By Jonathan Goldsbie

Recently, Torontoist’s father gave us a copy of the Toronto Survival Guide, published by the Holy Trinity Church in the fall of 1973. Impossibly practical and utterly useful, it tells you everything you would ever have needed to know as a resident of or visitor to Toronto in 1973. While there doesn’t appear to be any contemporary equivalent for Toronto as a whole, the University of Toronto—priding itself as always on being a (rarefied) microcosm of the city—has finally reintroduced its similarly-indispensible askastudent service. Whether you go to U of T, are about to go to U of T, or are contemplating going to U of T, you must visit this site, and you will regret not having known about it sooner.
Questions ranging from how to navigate the impenetrable bureaucracy to how be less lonely and/or sexually frustrated are helpfully answered by the mysteriously witty and seductively androgynous aska, whose true identity is carefully encrypted in the bowels of ROSI, allowing him or her a level of candidness you won’t get from any registrar or frosh leader.
“Back in 1999,” says site designer/producer Daniel Goodbaum, “Innis College launched the site askastudent to answer questions about the U of T administration and student life in an honest, sarcastic, and entertaining manner, something never really seen before, and still the only of its kind.”
The old site, while having excellent content, was nearly impossible to find, let alone use, and looked as though it had been designed in 1996.
It has, however, “recently relaunched into something more modern and bloggy. Still featuring the answers to everyone’s questions about university, the site will also have a variety of written features, as well as photos, podcasts, videos, whatever we can come up with.”
Screencap courtesy askastudent