Category Archives: Inspirations

12/17/13

Being human.

If I have learned anything in the last semester, it is that being human is an astonishing experience.

For my nursing school prerequisites, I took an Intro Psych course along with a year-long Human Anatomy & Physiology course. As a fifth year student taking first year courses, I was pleasantly surprised on how much I got out of these classes; it is an experience I would not have gone through had I taken these courses in my first year. Although on many occasions the lectures were dry and the information based on very basic facts and concepts, taking these courses allowed me to better understand my own body and mind to ultimately appreciate just what it is I have as a human being.

Biology taught me how the cells in my body worked in conjunction with one another to keep my body breathing and moving. Having started training in Capoeira in my spare time, I felt more in tune with my own body as began to not just see improvements in my strength and flexibility but understand how my body worked to allow me to move the way I should move in Capoeira. The human body is extraordinary in its efficiency and beautiful in its intricacy. Opening a door, taking a deep breath, even being sore took on a whole new meaning for me as I learned about human physiology. My body is built with so much potential in what it can do if I only put my mind to it.

Psychology explored the human mind in not just the brain but the human consciousness. I learned a great deal about human memory, learning, and behaviour which I found quite applicable to my own day-to-day life. Much like with biology, I began understand why I did the things I did and how thoughts came to be. More than anything, I finished the course with more questions than answers – more possibilities than conclusions. Through biology, I learned how the human body was adaptable in making slow changes and improvements. Through psychology, the power of human consciousness seemed endless.

As humans, we have been given these wondrous gifts of a body and of consciousness. To be able to utilize both of these things to as far as our hearts will fuel them is something of a grand vision I want to spend my entire life exploring. Just what can my body do next? What can I think up with what I constantly absorb from the endless colourful stimuli of this world? I don’t want to take for granted for what I have by default as a whole human being. The possibilities are numerous as the stars in the sky.

 

10/10/13

A shift in perspective.

My life hasn’t changed. I still have midterms to study for. I still wonder if i’ll get into nursing school and what the future graduation will bring. I still question if I’m doing enough sometimes – if I’m still growing as a person and marching forward.

But now there’s this extraordinary joy I feel as I go through each day now. The smallest things give me the warmest fuzzies. Nothing really ‘happens’ but yet I still smile at odd times through the day. I don’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone. It’s a delicate balancing act, but I feel at peace with myself. No overthinking. No worrying. No self pep-talks. Just me.

Nothing in particular happened today. It didn’t have to.

01/16/13

This is what learning should be.

On Wednesdays, I only have one class. It’s not even really a class – it’s like a gathering for everyone in my degree program. We meet. We discuss one topic together and we put our ideas to action. These classes always leave me in a state of inspirational euphoria as I imagine the grand possibilities that we as students can make into reality. I think that’s what I loved most when I transferred out of the Faculty of Science. I found a community on campus to which I could belong to. And I’ve learned more here by talking to people than I ever have in any silly 300-student lecture.

I’ve taken this take on learning as a collective – teaching one another – as my favourite way to learn anything. Being abroad for a year, I can safely say that although my lecture classes in Norway were fascinating, they weren’t the most valuable tidbits of knowledge I gained on my journey. 4-hour bus rides talking with a friend about our passions and education, debating the similarities and differences between Norway, India, and Canada in terms of development issues, along with the street smarts I gained whilst travelling solo are what I keep with me. Conversation. Action. The world outside the standard lecture classroom – one with interaction and discussion are my teachers.

So courses I’m taking this term?

1. Urban Studies seminar. Completely interdisciplinary. Free reign of course readings, discussion and research topics. The professor sits among us as we face each other in a circle. And we talk. We learn.

2. Urban Research lab. This is hands on. Interdisciplinary again, which is great. You get to work with numbers and facts although knowledge of such things are not a prerequisite. You learn from each other and work together to work on specific research projects based on issues in the real world. Research that can actually impact reality.

