My Biggest Mistake Applying for Jobs Post-Graduation

Posted on by under Career, Observations and Reflections, UBC

Sorry for the clickbaity title, but hey, we know it works.

I went through four very self-assured years as an English major, hating the “What will you do post-grad?” question but always having some kind of answer: one that would satisfy…

  1. my grandma
  2. my partner’s parents
  3. my friend pursuing a Bachelor of Science
  4. etc.

I won’t bother giving you the half-artificial answers I gave these people, most of whom were genuinely and benignly curious about what kind of life I would have with this kind of undergraduate “training,” if you even want to call it that, but here’s the real answer: I had only but a faint, faint clue. As I approached graduation, I fixated a lot on the people who I knew graduated with English degrees from UBC. Outside of graduate school students, none of them had the same job. Editor at Penguin Random House. Sociology professor. Teacher. Lawyer. Public relations professional. Executive director at a non-profit.

More importantly, none of them planned out the steps to get where they ended up at that time that I spoke to them. I was hyper aware of this fact throughout my job application process, so I wasn’t too worried about the fact that I didn’t know exactly what the next steps were.

In my journal roughly around graduation time, I wrote out all the things I knew I cared about in a professional life, and they were vague, broad things like being community-centred, words-based, team-oriented. Having a work-life balance. Believing in my employer’s mission or cause. This approach was right, but not necessarily helpful at the time when I was applying for jobs.

So my approach shifted, for the worse, toward “not being picky.” Despite my confidence that I would be some kind of okay, I also knew that I didn’t know what was really out there, what I was good at, and what the world wanted from me. So I applied for jobs thinking I didn’t really have the room to be picky. In other words, I applied for jobs that I knew I wouldn’t take even if I was made an offer, which put me in difficult positions, because I would either get offers that felt like I should accept but didn’t want to, or I couldn’t commit fully to a hiring process, which really shows during an interview. Employers can tell when you’re bought in, and when you’re not.

Here was my biggest mistake: I should have, and could have, been picky.

I want to emphasize that what I’m sharing here is my specific experience. I know that this isn’t the case for everyone, so take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, and what I’m saying is: Have optimism, but it’s not going to be easy. Applying for jobs was draining. I shouldn’t have been, but by June, I felt discouraged and impatient. I also wanted to be earning money. And, I can’t emphasize this enough, applying for jobs was so much work. I am no stranger to the job application process: the nature of getting jobs through UBC, whether through co-op (which I didn’t do) or internship programs or Work Learn (both of which I did do), is you have to apply for multiple positions. So I was used to applying for multiple jobs at once, but I cannot stress the dramatic increase in volume for post-graduation job applications versus during school, for positions meant only for students.

I kept a spreadsheet to keep track of jobs I applied for, which I’m not saying you have to do, but if you know me then you know that lists and spreadsheets and planning and tracking is just generally kind of my style. Largely due to my “don’t-be-picky” strategy, I ended up applying for over 50 jobs until I got an offer for a position I was excited about at an organization that I believed in. Had I known at the beginning what I know now, that number would probably be cut in half.

So, how did my application process change? After doing a few interviews (over the phone and in person), getting one offer and a few rejections, and doing a little bit of travelling, I realized that I needed to stop applying for jobs I didn’t see myself accepting, ever. If I didn’t like it from the posting, I wouldn’t like it during the interview or even if I get the offer.

I also started focusing on the opportunities in front of me. I got so caught up in jobs that I thought were such a good fit that when I got invited to interviews for other jobs, I would only half-commit to those interviews because I thought other invitations would be coming. They didn’t.

When Dixon showed up as an opportunity, I genuinely thought I didn’t have much of a chance, based both on my experience over the last couple of months and how (un)qualified I thought I was. Despite what I thought, I was invited to an interview. I did my research (unbeknownst to me when i applied, I had two friends who had worked at Dixon). I went to the interview, and at that point, I knew that my predictions didn’t really amount to anything, so I wasn’t holding my breath. I had also, around the same time, interviewed for a digital internship for a private sector job that I was pretty confident I would get, and I would have accepted either, but I knew I wanted Dixon.

I accepted because–and I can’t emphasize this enough–Dixon had such a good reputation in my community, and the people were obviously fantastic from the get-go. Everything else fell into place perfectly around that: I would be challenged in this position because, even if I am qualified (which I am), it’s a step up for me. That was another reason I accepted. Yet another reason was that the position was only four days a week. I could have been making more at another job with full-time hours, but this way I would have time and energy to develop professionally in other ways, or time to devote to myself, or I could keep teaching skating, which would make up the income that I lose in working only 28 hours a week.

