Category Archives: Involvement / Leadership

Events on campus (also, a quick guide on how to traumatize children)

Posted on 19 November 2011 | 2 comments

One of my favourite aspects of university is how there is always so much more going on than there is time to spare.

(And time — there is so much time in university, even though it doesn’t always feel like it. It’s easy to slip between classes to the Chan Centre for a lecture from Bill McKibben, the first of this year’s Terry Global Speaker Series, or attend part of the Robson Reading Series — or at least think about it. Nine-to-five work days just won’t be the same.)

Where do you find the events that interest you? My English department is quite good at emailing us with relevant information and events; I also enjoy subscribing to newsletters that do the work of finding and promoting the kind of events that I like to go to. Three of my favourites are:

And, of course, there’s always UBC Events, the centralized website for discovering campus activities.

Sample events that I wish I had gone to or would like to, if I can make it:

November 15, 4:30-5:30 pm (Global Lounge) – Occupy What? An open discussion about the social movement that has swept the world

November 18, 6:30-9:00 pm (111 W. Hastings) – Ignite the Light: Generational Expressions of Colonization, Social Justice, and the Legacy of Indian Residential Schools

Ongoing until February 12, 2012 (MOA) – ひろしま hiroshima by Ishiuchi Miyako: an exhibition featuring the colour photographs of clothing and accessories left behind by the victims of the 1945 atomic bomb at Hiroshima

There’s a Requiem for Peace at the Chan Centre tonight at 8 pm, presented in conjunction with the above exhibition. Student rush tickets are $10 at the door, but unless I can rush through my current pile of academic responsibilities, I shan’t be going anywhere (sad face).

On a completely different note, Jimmy Kimmel issued a challenge to parents to pretend they ate all their children’s Halloween candy and videotape their reactions. Here are the results, and I have to say, that last child is the boss:

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Posted in Around Campus, Involvement / Leadership, Recreation

Celebrating Halloween

Posted on 26 October 2011 | 2 comments

It’s that time of year again when gravestones pop out of the grass in people’s front lawns, bats are suspended across porches, cobwebs dangle precariously around doors and great yellow CAUTION signs are taped across front entrances. Some particularly enthusiastic houses have even acquired a coffin or two!

For people who’ve grown up with Halloween and take these preparations for granted, my giddiness must seem bizaare charming. Of course, when you consider that Halloween was almost non-existent when I grew up in Hong Kong, it’s a lot more understandable. The one and only time I went trick-or-treating, I took the lift up and down our block of flats to knock at each door, but only a few opened up and even fewer gave me candy (not being prepared for this very North American tradition in the middle of Asia). I think I ended up with two handfuls.

But here!

I once saw a tiny Asian girl clutching her pumpkin bag with a very intense expression on her face as she moved her rapid little legs as fast they would carry her over to the next door of magic candy-giving goodness. You could tell how serious this mission was to her, and I thought, ‘That would be me if I were five.’

Being too old for trick-or-treating (sigh), I’ve been looking for various other ways of having fun. A couple that I’m planning on doing this year are:

Visit the Dunbar Haunted House

One of the Marine Drive Residence Advisors told me about the Dunbar Haunted House, a famous haunted house that spends three months setting up for Halloween and is run by over a hundred volunteers. They raised over $67 000 for charity last year. Wait times can apparently go up to an hour and a half but I want to take a look anyway.

Go Trick-or-Eating!

Trick-or-Eat is possibly my favourite Halloween cause. Join a team (or make one with your friends), dress up in your costume of choice and go door-to-door asking for non-perishable food items on Halloween! All food donations go to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society. I participated with Trick-or-Eat in 2009 and really enjoyed it — people are wonderfully generous with food at this time of year (and a few also gave me candy, so I guess I got my trick-or-treating experience after all!).

(UBC students can just look under Locations/Vancouver/University of British Columbia to join, but you don’t have to be a current student to do this — I’m going with a bunch of my brother’s friends, all of whom are alumni.)

Have you got any other suggestions for Halloween that I might like to check out? Let me know in a comment!

Oh yes, my best friend from home just reminded me that it’s Diwali today. Happy Diwali!

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Posted in Day Zero, Involvement / Leadership, Recreation

Feeling creative? Submit to The Garden Statuary!

Posted on 12 October 2011 | 2 comments

The latest excitement in my life was applying to and getting on board the editorial team for The Garden Statuary, a fairly new student-run journal for creative and academic work. Hurray!

I haven’t done this kind of editing in four years (proofreading people’s last-minute papers isn’t quite the same…) and am looking forward to seeing the kind of creative work that students are producing.

Which brings me to my next and very predictable point:

If you are even the least bit interested in submitting your work, please do! You must be a UBC undergraduate at the time of submission, but that’s about the only stipulation. (Oh, and don’t plagiarise. Because we all know how uncool that is.)

