Goodbye March 30, 2010
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I’ve been working a term job at the university which is nice because you know it’s coming to an end soon, it’s easy to get to and the co-workers are friendly.
It’s been an interesting experience because I’ve never worked in an office or been paid to talk on the telephone, it’s also one of the highest wages that I’ve ever earned. There are a lot of good people who I work with who I run into on campus now but realistically we probably wouldn’t have met outside of work.
The end of the job is good because there are two weeks left of university and that means time to cram and finish up. The only downfall is what job comes next?
Cheers,
Here’s to a happy new beginning at work and a friendly goodbye to some good people.
Friendly faces March 25, 2010
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This is a collage that I made of a friend called Erika, the desk was my attempt at Photoshop
It’s been a week and a half since I’ve had this dreaded head cold and there’s only two weeks of class left until exams, talk about bad timing.
Fortunately this year I’ve recognized a couple of familiar faces from my first year around campus.
Sometimes you can’t put a name to a face or even figure out how you know that person. That’s been the case for me throughout this year at school, I’ve seen people from high-school, art classes and from study abroad meetings.
One girl who I met in my first Sociology class with John Bratton always pops up in the same places that I go to. I’ve ran into her on campus, downtown, at play and art shows and even interviewed her for stories because she’s a member of the student union.
It’s always nice to catch up and spend time talking to the people who you think you’ll have a good time with but never actually make the time to talk too for whatever reason.
I’ve been trying to put a name to put a name to a girl’s face in my politics class for the whole of the winter semester. Today I went to Heroes, the campus pub, to grab a bite to eat before heading to class. I ran into her there and then it hit me while I was people watching. I smiled thinking that nobody would notice feeling slightly crazy for having spent so much time debating who this person actually is, she walked up and sat down beside me. She had been trying to do the same thing all semester too. We met at the compulsory study abroad pre-departure saftey and awareness prep meeting. She went to Africa and she’s graduating this year. Turns out that she’s going on a trip with the other friendly face who I told you about earlier.
That cliches true for a reason, it’s a small world after all.
Kamloops View from a campus parking lot
What’s journalism for? March 24, 2010
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Scruming with Denis Edney, attorney who represents Omar Kadhr, for reporting class.
Journalism’s purpose is to inform. I can’t say that it educates, but it informs. It has many positive influences. It informs and irritates the public to the point of taking action. However, journalism can also be petty and cheap.
There is a lot of bullshit contrived of popular culture and it is important to sift for the gems.
Tiger Woods received publicity for triumphant gains in the sports world, but not nearly as much publicity as when his infidelity was exposed. If Barack Obama severed international relationships with Saudi Arabia or chose a path of infidelity or polyamory what would we read about fist?
There are a lot of challenges to be considered when evaluating what journalism is for. Who responds to it? What is expected from it?
Carving a world of growing trees and running water in a pristine valley with a literary scalpel is purely self indulgence and is reserved for only the most hedonistic writers who put pen to paper, or in my case, fingers to keyboard.
Journalism differs from writing fiction because society expects the media to portray current events in a truthful, unbiased, and interesting way. I constantly find myself becoming frustrated when writing facts with no personal opinions or hypothetical solutions. Words come easily to me in differing mediums where the tool becomes more expressive, interpretive, and entertaining. When the medium can be smudged and ingrained in its’ environment, like charcoal rubbed hard into paper, the image creates a set of words and ideas that tests our opinions and knowledge.
Pursuing a career as a journalist may present conflicts of opinions among people who you’re interviewing but you also gain a lot of rights that activists and scholars don’t have, how many people can ring a political organization and expect to hear and answer for your questions on a deadline. Have you ever dealt with bureaucrats before? I’m not saying it’s easier as a journalist but I am saying you have a right to privileged information, again sift through for the gems.
In journalism, the viewer expects that the writing will be boring and unbiased so that the words don’t offend Holly the house wife but simply deliver the content to her in the quickest and driest medium available so she can live out events that she wouldn’t have experienced if not for text, photographs or videos.
The simple truth of the matter is that the viewer will never understand or appreciate what has happened to the girl who has been raped, the mother who found her children murdered or the family who lost their loved ones in a terrorist attack or at war.
Journalists are first responders but we aren’t trained to deal with the emotional turmoil as well as people in the police force or hospitals, but we do.
There is power in being aware and informed about what is happening in the world but this information is only powerful to the activist, the scholar, the mother or the grandfather who is willing to initiate social and political changes and fight for what they believe in.
Journalists fight to get information and verify facts, but how are the masses responding? It’s easy to turn the page of a newspaper when cacophony fills our ears and disgust builds in our stomach.
Waking up to somebody molesting you isn’t something that one has the ability to repress in the long term; eventually emotional turmoil will force itself outward. There have been 617 journalists murdered for their work in the last six years and that number is rapidly growing. But is their death provoking change?
After Veronica Guerin died in 1997 the Republic of Ireland issued new laws that allowed the police to arrest criminal suspects with money that cannot be explained, but when Bush declared war with Afghanistan nobody in North America flinched.
I saw school children on the news a few nights ago protesting to keep their primary school open and that gave me a splinter of hope that could be guarded or kept but quickly the idea was cynically disregarded.