But at the time that I accepted, these things weren’t obvious yet. I mentioned earlier that I had been feeling discouraged and impatient: these were factors, and I can’t deny that. I wanted to start making money, and I would have accepted the next offer I got at that point, especially since I was being pickier in my process. I got incredibly lucky with my situation, but I also won’t diminish the fact that I worked hard to be able to get here.

I planned out almost every hour of my four years of undergrad. So you can understand my frustration with this fact, something which I knew but didn’t really learn until this spring: there is no exact science to applying for jobs, or being offered jobs. Sometimes it really is just timing. Fit. Luck. Things that are completely out of your control. It sucks. But it’s not so dreary as all the Grown-Ups told me when I talked about my English degree. My biggest takeaway from this experience is a real faith in the Universe in being able to work things out, if not in ways that you expect. More often, actually, in ways that you don’t expect. So be patient. Trust the process. And, especially if you’re a liberal arts major, be brave. Be open to the possibilities, and be especially open to the possibilities you can’t even imagine.

Finding the Starting Line

Posted on by under Fitness

Yesterday, July 27th, marked a month of consistent running for me, except for the week after I got my wisdom teeth out, but I have been running 2-3 times a week otherwise.

I have a fairly active background. I never labelled myself as an athlete, and I’m more willing to do so now than in the past, but I did grow up figure skating competitively and after that part of my life ended, I transitioned into pilates, yoga, and then weightlifting. Since I started weightlifting (over four years ago now!), I’ve become stronger, more excited to exercise, and more open to trying new forms of movement: indoor cycling, gymnastics or calisthenics, and I’ve been meaning for a long time to get into swimming lessons, but that hasn’t happened (yet). Throughout that time, I’ve reached a lot of goals, whether that’s particular figure skating skills, lifting a certain weight, or doing a front flip for the first time.

None of those accomplishments, however, feels quite as rewarding as finally getting into a running program, building a routine, and sticking to it. I have tried and failed multiple times to run regularly, to create goals for myself and to reach them, but something has finally clicked for me, and–I never would have believed I would say this, even a year ago–I actually enjoy and look forward to running.

I’ve always associated my dislike of running to the thump-thump and the impact on my legs and the amount of effort required to go a particular distance; proportionately, I could go much faster and much further on ice with less effort. Running, in comparison to skating, always felt clunky, awkward, and laborious. That comparison still stands, but my relationship to the clunky, awkward, and laborious feeling has changed completely.

The reason I enjoy exercise now is because I am a very mental person. My thoughts never stop. I think things very quickly, and I can never just turn it off–and I didn’t realize that this was something that other people actually can do until very recently. Meditation doesn’t come easily to me, although I do appreciate it and believe in it when I remember to do it. When I exercise, I feel fully present in the body and space that I’m in. This approach was actually informed a lot by yoga, which I don’t practice regularly anymore, at least formally: yoga taught me how to breathe and be present in such a way that influences everything I do with my body now. I love the steady rhythms of repetitions in the gym, or breathing while running. My brain is still going, so to speak, but I find the attention to rhythm to be so helpful–when I’m stressed or anxious, certainly, but also just in general, even when I’m feeling mentally healthy.

My point is, running is still clunky, awkward, and laborious physically, and certainly this is more true when I consider running relative to yoga or figure skating, but it’s worth it. Like with yoga and meditation, running relies so strongly on concentration on breath, and on opening your body in order to create greater capacity for breath, and I find it not only mentally soothing, but physically so rewarding. It’s still early days, so I know I enjoy this privilege for only a short time, but I haven’t had a bad day yet. Every run has a different purpose because of the training program I’m on–some days I’ll run faster for a short period of time, run longer, run fairly fast over a longer period of time, etc.–and that gives me so much room to smash every goal. It’s truly been so rewarding and I’m so excited to keep going.

As the Nike+ Run Club coaches say, “There is no finish line–we’ll see you at the next starting line.” 😉

2017 Reflections

Posted on by under Observations and Reflections

Rather unbelievably, 2017 has come to an end. Last year was an incredible one for personal growth, as can be seen by the events documented in this blog, even if sparingly, and even if the fake news would have me believe the world is rapidly approaching its demise. Although that might not be far from the truth. But I don’t want to talk about that too much.

So many of my dreams came true this year, which just reiterates for me the value of dreaming big, planning, and believing. Following through on big plans becomes much easier when you do all the thinking beforehand, I’ve learned.

I saw my name in print. I made the Dean’s List, finally. I returned to Los Angeles and Las Vegas after two summers away, reuniting with many of my family members. I visited Europe for the first time, travelling solo on a new continent and new countries and cities. I worked my first full-time job. I got some scholarships.