3. Public Policy. This is a lecture style. But it’s interactive. Half the class is brainstorming and talking amongst ourselves. We are expected to think and speak up instead of absorbing everything like silent sponges. How it should be.

4. Directed Studies. This is an amazing opportunity to work on a project outside of the classroom and get credit for it. For this, I chose to research and survey how to deal with the logistics of creating a student Community Kitchen in the new SUB. Hands-on project. Practical experience. Interaction with the outer community and other stakeholders as a team. No silly lectures. And I get credit for it.

I guess if I’ve discovered anything by my last term at UBC, it’s how I learn best. How I think anyone should learn. I know so many students who aren’t aware of how flexible their university education can be. It doesn’t have to be one straight way. Yes, I’m lucky to be in a faculty (and program) that supports such flexibility, but I know of so many people in other faculties who have found a way to make their education their own too.

So in a really rambling way, what I’m trying to say is that we should really think of education as something out of the box called ‘the classroom’. Or at least, reshape what we think of a classroom to be. In the end, students will come out being better thinkers, leaders, and more confident individuals.

10/7/12

Trials & Revelations in the Field

Field Work is a whole different terrain… even more so in an entirely foreign country where you are considered an alien. It’s been around 3-4 weeks since I have arrived to work at Seva Mandir, a local Indian NGO based in the district of Udaipur. I arrived (as always) bright-eyed, ready to take on whatever challenges would await me during the next 2.5 months. 4 weeks later and I wonder if I’ve even begun.

Here’s the thing about doing field work in an NGO: no one arranges anything for you. You’re on your own. It’s the real deal. Do with it what you will. I thought I had known about this reality long before arriving in my new internship. I really did. It’s only now that I have realized that although I was fully aware of working dynamic at Seva Mandir, I hadn’t really accepted it. I was still stuck in that academic setting where I had so comfortably settled in the last 16 years. In school, you do your homework, study for your tests, get good grades and eventually get praised for all of your hard work. Classes start at 8 and end at 3. There’s a structure to your day. Here in India, I’ve been thrown into the polar opposite. I never have a structured 9 to 5 day – I could be up at 7 in the morning one day and sleep in until 10am another day. There are no set deadlines – except perhaps the looming departure date back home on the other side of the world. No one gives you a set assignment or test. As for praise – you go without. You learn to motivate yourself without reassurance from anyone else.

In short, even 10 years in university could never have prepared me for any of this.

Let me back up and explain just what I’m doing here at Seva Mandir. I’m currently working in the Education Department looking at the NGO’s Youth Resource Center (YRC) program. These YRCs are placed in villages all over the Udaipur district, with the main goal of ‘youth empowerment’ at its core mandate. YRC Facilitators at each YRC organize various activities, discussions, and training programs to teach youth about important government policies, provide a space to talk about social issues, and provide youth with vocational skills in order to better sustain their livelihoods. Such a program aims to shape youth as confident, responsible citizens for future generations. At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. In reality, many YRCs are popularly seen as Youth Recreation Centers – attracting small children rather than the large 14-25 age group.

So why isn’t the program working? Many studies and evaluations were conducted, which revealed that there is a clear lack of structure in the YRC program, which makes it difficult to manage and coordinate the countless number of stakeholders involved with YRCs. Hence the main message is often lost and everyone pretty much does whatever they see fit without any effective results. This is when I come in. My goal is to formulate a study to design an effective monitoring and mentoring system between all of the program stakeholders. Basically, create a backbone for the YRCs. It’s a big job, let me tell you.

So I did what I could. I thought long and hard about my research design. I thought about what I would have to do to get the data from the field. I made a plan and countless interview guidelines for all of the stakeholders I would speak with.

Now, I have a Reporting Officer. He’s pretty much my go-to person for this entire project. He’s the current YRC Coordinator and very much dedicated to his work. He even helped all of the interns in getting oriented in Udaipur in his free time. So I go to him and show him everything I have designed and get a thumbs up. Cool. We discuss the arrangements for getting interviews and focus group discussions going in the villages.