Should journalists risk their lives to get information? Or if we grow tired, numb, and exhausted from writing with no hope remaining within ourselves for society, should we look at more examples like Dennis Edney, who has been representing a Canadian citizen who has been tortured and imprisoned abroad with little help from the Canadian government?
There are a small group of individuals who remain dedicated and annoyed with current affairs and they want to better political unrest.
There are people who are setting car bombs off in far and most often foreign land. The people who are healthy and compassionate will always show up to fight for what they believe in, but is anybody else truly listening to the series of problems being portrayed on the media on a regular basis.
It seems a lot easier to change the channel when we see something that disturbs us and speak with friends about rainbows and butterflies, or draw our attention to writing fluffy books on orangutans or spinach, or any other obscure hobby or interest that allows society to filter out the unnatural things that people find disturbing and don’t want to experience on a regular basis.
Journalists have the power to decide the angle of a news story but it’s entirely up to the viewer to filter out the crap. Some of my peers seek Journalists have the power to decide the angle of a news story but it’s entirely up to the viewer to filter out the crap. Some of my peers seek entertainment and enlightenment, but they appear desensitized and detached while I remain a girl who is not the typical prototype of a conformist 20-year-old female who has grown obsessed with marriage and procreation, but one whose interest in international affairs, politics, and education in a simple attempt to make a difference in the world.
Perks of writing reviews about concerts for the Kamloops Daily News = Free concert Tickets and friendly company from J-School.
Where should I live? March 23, 2010
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Visiting the Louvre in Paris during spring break of my second year at University (during study abroad).
When I was living abroad, as a study abroad student, I always explained that things in Scotland or the traveling that I did in other parts of Europe to my friends back home as either really good or really bad.
It’s never anything in between the two because it always felt extreme.
When you’re traveling you encounter places and people that you might never have dreamed of and the result is usually the same thing. It’s either really good or really bad –there’s not a lot of grey areas to climb through.
Now that I’m back at home in Kamloops and back at university I feel like my description for travel applies now more than ever.
When you’re abroad it’s a lot easier to accept these intense conditions because every now and then you’re rewarded with a beautiful view, a funny crowd, a building or even an art gallery.
And now that I’ve switched my area of study from Visual Arts into a degree in Journalism I’ve realized that it’s not where you are that matters. It’s important to be with people who think, speak and act like you do, it took me awhile to figure that out but that’s what university is about
Karen and I in a Elgin cathedral, Morayshire Scotland
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What happens after graduating from high school? March 11, 2010
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In Grade 12 there’s a lot of pressure about what your next step is going to be but the problem is that most people don’t have a clue at that age and I was no exception to that rule.
Luckily during 2007, my grade 12 year, there was something called a dual credits program that introduced you to university and it meant that I could take a course of my choice at the university and get credit for it at NorKam Secondary School and Thompson Rivers University.
All you had to do to be accepted was write a short essay explaining why you should take the course that you’re interested in so I gave it a shot and applied to an introductory course about sociology. And I was accepted to start courses during the winter semester of 2007.
My first class was with John Bratton and I walked away from a well-structured lecture that I actually wanted to listen too, and that never happened to me in any of my classes at the high-school.
Who knew that a lecture about where you buy your coffee affects politics in such a dramatic way?
I grew obsessed with going to his classes and despite my initial concerns of looking like an outsider, nobody knew why I was there until I spoke up about my age and naivety to campus life. The other students were friendly and eager to offer me tips about first year university after seminars and before his lectures.
At the end of the semester I was excited, intrigued, confused and concerned about what I should do about after graduation because I loved taking classes but I didn’t know what job that I wanted.
Starting university level courses without a knowledge of what MLA, APA and ASA from a 100 level English course had proved to be difficult for me during sociology and I was curious to learn more about that than what a standard Google search could tell me.
Retrospectively I realize that it wasn’t hard but somebody needed to show me how to format my assignments and break down the jargon throughout my first year.
I remember talking to Bratton at the end of the course, he asked me how come I chose sociology instead of something else but the truth was simple.
I just wanted to test the waters and see if life on campus would suit me or not and I knew that I loved campus lifestyle. I wanted to start taking classes immediately but I didn’t know what job I would do or what degree to take because there was so much I wanted to learn and so much time that I had wasted procrastinating in high school, don’t lie –you do it too.
Bratton laughed at my comments and he asked me what decision I was leaning towards. I remember saying that four years would be a long time to commit to time at school in a hometown I wasn’t particularly fond of. He looked me in the eyes and replied that the amount of time spent here would pass whether or not I was in school and that I should get the job and the education that I wanted instead of working at a job that and then I realized that there was no logical argument to that comment so I submitted my application.
My first two years at University were a combination of courses in Visual Arts, English and Sociology because my advisor helped me to plan to meet the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts to suit my inability to choose one area to focus on but the truth is that you don’t even need to choose a major until second or third year.
Eventually you learn to grow an opinion and after I had spent my second year in the Study Abroad program in Scotland I came back to Canada and I entered the Journalism program but that’s another story, welcome to combat on campus.
This is me in Barcelona on the rooftop of La Pedrera on a school trip.