And my favourite: I can’t even begin to wrap my head around all the incredible people I met and got to know this year. I feel like I am at a point in my personhood where the idea of making new friends becomes confusing and daunting, so I never even imagined meeting the kindred spirits whom I got to know this year, but I am so grateful for them. My Edinburgh flatmates, my new Vancouver classmates, and everyone in between, like my old friends who have stuck around, my incredible support network of family & basically family, and my new mentors and role models at work: I’m so happy to have you in my life.

Ultimately, it was the incredible people who made this year for me, showed me the value of friendship and the power of shared values and interests. Like I say, I didn’t even realize I wanted so many of the new friends I made this year, let alone did I realize I needed them—to renew my faith in humanity and my love of life, and people.

This penultimate semester of my BA was an immense hurdle to cap off an otherwise relatively easy-breezy and wonderful year, although 2017 was all the better for that challenge, of course. Despite the struggle of last semester (and being scaled down in psychology [grumble grumble]), I remain steadfast in my belief that I like school, but this semester also confirmed for me that I am ready for something new in my life… at least for now.

The proverbial Bend in the Road finally approaches, and I see the road clearly until April, at which point the road bends and I can’t see beyond. I can suppose that adulthood (ha) lies after the bend in the road. Hopefully full-time hours which pay money and don’t make me too miserable (if I set the bar low, I’m less likely to be disappointed), probably studying for standardized testing for law school and grad school, and applying for further ed eventually, but I have no further details, and it has never been this murky for me. I think maybe that should (?) scare me, but it actually doesn’t. I have well-established dreams in place and this past year has shown me that that will be enough to carry me through, even if ways that I don’t expect.

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6 Lessons I Learned from my First Full-time Job

Posted on by under Career, Observations and Reflections, UBC

I just finished a Canada Summer Jobs position at Mom2Mom Child Poverty  Initiative, and am heading back to school (for the last time in my BA!!!) next week.

After spending quite literally all my money in Europe earlier this summer, I returned home at the poorest I’ve been since I started making my own money, and all I really wanted was a job–ideally one that would pad my resume, pay off my trip, and would understand that I was going back to school in the fall. Mom2Mom’s Canada Summer Jobs posting showing up on my Facebook feed was absolutely providential for all those reasons, but I definitely got so much more than just a job and paycheque. I learned so many things that I can hardly distill it into a list, but here are 3 things I learned about working, and then 3 things I learned from working at Mom2Mom.

It was my first time working a full-time position. There was probably only one week in my life that I worked upwards of 35 hours before this summer, so having a 9-5 office job was new to me. The weekend before I started at Mom2Mom, I was chatting with some friends who had been doing full-time co-op jobs all summer or all year, and they talked like people tired of their full-time jobs, tired of spending 40 hours at the same place doing the same thing every day, and listening to them, I felt a little bit of dread for what I thought I knew would be a dull, mundane office life.

It was also my first time working for a non-profit, although I’ve always been involved with a number of non-profits, always a volunteer. I’ve always known that it’s not glamorous, and that it would never make me rich, which is perhaps why I never seriously considered working in non-profits as a career.

On both fronts, my expectations and assumptions were seriously questioned and then proven wrong.

#1:

I bring so much more than just “English major” to the table. It was very cool that my boss graduated from the same program and the same university that I did, and it probably helped both in terms of getting the job and in terms of getting the job done, but what I actually did at Mom2Mom, and what I did well, cannot be fully expressed when I tell strangers that I am an English major, Law & Society minor.

#2

I distinctly remember my mom telling me when I was very, very young that she wanted to do anything but an office job. I’ve seen the media caricature the office drone at a computer, tapping at keys for 8 hours and then going home to a greyscale life. What I forgot to consider is how I would fit into that frame. I have always been a go-getter. I love setting goals for myself and getting things done.

Working a 9-5 office job just means that I can leave work and I can actually leave work. When I leave school, I come home to do more school. Every English major knows that doing reading for pleasure is out of the question during the semester; sure, you might be on top of your reading (if you’re lucky!), but you can always read ahead, so why bother starting something for your own leisure reading?

This summer, I got to spend my transit time reading books that I chose. I got to write more, watch Netflix when I got home, go to the gym, hang out with friends, and more, because I had a 9-5 office job. My life became fuller of things I love and am passionate about because working at Mom2Mom left me with time and energy to do so. It also meant I could go back to work ready to get stuff done. I was a better employee because I was better to myself.

