Category — Second Year

Say hello to my beautiful new plant named Pansy (because the flowers are in fact, pansies). She will take her place next to my beautiful, albeit dying orchid Lola (I’m trying to revive her, I swear!). Pansy came into my family through a random act of kindness from another small team of Advisors in Vanier. Actually, from the same house duo (Okanagan/Cariboo) that I lived in as a resident last year. I love that everyone who knows anything about me knows how much I love owls and giraffes. Pansy’s so beautiful and I’m so excited to have her join the Valentine famjam.

Unfortunately, Lola's a little withered.

I love her already.

And where the heck has she been?

I’m sorry I’ve been so out of the loop. The chaos of my life picked up almost as soon as I landed at YVR after Winter Break. I figured post-Reading Break was a good time to catch you up on all the shenanigans I’ve been getting up to.

In January, I kicked off the month with the ‘F’ Word Planning Committee Retreat with the Women’s and Gender Studies Student Association. The ‘F’ Word Conference is a FREE conference on April 28th, 2012  and a chance for WAGS students, and students from other faculties and universities to engage in some awesome discussions with various panelists, student-led workshops presentations and  community organization workshops. I’m the Communications Co-Coordinator, so my job is to build and maintain the website, Twitter and Facebook accounts, and the print media with my wonderful partner-in-communications. So that’s been keeping my busy for the past two months.

Jump forward to February 17th, and I’m leaving on a (jet) plane for California. I spent four full days exploring all that SoCal had to offer with my best friend from Ontario (who currently goes to UBCO) and two of her friends. I had been there before with her in 2009, and on a whim asked if she’d be up to Californ-i-a part deux. We went to Santa Monica and Venice Beach (where I did all my shopping),

Santa Monica

the Natural History Museum (where we took a slight unplanned detour through the University of Southern California),

The cutest little guy at the Natural History Museum

Hollywood Blvd (including Grauman’s Chinese Theatre where I got to see the lovely cast of HP’s hand and footprints),

The Trio's prints in Hollywood

Disneyland (I got a picture with Mickey!),

The big "cheese" himself, Mickey Mouse

and the beaches of Orange County. Best (and first) trip of 2012 (but not the last!).

I’ve also had countless interviews and applications to fill out as I try to build some sort of plan for the upcoming academic year and finalize summer plans. As it stands:  1) I will be going to Europe for 5 weeks in May, 2) I’m still looking for a summer job, 3) you will find me back at Place Vanier for another term of Advising before I 4) go on exchange to Australia (Macquarie University in Sydney)! So if you’re looking for me in term two of next year, you’ll have to make the trek to find me. I am so beyond excited! It still feels super surreal and a part of me is wondering what the heck I just got myself into, mostly because it was an abstract idea before it became an actual reality and I’m not sure if I was prepared for said reality to hit my like a tonne of sparkly, beautiful bricks. But I’m more stoked than not.

I have some more interviews and applications to fill out. So, wish me luck and I’ll update you all soon.

Hope you enjoyed your Reading Break!

You should watch this video if a) you love reading hard copies and b) you really love stop-motion produtions.

Welcome to the final installment of my Canadian Conference on Student Leadership adventure! Today’s itinerary (and it’s going to be a lengthy one, so bear with me!) includes: a wonderful trip to Banff and Boundary Ranch, two amazing keynotes and a lesson in “positivism”.

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These updates were meant to be much speedier, but you know how life (the flu, really) just intervenes in all your plans…

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Friday was our first full day of  the conference and perhaps the day I found the least stimulating. We attended five sessions of workshops (one during which I presented a workshop with Kelvin and Wendy) and our first keynote speaker W. Brett Wilson.

To be honest, when Brett Wilson first began his presentation I thought two things: 1) he’s a great public speaker and 2) there is nothing that he is saying that has any relevance to my life. For the first third of his speech he referred a lot to money and profits, topics that I find as interesting as watching paint dry. After the first three presentations, I was worried that this day was going to be a complete write off. But then he started talking about leadership in a way that I could wrap my non-Commerce-like brain around.

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