And then I wait. And I keep waiting.

Responses from villages are slow. I can’t actually speak with anyone directly because I don’t know Hindi. So I rely on my Reporting Officer and he makes some calls. Any trips I go on are usually arranged by him. But things are still slow and a week or two goes by. The lack of quality translators that can work with me for interviews are frustrating and it takes me a good week to get used to calling potential translators, conducting interviews together as a team, and actually getting some quality data. It’s basically a huge learning process.

Today, I returned from the field with my Reporting Officer, with only one out of three interviews done for the day. Since I hadn’t been feeling well, we had to postpone the discussion to my dismay. So on the way back to Udaipur City, I thought I would have to go back to playing the waiting game when my Reporting Officer asked me what my plans were for tomorrow (Monday). I shrugged and told him I would type up some field notes and wait. Immediately, he made very constructive suggestions for me to take on for the week. Visit the villages you haven’t gone to speak with the YRC Facilitators directly. Go to a village every single day. Get them to understand the importance of your study to the YRC program and have them arrange interview dates for you.

I told him that I couldn’t speak with most of the stakeholders and that I needed help.

He told me get a translator and also added that I should have worked with a translator to make phone calls on my own.

I had to blink. I had not thought to do that. The phone calls, anyway. I never once thought I could take the project into my own hands like that. Faced with the giant language barrier, I had accepted that I had to get a green light from the people around me to get anything done.

Thinking on it now – why? Why didn’t I do exactly as my Reporting Officer said? More importantly, why hadn’t I taken the initiative to think of the solution on my own? I realized on the ride home that I had somehow made myself believe that I couldn’t do anything in such a foreign environment. I had hesitated and resigned to doing really nothing for a good 2 weeks. This wasn’t the ‘me’ that got shit done back home. And by straying from my usual determination, I felt like I had let my Reporting Officer down. See, it’s not his job to tell me exactly what to do. The reason he called me into conducting this study was to get an objective perspective on the YRC Program. This, as the YRC Coordinator, he could not do. In this respect, I was a colleague rather than a subordinate. For me subconsciously, I saw my Reporting Officer as my teacher rather than my mentor. I was writing notes and staring at the blackboard instead of taking the initiative to see him as an advisor to see now and again as I conducted my own study. Instead of asking him to arrange interviews for me, I should have been asking how I could arrange the interviews myself.

So 4 weeks in, and I’ve had a revelation. Enough playing at the drawing board. I want to show my Reporting Officer that he picked the right person for this enormous task. Seven weeks left. Eight villages and numerous stakeholders to speak with. I’ve barely begun. It’s time to hit the ground running.

 

09/5/12

Colour My World.

It hit me just now: the realization that I live in two different worlds.

First is the world I currently live in. Here, my current home is in India. In this country, I wear Ali Baba pants, hop on and off auto rickshaws daily, and brave places that cannot even be called ‘toilets’.  I haggle for everything and bobble my head.  I walk the crowded streets of Jaipur, with a cow passing me every so often so nonchalantly. This is my day-to-day life at present, but in this surreal world, I’m never still. India is only my current stop. This is a world where I’m travelling constantly to new and wondrous places. Meeting new people from all over the world. Experiencing new languages and cultures. This is life I currently live.

Second is the world I left behind. The world as I knew it back in Vancouver, Canada. Where I grew up. Went to school. Had friends, family, and a job that I loved. Sometimes, I close my eyes and try to remember a regular day for me in that world: I slam the snooze on my alarm and groggily shoo my dog out of my bed as I get ready for school. Here I wear jeans, a nice scarf and pea coat, paired off with a pair of black boots. Standard UBC fashion. I race other transiting students out of the skytrain, down the escalator to get first in line to the direct bus to my school campus every morning and hit a couple z’s on the bus ride there. I hurry to my classes, maybe see a friend during break. On weekends I drive to work. I have a permanent layer of chlorine on my skin. Sometimes I walk. Go for a run in the rain. Tumblr. Cram for midterms.