#3

I have always loved school. I love reading deeply, writing thoughtfully, and thinking critically. That, coupled with the fact that I like a challenge, always suggested to me that staying in academia makes sense, because wouldn’t a 9-5 office job, doing admin or comms, be mundane?

In fact, I found myself confronting impossible problems and internal conflicts throughout my term at Mom2Mom, and I was always thinking critically, which brings me to my third set of lessons.

#1

Moms love their kids. Love cannot be measured by gifts, involvement in extracurriculars, or public displays of affection. Moms don’t all start from the same place.

#2

Poverty cannot be solved by work. It cannot be solved by throwing money at it. Because not everyone learns how to budget. Because families get stressed. Because children grow, and have needs. Because making ends meet can only do so much, and because emergencies happen. Poverty cannot ever be reduced to a single root problem.

So many of my peers–myself included–think that we can create the most efficient change by creating and changing legislation, or advocating for the underdog. I still think that the law is a powerful tool, and I’d love to explore that, but legislation is slow and it doesn’t focus about the individual.

Government services doesn’t imagine solutions to a single mother’s broken laptop for school: Mom2Mom does. Community members do. Volunteers reach out to their communities, look into their resources, and do the work themselves. Change doesn’t have to be large-scale and dramatic to be worthwhile. We don’t have to “fix” poverty. It is enough, and it is also so much more, to help make changes for the individual and the family.

#3

I am privileged. I get to take out student loans to attend one of the top universities in the world. I got to grow up competing in organized sport. I have had fancy, shiny electronics, I’ve accumulated books and expensive clothes and accessories. I am a woman and a visible minority, and I am privileged. My job earnings at Mom2Mom could have helped feed a family, and I thought about this every time it felt like I was wasting time.

When you plug in the numbers, it doesn’t make sense and the system sucks. But liberal arts majors know what accountants don’t: privilege, society, and humanity don’t work like an accounting spreadsheet.

I come out from this incredible summer job so much more grateful and simultaneously so much more critical of my degree. I recognize that it equips me with the skills to do great things, but I am also so much more than my degree. I love university, and I am excited to go back, but I am also so excited to finish; there is a world beyond May 2018 and I can’t wait to see what it looks like, but thanks to Mom2Mom, I am assured that that world is not so bleak as others might have me believe.

A great and terrible beauty, and: why we visit graves

Posted on by under Chronicled Adventures, Observations and Reflections, Travel

I have visited cities where it is great fun to be a capital-“T” Tourist.

Here I am eating pizza on Wall Street in New York City, wearing a dumb Statue of Liberty headpiece. (about as touristy as it gets)

Paris, however, is not one of those cities. Being a solo female tourist in Paris is daunting. Walking down boulevard de Rochechouart, where my hostel is, I found that eyes tended to linger on me—something I’m not accustomed to—and I figured that I must either be very beautiful or very strange to the Parisians, neither of those being particularly reassuring. I am lucky in that I generally don’t live/work in a place frequented by catcallers, so until being in Paris, I never had to learn how to deal with them.

On the British isles, I could fake being a local. I could pass off as one: I even got asked for directions a few times, and I could even give it. But Paris was impenetrable to me. It was partly the language, partly the solitude, the timidity that makes me stick out like a sore thumb.

I dreamt of Paris for so long, and I was so determined to crack it. I was determined to find some kind of home in Paris, like I found in all the other cities I visited. I kept remembering the conversation I had with my flatmate Alex in Edinburgh, when I shared my travel plans post-Scotland. When she found out I was going to Paris, she asked me, “Do you idealize Paris?” Such an oddly phrased question and it rang in my head the whole time I toured the city, once I finally got there. I began to realize that my idealization of Paris was preventing me from truly knowing it: there was  Paris in my head, and it was different from the Paris I was experiencing.

I never thought of Paris as being hot and humid, or smelly and crowded. I never thought of the way scammers are quick to spot tourists and take advantage of them. I never imagined being in Paris with hardly a euro to spend, so sick that I could hardly walk in the heat without getting lightheaded, getting up in the middle of the night in my hostel bed because I couldn’t stop coughing.

All this being said, I still want to and believe I can feel at home in Paris. I’d love to wake up in a little Parisian apartment, with the doors open to a Juliet balcony with flowers blooming on the railing. I’d love to ride a bike down to la boulangerie ou la fleuriste and carry a bag of baguettes or bouquet of cut flowers in my arms. I would love to be able to talk to the locals fearlessly in French. Paris was still beautiful to me, and thinking about it now that I am home, I know that when I go back to Paris, I will be ready for her.

