Summer Job

Grades are in! How'd everyone do? For myself, I didn't do as well as I had hoped, but I'm still satisfied with my average.

School may be over for the summer but the learning never ends! Now it's all about trying to earn enough money for another year of tuition. I've got a job on a salmon farm for the summer (5th summer in a row) and it usually pays my tuition for the next year. Then I just have to worry about living expenses.

Salmon farming is a pretty cool job. The only job I can think of that would be more "west coast" would be something in the adventure tourism industry. It's a sea farm way up in Quatsino Sound, about an hour by water taxi from Coal Harbour (still on Vancouver Island but very remote). I stay there in the farm house (pictured) for eight days, then I'm home for six. Off and on till school starts again.

I'm mostly just feeding the fish and doing routine farm maintenance stuff—keeping the boats running and the farm tidy. The thing I love most though is the wildlife. There are always eagles flying by and sea otters hanging around. Now and then a pod of orcas or a humpback whale even show up! When it gets warm enough I'll be able to jump in and join them! Not a bad day at work, eh?

What's Next?

I am pleased to say that my three exams are finished with, all of my assignments are turned in and I am free for the summer! One of my exams, admittedly, gave me quite a lot of grief, but I'm in recovery now!

I plan to continue this blog through the summer, and to try to keep it frequent, though I'm not sure as frequent as before. I intent to have a lot of grand adventures this summer, including music festivals, road trips and camping so I'll tell you all about those when they happen. I'll be working on a salmon farm this summer to pay for next year's tuition, and I'll let you know how that goes too.

What's everyone else doing for the summer? any travel plans? Comment here and tell us what you're up to. Many students are perhaps going home, or travelling to other places, and I'm sure a lot of you are going to be working hard for your tuition or your loans.

I wish you all the best, and good luck with the rest of your exams!

Portal 2010 a complete success!

On Tuesday, the fourth year Publishing class finally launched our baby into the world! Portal 2010 is a literary magazine that showcases the best writing of VIU students (from what is submitted), and this is Portal's 15th year as a class-run literary magazine; one of the only magazines like it in Canada. There are many other university literary magazines, but not many that are published in-class, so this experience is very unique. The class sees the magazine all the way from business plans and acquisitions, to ad sales, layout and the launch party.

This year's launch was an enormous success! As the final featured guest of this year's Poets on Campus series at the university, Kate Braid read from two of her books, A Well-Mannered Storm: the Glenn Gould Poems, and Turning Left to the Ladies, accompanied by cellist Allannah Dow. A favourite moment of their performance was when Dow began to sing lines from Rumi at the end of one of the poems. It was so unexpected that the audience was looking around to see where the enchanting voice was coming from!

Awards and scholarships for the Creative Writing department were given out, and Kevin Roberts was honoured for his many years of teaching at VIU since its conception as a small, community college. Kevin Roberts, who is retiring this year for the second time, was instrumental in the conception of VIU's Creative Writing department, having created many of the second year classes.

The launch part could not have run any more smoothly and I am very proud of the conduct of our class, and the product of all of our hard work. I would like to invite everyone to pick up a copy of Portal 2010. Until Friday we will be selling it in the library, and it will of course be available in the VIU bookstore. You can visit our beautiful new website created by our web designer Liliana Gaeta, where our new cover will be displayed as well as audio recordings of some of the works in the issue.

Thank you to everyone who had a hand in making this experience memorable, and good luck everyone on your exams next week!