You know, after reminiscing a normal day for me in my world from a year ago, I’m not so sure which one is more surreal – the one then or this current world of mine. There are a lot of spaces in that old world of mine where I have a ton of time I just spent… procrastinating. Daydreaming about this world now. Even though I have a lot more free time abroad (that’s with my fair share of lazy days too), it feels… fuller. That old world is just a flash of events that don’t seem to interlink – as if I was really dreaming that old life and flashing through the mundane bits. There are definitely parts about it that I miss. But more so than that, there is so much more that I want to bring into that old world of mine from this current one. Every day I spend in India is so full of colour (quite literally – the women here wear the brightest scarves and saris) and when I think back to Canada, everything I remember is in hues of grey and blue. Did I really spend all that time cooped in my room? Why didn’t I go out more? Make use of my time? Get to know my own city?

I often think about the day I return to Canada. November 28th. I wonder how I will feel. How I will see the city. My job. My school. My home. There’s a part of me that’s afraid to go back to that old world – afraid that all of the colour I’ve soaked in this year will fade away with the Vancouver rain. I’m afraid that I will find everything the same as I left it.

I don’t want to see it that way. I feel right now, these are two different worlds that belong to me, but they are very much detached from each other. No one in Canada can really know the people I’ve met or the things I’ve experienced out here just like my friends here haven’t a clue about my life back at home. I’m afraid that when I go back, I’ll feel so detached from that world after experiencing this one.

If that old world is in a protective bubble, I stepped out into this new world eight months ago. I don’t want to just go back inside. I want to pop the bubble. I want the colours of this world to seep into my old one. I want my worlds to merge.

So I hope that when I fly back to Canada, I will see everything with new eyes – as Vancouver is only the latest destination in my travels. A new colour in my life.

09/1/12

First Step.

Today is September 1st, 2012. I am sitting alone in the guest house canteen in Jaipur, India waiting for my breakfast. An omelette, two pieces of toast, and a fresh plate of mangoes and bananas. The weather outside is hot and sunny – a complete 180 degrees from when the monsoons hit the city only a few days ago.

Sometimes, I can’t believe I’m here.

I began my journey abroad on January 26th, 2012 when I drove down to Seattle, USA with my mother to catch a solo flight to Oslo, Norway. I left behind everything I knew – my family, my friends, my job and school – in my home of Vancouver, British Columbia. To this day, the most terrifying and heart-wrenching experience I’ve had has been the moment when I left my mother through the airport security check in Seattle. From that point on, my life changed entirely. In the span of eight months, I have been to sixteen countries on three separate continents – witnessing the wondrous Northern Lights in Tromso, Norway to weaving through the dusty ancient streets of Marrakech, Morocco. Never in my dreams would I have imagined that I have would have done so much this year. And I’m still not done yet!

To commemorate the memory of surreal life this year, I got a tattoo on my left foot: Wanderlust.  My favourite word. I had wanted to get this done for a long time. The pain I went through to get this inked into my skin is something I hold sacred. The faces of all of the people I had met and the things I had experienced came rushing back to me and all I could do was smile (I’m pretty sure my friend and the tattoo artist thought I was crazy). It was as if at that moment, it was not ink but all of these precious memories that were being etched into my skin. It is a permanent memento of this amazing year and for many more travels to come.

So today is September 1st – at least 12.5 hours ahead of Vancouver that is. People are heading back home from their summer jobs and trips, ready to roll into a new school year. It’s surreal knowing that I won’t be joining them.  A year ago, I was in my old room wondering just what 2012 would hold for me. Now I’m in my room in India pondering the same thing.

So I look at my foot.

03/7/12

Tuum Est.

In Latin, it can be roughly translated into “It is yours.” The University of British Columbia wears this motto with pride, displaying it publicly on signs and crests wherever possible. For a long time, I haven’t really liked this translation.