On my last full day in Europe, I visited the Père Lachaise cemetery and mused on how quickly the last two months went by. I had seen and done so much, met so many people, that the 7 and a half weeks somehow also managed to seem like it wasn’t a long enough time. And yet the trip that I’d been dreaming about for more than year had come and gone so quickly.

At the cemetery, I visited Oscar Wilde’s grave and memorial, and I kept thinking about a class I had taken with Dr. Miranda Burgess in second year, where she shared pictures of Oscar Wilde’s memorial on her own visit to Paris. I remember her asking the class why we thought people visited graves. I don’t remember the conclusion of that discussion except that it seemed like Miranda was never satisfied with our suggestions.

It occurred to me that day that the whole trip had been structured around exploring a big graveyard of European history, art, culture, and literature. All the places I’d visited were rich with past lives, past moments, and memories.

But in between visiting Shakespeare’s grave in late May and Oscar Wilde’s in early July, I’d managed to also live, and find life. I’d met so many cool people with interesting, funny things to say about places they had come from, had been, and will go to. I had reached my own conclusions about how to live my own life, to make my own art, to write and tell my own story.

So, Dr. Burgess, maybe that’s why we visit graves. A reason to go to a place, but with the hope—and expectation—that we discover something entirely different from the reason we came. I know that’s what happened for me.

Dublin, where solo travel became social travel

Posted on by under Books, Chronicled Adventures, Travel

Every blog post I’ve written for every destination was first written in my journal. Because I was only in Dublin for three days and was very social for all three of those days, I never actually had time to write about Dublin in my journal. Now, two weeks later, I have to write about it from scratch, because it certainly won’t do to not have a blog post on Dublin. I think, had I not come straight from Edinburgh, Dublin probably would have been my favourite city on my trip to Europe.

If you know me, you know I am not a drinker. I am highly suspicious of what alcohol does to me (and have in fact never explored that fully), and for that reason I only like to drink with people I know, and then especially people I trust. Now, combine that with what you know about Dublin and the Irish, and what should have happened is that I spent my days in Dublin being extremely uncomfortable. That’s what I would have thought, anyway, and because that’s kind of what drinking in Vancouver is like: if everyone else is drinking and you’re not, it’s a little harder to have a good time.

But while the Dubliners certainly appreciated their drink (I found a number of posters throughout my hostel about the best ways to get over a hangover), the drinking culture seemed different from what I’m used to in Canada. It seemed as though the Irish didn’t need to be drunk to have a good time—which was lucky for me, because as it turned out, my experience in Dublin turned out to be all about the people. I was never lonely, which explains why there was never a journal entry written in that lovely city.

My new friend Grace (hi, Grace!) is American, but you wouldn’t have thought so as we ran all over Dublin together. I wasn’t sure if I was going to write about her in this blog post, but as I say, my experience in Dublin was all about people, and since I spent a good chunk of my time in Dublin with Grace, it seems right that I talk about her a little. Extremely social and extraverted, unafraid of the drink, and redheaded to boot, travelling with Grace felt like exploring Dublin with a local.

She also enriched my visit to the Guinness Storehouse, a place I probably wouldn’t have been so keen to visit had Grace not been with me. If it turned out I didn’t have enough funds to do everything I wanted, Guinness probably would have been the first to go, but boy, am I glad I went. Other than having a fantastic view of Dublin, the Storehouse truly felt like Disneyland for beer lovers, and you don’t have to be a beer lover to recognize it.

A friend spent some time in Dublin shortly before I arrived there (hi, Xandrina!) and she said to me that the Irish were so nice, and that it seemed much more genuine than the Canadian nice. Now, I love Canada, and I had only been in England and Scotland during that point in my trip, so I didn’t like the idea that the Irish were nicer than Canadians, but the Irish are truly some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met, in addition to being some of the funniest. The Irish seem to have truly mastered the art of socializing.

What I discovered in Dublin is that there is a verifiable Irishness to the people; it was something I picked up on reading W.B. Yeats’ poetry and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest but could not quite put my finger on until I had experienced Dublin for myself. There is truly this incredible sense of belonging to a people and to a place which has not been home to the happiest of histories, but has fostered a sharp wit and easy humour. These people are as quick to laugh as they are quick to drink, and their hospitality is almost excessive and yet somehow so genuine. As I left Dublin, and eventually Europe, I read Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (a book I picked up at a bookstore by the River Liffey after having visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral, of which Swift was a dean) and was struck, again, by how strikingly Irish these writers are. I bought a book each from England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, to act as a souvenir of the place that I had visited, to help me remember the sense of Stratford-upon-Avon, Edinburgh, Dublin, or Paris. Although I didn’t get much of a sense of Dublin from Gulliver’s Travels, I got so much of a sense of the Irish people, and rightly so, because the Irish people truly are what made Dublin so great for me.

