Looking Forward

How is the post-strike depression treating everyone? I know I'm not the only one suffering from it. One of my classmates recently described it very well. With our short semestres, we are usually forced to build up a lot of momentum and energy to get everything done in the four months given; it's like rolling a boulder up a hill. With the strike-break, we've lost that momentum just before the peak, and now it's like we have to go from 0 to 60. All of that built up energy dissipated. This is basically how I've been feeling.

While working to wrap up my semestre here at VIU, I've also been planning my escape, so to speak. For the last five years I've kept a summer salmon farming job with Marine Harvest up in Quatsino Sound, and it looks like I'll be going back up there again. I actually leave for the farm next Thursday, so I've had to arrange with some professors who had intended to schedule classes on that day. I'm sure I'm not the worst off. There are students who had planned to start picking up shifts, or leave for work much earlier than me.

I'll be working pretty hard this summer, trying to earn as much of my UBC tuition as I can for the fall. My salmon farming job, plus living with my parents, has allowed me to stay off student loans all through my undergrad, but I'm going to have to go into debt when I move to Vancouver. So, I'll be bouncing between the farm, my parents place, and Vancouver all summer, and come August I'll have to find a new place to live. Haha, but i guess I should be focusing on the present. I still need those grades if I ever want to go to grad school.

The Semestre Abridged

During the strike my school-related anxiety metre reached boiling as the "contingency plans" roll out, and the administration's terrifying scare-tactic emails washed over me. It's only been a couple of days, but I think I've returned to my normal level of disquiet.

Since the strike ended over the weekend I've seen or exchanged emails with all of my profs, and the tendency seems to be toward flexibility, which is extremely helpful. I've gone from four exams to one, and most of my research paper deadlines (I still have four of them plus a poetry portfolio) have been pushed to the end of the month. Professors have been open to negotiating with their classes, adjusting dates to fit our work schedules, and collecting opinions on grade percent distribution.

Things are going well. Still, I hope next year's students don't have to go through the same thing, when the faculty's contract is up next Spring!

P.S. If anyone has been wondering why I so consistently spell the word "semester" incorrectly, it is a style choice. Call it a Canadianism, if you will. It looks better to me when it is congruent with "metre" and "theatre" etc.

Life After Strike

This has been a very stressful time for me, as I know it has been for a great many others, but many of us can have a great sigh of relief now that the month-long faculty strike is over. I was recently accepted into UBC's 12-month secondary education program, to begin in September, but my acceptance is conditional upon my graduating with my degree from VIU. If it had not been possible to salvage this semester I would have had to stay another full year at VIU to finish, and re-apply to UBC later.

As a student it's very difficult to chose a side when you are put in the middle of a labour dispute. We hear the most from our professors because they have the soapbox. Although the administration got better at communicating with students, their emails began very cryptically, and my professors claimed that the information they were giving us was false or out-dated.

It seems to me impossible for students to get a completely unbiased explanation of what has been going on over the last month, nay, further back a  year or more. I'm ready to get back to work, and try to put all of this mess behind me. I hope our professors are ready to do the same.