“It is yours” makes it seem like everything in the world is mine for the taking – as if I’m entitled to the best of opportunities out there. It takes out the element of hard work required in making those doors open for myself. It’s saying I don’t have to lift a finger to get ahead in life. “It is yours” takes my education and all my good fortune in life for granted.

The truth is: it isn’t “mine” – at least not from the get-go. That’s why I like opting for an alternative translation that seems to better encompass my UBC experience and the way in which I try to live: “It is up to you.” No opportunity is a ring presented to me on a velvet pillow – it is a door to be wrenched open, to prop open with the tip of my toe, as I make my way through life.  Studying at UBC – studying abroad – merely being present in these environments won’t accomplish anything. Such settings provide me new avenues to explore and critical examine and re-evaluate constantly what I want to do with my life.

So tuum est! The world is large and full of as many wonders as horrors. It’s up to me to find a way to experience as many of the former, while critical working towards dealing with the latter. No one is going to make that happen for me.

03/5/12

Lost in the clouds.

I remember back when I used to chatter on and on about my passions and dreams to any passing person as I stared up at the night sky full of stars. The words always came so easily as they rolled off my tongue, brimming with confidence and longing. It’s as if saying them out loud would bring me one step closer in reaching for those stars.

I think somewhere along the line I’ve forgotten that part of myself. Or perhaps, now that I have taken off the ground, I am now lost in the midst of misty clouds, unable to see the stars as clearly as I once did. I don’t chatter on and on about my passions any more. I’m not as confident in my words as I once was. It’s as if I left a part of me on the ground that day as I took off into the sky. What happened to that girl?

If I know myself at all, I’m sure she’s still there chattering away where no one can see or hear her, staring up at the endless expanse we call sky.

01/15/12

Strength and Love

Without either, I would not be the person I am today. Strength and love are what I have after almost three years of learning to love and rediscover myself every day.

Strength lifted my head high towards the clouds when I felt so alone on the ground. I grow stronger every day. With every obstacle I face, I trip and stand taller than ever – ready for more. And in those moments when I feel as if I’ve lost all my strength – when I have fallen – I have love. I receive such wonderful love and support from my family and friends; I can count on them to give me a helping hand to reach for when I have tripped and can’t get up on my own. They give me my strength. Love is what gets me through each morning as I stand before my bathroom mirror. The lifelong romance I have with myself my most valuable relationship in my life. It is with this self-love in which I build my self-confidence, bravery, and determination in the pursuit of my many passions. It is self-love that returns me back to my roots – my identity – and what I stand for when I feel lost. And through self-love I am constantly rediscovering and reinventing myself. It is through learning how to love myself that I grew to understand and embrace being alone. Self-love taught me strength and it opened me up to embrace the love of those around me so I didn’t have to always be on my own. Truthfully, I am never alone anymore.

This morning, upon waking, I looked out the window up at the winter sky overhead. An endless blue. So full of wonder and at night, so full of stars. The stars dazzle me with the inspirational people I have met and the precious experiences I have thus gathered. These are the things that shown me the beauty of the sky. But it is the expanse of clear day blue – so limitless and serene – that excites me most. I ask myself what is up there waiting for me. I’m almost ready to sprint as I spread my wings for the first time and take off into that beautiful sky, ready for anything to be thrown in my way. After all, with strength and love, I am unstoppable.

01/15/12

The inspirational spoken-word poet, Sarah Kay

Sarah Kay touched my heart when I first saw her perform at the Student Leadership Conference this Saturday. Her every word, movement, and intonation was precise and delicate, yet had so much power and passion behind it. I couldn’t help but tear up by the end of her performance. I felt like I could do anything as her words brought in me a truly wonderful breakthrough.

Below is a lovely TEDtalk/performance Sarah did that is worth every minute watching. The video doesn’t do justice – this woman is absolutely phenomenal live.

“If I should have a daughter…”

Needless to say, spoken-word poetry is now on my bucket list.