A love letter to Edinburgh

Posted on by under Travel

I hardly know where to start with Edinburgh. It’s silly, but honestly: I had to redo my Instagram captions so many times because there was just so many things I wanted to say about the city that could not be condensed into a single caption. Even though I have a full blog post to rave about it, I still don’t know where to start.

I worry about taking Nate to Edinburgh, because I love Edinburgh, and I want him to understand why I love it so much, but I feel like I cannot quite put into words why I love the city so much. I loved London for its culture—art, theatre, literature, all displayed for you to fully appreciate. But I can’t quite distill Edinburgh like that. Here is my best effort:

I told Asa that I think Edinburgh is a young person’s city. I’m sure people who live there all their lives are content, but I can’t see myself doing that. It’s a place to be inspired… to write, travel, make art, think deeply, walk for hours, try different kinds of food, meet different kinds of people, learn different languages, read more books. And then you leave, and you’re a better person for it. And you’re obliged to share your Edinburgh with the world.

It is a city that is somehow quiet yet lively. When the city is awake, it is filled with life, but it is also a city that sleeps peacefully. You can have a good time, but you won’t worry about finding quiet places, either.

It is a people’s city, free from big corporations and instead littered with shops that seem to mostly be a circulation of possessions, a sharing of lives and experiences. Locals own and run coffee shops and restaurants, but “local” has a fluid meaning in Edinburgh.

The Scottish accent in Edinburgh is hardly discernible because it almost always isn’t just Scottish. It’s mixed with French, British English, American English, Middle Eastern, Asian, and as a result you can’t really be sure what “local” means. Edinburgh is a city of more than just Lothian, or Scotland, or Europe: it is verifiably a city of the world.

And yet, Edinburgh manages to be so proud of its Scottish history, of its position with regard to British and world history. It embraces its geniuses: Hume, Rowling, Scott, Stevenson, Burns. It remembers them.

And it is so, so beautiful. Edinburgh is a city that aged so gracefully it wants you to know how old it really is. (Very.) It’s a city of big windows, old faded brick, beautiful skies, rippling blades of grass, cobblestone roads, narrow closes, and garden squares on every block. It is no surprise to me that it was the first UNESCO City of Literature, because how could it not be?

How could you not be inspired to write by its highs and lows, changing vistas, and tapestry of people—of different colours, backgrounds, cultures? In Edinburgh, one is almost duty-bound to write.

When I told Alex I couldn’t quite put my love for Edinburgh into words, she pointed out—and I agree—that you have to breathe Edinburgh. You have to breathe that Scottish air.

Dear, stunning, magical Edinburgh.

Arthur’s Seat, or: reasons why I’d like to be a seagull

Posted on by under Chronicled Adventures, Travel

After spending some time sitting on the very top of the Arthur’s Seat, my flatmates and I began the walk back down to the city and mused on the types of birds we’d like to be. A pelican, a vulture, an owl, and me, a seagull.

The more I see of Edinburgh, the more I love it. I have never known a city so widely loved, and I knew that it would be wonderful before I even arrived. Whenever I told people who’d lived in Edinburgh before that I was going to be in Edinburgh for the summer, their eyes lit up. I’d met friends who could talk and talk and talk about the city, about places to see and eat and drink and enjoy. Los Angeles, Paris, New York City, and London do not even receive that response. Imagine: here is this humble Scottish city, so loved, obscuring such metropolitan giants.

I continued to fall in love with Edinburgh as my view of it became more and more panoramic approaching the top of Arthur’s Seat. The day that we went was about as perfect a day as you can get in Edinburgh to hike up Arthur’s Seat. It’s a very rewarding hike because you can see your destination from every point along the trail, and on that day, it was very windy and quite sunny, but with very fast-moving clouds, so just when we felt like we were exerting ourselves, there would be some wind to cool us off.

And, of course, the view was… almost unbeatable. Anyone who knows me knows that I swear by the beauty of Vancouver, that nothing can beat it, but Edinburgh made a good case for itself that day. Already out of breath from hoofing it up the hill, the view of Edinburgh from almost-the-top took my breath away. I know people tend to take that phrase for granted—”take your breath away”—but I learned on that day that there are such views that can actually do that.

The winds were incredibly strong. Even in the streets of the city, it was very windy. At the top, the winds were strong that I would have to get my balance every time I stood up or took a step. A person generally only has two hands at their disposal: one to hold their hair back as they take a selfie, the other to take a selfie! However those winds were so strong that my selfie ended up looking like this:

But hey, it isn’t about my face, it’s about that amazing view.

