Hindsight

I'm halfway through my third year here at VIU and today I got to thinking a little about the beginning. I took a year off between high school and university and traveled to Japan, where I taught moral education classes for children. Whatever I learnt in Japan about myself or about the world, the most important thing I gained was distance from high school. I don't mean that high school was so traumatic. University and high school are just such different experiences, and I think that if I had gone straight through, I would have approached them in similar ways. Obviously students who move straight through survive, but I think it must be a little easier if you bring some worldly experience with you.

A colleague of mine mentioned in her blog that she thought it might be valuable to start university "directionless", but I cannot agree. This is, no doubt, the reason so many of my fellow students are in their fifth or sixth years of four-year programs. When I started school, I wanted to do a major in English, and I knew I wanted to be a high school teacher. I'm going to complete my degree in the recommended four years because I had that goal from the start.

Man, this year has been an active one for me! In my first year, I lived in Qualicum Beach with my parents and took the intercity bus to then-Malaspina everyday. I had no time for extra-curriculars because I was always on the bus! Now that I live in Nanaimo I'm an executive member of both the English and the Creative Writing clubs and seem to have time to hit a couple of guest lecturers or poetry readings from time to time! I feel more part of the community than before.

That's what university is for me: community. Sure, I'm learning how to write in my genre and hopefully I'll be able to get a teaching gig when I'm through, but it's the networks I'm developing with other writers of my generation, my contemporaries, that I think will prove most valuable.