic year. I've already had my mind blown by some of the amazing graduate students who call Massey home as they're completing their studies and we've only had a few meals and one evening activity to-date.
The task of the moment however is to start wrapping our heads around course selection. EC has narrowed down some interesting polisci and arts courses, JW has a smorgasbord of philosophy and arts, SM has found some neat music stuff and YHK is heavily into climate change. I've had some discussions with the associate dean at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, but today was a big realization that it's been a long time since I last did this. I should have prevented some disappointment by reading the course schedule before the course calendars as some of the descriptions I was most intrigued by are not scheduled for the coming academic year. Three out of four graduate-level courses whose calendar descriptions had me salivating are not on the schedule.
So back into the course calendars I go...