The only times I took a bus out of Edinburgh were to leave it; I arrived by train and walked everywhere I went in the city. Anyone will tell you that it is a very walkable city, which gives the illusion that Edinburgh is quite a small city, but from up there, you could see the city truly sprawling, radiating around Arthur’s Seat out into the green Scottish countryside and out into the North Sea.

At the top of Arthur’s Seat, birds with their wings outspread seemed not to be able to get anywhere unless the wind was also going that direction. Crows trembled midair, as if on some kind of windy treadmill, and smaller birds were nowhere in sight that high up. But seagulls… seagulls rode the wind with ease, and for that I envy them.

In Berwick-upon-Tweed, a seaside town occupying the northeastern-most corner of England, there were these tiny birds that flew in circles because they would fly away from the beach and be forced back toward the water by the wind. I felt like a Disney princess, because they were basically flying in circles around me. At the same time, I felt distinctly that it must be rather frightening to be so weightless that you cannot control your own direction.

Seeing seagulls when I first arrived in Edinburgh reminded me that I was close to the water again, just like at home in Vancouver. I love that you can see seagulls in the city, but they also—by their very name—belong to the sea. And yet, they are birds before anything else. I envy and admire a creature that can belong to the earth, wind, and sea; it’s also a creature that, like me, finds home by the water.

Everywhere I’ve gone in Scotland where I’ve been struck by incredible beauty—the cliffs on the Isle of Skye, Glen Coe in the highlands, and of course, Arthur’s Seat—I’ve found seagulls. Feet (and tour guides who make you stop looking at Glen Coe so that you can move onto your next stop) seem to be such an inconvenience whenever I watch seagulls. As we made our way back down from Arthur’s Seat, they continued circling the peak. On another day, as I forced myself back to the tour bus, a seagull flew over the pathway deeper into the glen. Couldn’t I just be a seagull and weave between mountains and rivers and fairy falls forever?

I could literally see my house from here!

Dealing with language barriers

Posted on by under Observations and Reflections, Travel

My relationship with the English language is complicated. For one thing, I love it: I study English language and literature and enjoy doing so, and I also speak, think, and dream in English. However, I also speak English because my parents brought me to a land colonized by people who spoke English and forced English upon the peoples indigenous to that land. Furthermore, I myself was born and spent much of my childhood in a colonized country where many different languages and dialects are spoken, where speaking English is attached to a certain kind of person, and being “inglesera” is usually not said with fondness.

I find myself confronting every facet of my complicated relationship with the English language while I am abroad, despite the fact that I am visiting not only an English-speaking country, but England itself. In every corner of Britain that I have visited so far, I have been forced to face the fact that the way I speak and the words I use betray me as a foreigner.

Something an American tourist told me in Glasgow about an interaction she’d had with a native Scot:

“Accent? I don’t have an accent, you have an accent!”

My philosophy about being a tourist is that I enjoy being a tourist: I don’t shy away from big tourist spots like Buckingham Palace or the Brooklyn Bridge, and I bristle when people complain that these places are “flooded with tourists” and complaining while they are tourists themselves, but I also dislike looking like a tourist, especially as a solo traveller. So, I do not dress like a backpacker, I don’t carry around a camera, and I avoid paper maps like the plague, but I find that my accent betrays me. I am not usually shy when interacting with strangers, but I found myself suddenly speaking quietly whenever I had to interact with native Londoners, because I was so aware that my rhotic dialect makes me stand out in conversation.

Something I overheard in London, said by someone with a North American accent:

“The French could speak English, but they choose not to.”

Collectively, my flat-mates have a working understanding of upwards of eight languages. Having grown up somewhat bilingual, but never having learned a language to a working proficiency (we’ll find out how functional my French is when I visit Paris in July), I have so much admiration for people who learn languages in their adulthood. I have especial admiration for people who learn English, which has rules that even I am still learning, and—as my flat-mate aptly put it—is “so idiomatic”.

The problem with English being so widely spoken, so dominant, is that it does not give native speakers much reason to learn other languages. My multilingual European flat-mates, upon listening to me and my American dialect pine for the knowledge of other languages, say: “But you speak English!” as if it’s enough, and I suppose it is, and yet I know that it isn’t.