We accept academic essays, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, stage/screenplay, artwork, photography, illustrations, and even film and music. For more details on submission length and format, check out The Garden Statuary website. The deadline for the Term 1 issue is Monday, 7th November.

Alternatively, if you would like to sign up for the email list, just fill out a comment with your name and email below (your email won’t be displayed).

I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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Posted in Involvement / Leadership, Recreation

UBC Learning Exchange Trek Program

Posted on 28 September 2011 | Comments Off on UBC Learning Exchange Trek Program

What a flood of posts in the last few days — but I couldn’t ignore writing about the UBC Trek Program as yet another great opportunity to get involved.

The Trek Program focuses on connecting students to the community outside of UBC. Offering a number of volunteer positions in various schools and non-profit organisations based in the Downtown Eastside, Trek is an excellent way of breaking out of the university bubble and creating connections within the local Vancouver community.

Trek asks students to commit two hours a week for at least four months (one term). Having done a Reading Week Project at Grandview Elementary in 2008, I’ve wanted to make time for a more long-term commitment since, and have finally signed up as a literacy mentor. This was something I did in my first year through the One to One Literacy Society that I’ve missed.

If you’d like to be a literacy or maths mentor to elementary school children, these are always in high demand. There are also lots of positions in soup kitchens, working with the elderly, and in neighbourhood houses. Athletes and Science students are also always especially sought after.

If any of this sounds like something you’re remotely interested in, check out their website for more details and register for an orientation session! This will definitely be something different to what you experience on campus.

(Also, I think everyone who doesn’t hate children should do the Reading Week Project at least once in their UBC career.)

Comments Off on UBC Learning Exchange Trek Program

Posted in Involvement / Leadership

Coming back to starts

Posted on 14 August 2011 | 2 comments

How amazing is it that email these days can store everything you’ve been saying and receiving for the past several years? Not only that, but being able to search and rediscover things you’d forgotten you’d even done.

The other day, I found the exact date of The Ticket that brought me away from Hong Kong and dropped me in Vancouver to begin a new life. This week marks the fourth year since that landing date. I’m a little in wonder of it all: of how my parents were willing to let me go so far away from them, of how lucky I am that I could, of the growing space between that frightened, eager eighteen-year-old girl I was then and the (only fractionally) less frightened, less eager person I am now.

Rereading my panicked emails to my friends and family about the items I ultimately forgot to pack, I remember all those questions racing through my head. Will I be able to make friends? Will I succeed at university? Will I be able to take care of myself? After all, the only thing I’m confident of making for breakfast is cereal…

But also the hopes: I hope I meet great people. I hope I have classes that change how I think in whole new ways. I hope I get to travel and see even more of the world. I hope I love it all.

I want to turn to myself from four years ago and say: you will, you will, you will.

You’ll meet some of the most amazing, admirable individuals you’ve come across in your short life, as long as you put yourself out there. You’ll find those classes that blow your world away, as long as you keep challenging yourself. You’ll have more opportunities to do what you dream of than you’ll know what to do with, so choose the ones that speak most to you (and don’t try to do them all, because that’s not possible).

You’ll find real friends after your heart, with patience, effort and a little bit of luck. You’ll succeed at university when you follow your interests, when you put in the time and effort, and when you ask questions and seek advice for when you don’t get things right. And you’ll totally learn how to fry an egg. Never mind if it doesn’t look pretty.

You probably won’t love it all — that’s a little too much to ask. Life has its way of throwing bits of grief your way when you least expect it, after all, and the imperfections are what throw the better bits into appreciative relief. But I promise you will love your UBC life if you give it the best chance possible by coming with an open heart and an open mind.

View from Gage

The very first view I got from Walter Gage where I stayed for ASSIST (now Jump Start)

UBC Jump Start starts this week. A longer, more intensive orientation than GALA for students coming from abroad (and this year, also for aboriginal students), this was where I first threw myself into UBC and met some of the most awe-inspiring individuals you’ll still see all over the place on campus (those that haven’t graduated this year, anyway). Here is where I met one of my very good friends to this day, where I met another to whom I just said goodbye, and where my world began to open up just that little bit more.

Even if you aren’t going to Jump Start, their blog is a good resource for those of you who want to get a head start on understanding the great, mad adventure that UBC can be.

(Maybe it’s all the reminiscing I’ve been doing with friends since first-year, or maybe it’s the short hair I haven’t had since 2007, but I keep thinking of all the things and resources I wish I’d known about earlier, or did find useful when someone told me. In light of that, I’ll be mentioning at least one per week for the next few months. Like how to take a bus! — I remember how stressed I was over this activity most Vancouverites take for granted.)

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Posted in International, Involvement / Leadership, Orientation