More things I’ve heard:

  • From a Spaniard working in Glasgow hoping to work in Canada someday: “I came to Scotland to improve my English for when I move to Canada, but the Scottish accents… … whenever I meet an American or a Canadian I love listening to them talk!”
  • From my mom, to her goddaughter raised in England: “Do you have an accent?! Jia says you have an accent.”
  • From an American tourist in Glasgow: “Now… I mean… I hope this doesn’t offend you, but… I’m sorry, I don’t think you have a Canadian accent at all!”
  • And finally, on an episode of Rick and Morty, which I was watching thanks to my flatmates: “As they say in Canada, peace oot!”

A blog post written by nostalgia, gratefulness, and wanderlust

Posted on by under Observations and Reflections, Travel

This was written on the day of, but hours before, the recent terror attacks in London, in particular at Borough Market.

Over the past few days, I have had a lot about big moments, seen a lot of impressive sights, and been to many meaningful places, and certainly when I think back on my first time in London, I will probably remember seeing the Rosetta Stone, or the incredible way that Westminster Abbey and its stunning architecture made me feel (i.e., very religious, more than I’ve felt in my life), or sitting in the Palace Theatre watching a show that I never imagined being able to get tickets to see.

But when I tell you that I love London, I want you to know that I fell in love with London in the moments of solitude and quiet found between those big moments as much as I fell in love in those big moments. I loved learning the art of navigating the tube, finding home in the ability to traverse London’s underground maze. I loved sitting atop a double decker bus and watching people and black cabs hurry by modern shops housed in old buildings. I fell in love with London sitting with food from Pret in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral, leaning against the trunk of an oak in Hyde Park with my journal in my lap, or sitting on the banks of the Thames with a “butty” from Borough Market and a view of Tower Bridge.

It was hard to be alone, but London was undoubtedly one of the best places for me to learn how to be alone. Leading up to this trip, I made a point to spend time with all of my favourite people, and after each of those times, I reflected on how much I valued each of them, and how sorry I was to be leaving them, how grateful I was for their genuine excitement for me. Now that I am away from my friends and family, however, I find the feelings and thoughts I directed towards them being reflected back onto myself. I am learning how to spend time with myself and how to value myself.

The solitude also gave me ample room to meet new people, to accept the friendliness of strangers. My first hostel experience was certainly not luxurious comfort, and I did not expect it to be. I am excited to have my own room again, and I will not miss having to open so many doors just to use the toilet, or having to fish my belongings not only out of a suitcase but unlock it from a locker. Despite the many things I didn’t like about staying in a hostel, however, I cannot imagine staying anywhere else anytime soon—not only for the economic benefits of staying in a hostel, but for the people I was able to meet and the conversations I was able to have with them. I am grateful for those people—a local from Kent, a seasoned traveller from Australia, girls from South Carolina studying abroad, a man from Virginia finishing a doctorate in Britain with good things to say about the UC system, and a fellow Canadian (albeit from the opposite coast) beginning a new chapter of her life in London.

Being surrounded by people from all over in a new place also gave me appreciation for the ability to truthfully say, “I am from Canada.” I’ve found that it’s a privilege to be able to make that claim; saying it never failed to bring delight to the people I met. I am so lucky to be able to pack Canada’s international reputation with me on my travels. Interestingly, however, one morning I braided my hair and the cafeteria lady at the hostel asked me how I did it, and commented that she has to ask a relative to braid her hair for her. When she said that the relative was from the Philippines, I said, “Oh, that’s where I’m from!” I didn’t think anything of it at the time when I said it, but later I mulled over this gift of mine, to be from two places.

As I get closer and closer to Scotland, and the plains are becoming increasingly hillier and mountainous, I realized that despite my bouts of loneliness in London, I will miss that city. Around three or four days into my London adventure, I found that I wasn’t sure what to do with my time, but now that I’m gone, I can’t help feeling like I’ve only barely scratched the surface, that I desperately need more time, even with the six days I spent there—a longer stay than those of many of the travellers I met.

What I’m discovering with travel is that I rarely visit a place, and then leave it feeling finished. I am never finished in Los Angeles; on top of visiting my family, I always find there are a number of reasons to go back. There will always be shows to see and food to eat in New York City, and we still haven’t been up the Empire State Building. I haven’t visited the Strand bookstore in the City, either. I still have to see all the parks in Walt Disney World and Universal Studios Orlando. And now, as I leave London, I am leaving with a to do list to be put on hold until I’m able to go back.

Still, in the event that I am never able to go back to these places, I know that I loved each of those cities as fully as I could while I was in them. I will surely remember all the big moments—climbing to the Hollywood sign, watching Wicked for the first time, seeing Hogwarts from the back of a fish in Seussland—but I have left these places knowing that I relished in the little moments, too. Those, I don’t need to remember. They exist fully and completely in their own present, and I am grateful that I lived in those moments.

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