Saying Goodbye

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Trigger Warning

It was a difficult break for me.

My uncle was diagnosed with brain cancer in early December and everything happened very quickly after that. I was still here in Vancouver when I got the news and it hit me hard.

But I finished my finals, said my goodbyes, cleaned up my dorm room, and play acted at normal.

When I got home, I could see that the situation was anything but. I’ve never really been affected by cancer in this way and the toll it took on everyone was really and truly unimaginable.  I didn’t realize that there was nothing to be done for him until I got home.

The waiting was maybe the worst part. But we spent the time as best we could and visiting with my uncle actually produced some funny and happy moments.  I won’t forget those. On Christmas Day my family got together and I saw cousins and others that I hadn’t heard from in over ten years. In some twisted way this whole situation brought everyone closer together.

I said goodbye to my uncle on Christmas Day. I’m not sure that he recognized me.

My immediate family left for our trip to Mexico as planned.  Everyone agreed that was best. Mexico was wonderful and I had a great time, but there were constant reminders of the situation back in my hometown.

I flew back alone for the start of school. It was a long journey from Mexico to LA and then from LA to Vancouver. I was exhausted and covered in a layer of who-knows-what from sitting on airplanes all day. (It’s a weird feeling, like your skin is coated, and it comes only from air travel.)

I passed through immigration in Canada and proceeded to wait for my bags. I waited and waited and then turned on the WiFi on my phone.

There was an email from my father. My uncle had passed away.

I waited for another half hour, found my bag, and left the airport.

I think I feel guilty for not mourning properly there in the airport and for pretending to be fine as I went through customs, hailed a taxi, showered, and went to bed. I feel angry that I have to be away from my family as I deal with this. And I miss my uncle and feel the loss of potential in what I think really could have been an awesome relationship.

He went to UBC when he was a student and stayed here in Totem Park. I know he had an amazing time here and maybe the best way for me to honour him is to do the same and to live and work and play at my best while I am here.

It’s all I can do anyway.

I love you, Uncle James.

I’m Alive

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I promise I’m alive. But I’m also at home and quite honestly, blogging wasn’t my first priority. Sleep was.

It’s been a bit of an odd Christmas. My family takes a trip to Mexico most years and we are due to leave in two days. I’m stoked and very excited, but at the same time, my family is in crisis mode because of a very shitty thing we call cancer. I don’t want to talk about it.

Anyway, it’s made me rethink the whole Christmas thing. And I arrived at the realization that even my very down-to-earth family was “consumed” by the consumption aspect of the season. (See what I did there?) This Christmas, we got together with my dad’s side of the family. It was sort of this big family reunion, with people I hadn’t seen in over a decade sharing a laugh, a cry, a regret. It was really special even though the event itself, to say goodbye to a beloved uncle, was really upsetting. Realizing how much love one family can hold really made an impact on me. Especially during the holiday season, as fake as this sounds.

A lot has been weighing on my mind lately and I think maybe I just needed a place to write it all down. Organizing my thoughts seems to help. That’s lesson number one, kids: write it all out. Then have a good cry and maybe write more.

Sometimes that’s all you can do.

Happy Holidays.

 

OMG TEH EXAM TIME

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I just finished my first university exam. It was philosophy and I’m feeling pretty good about it. Finished with an hour left though, which is either a sign of my extreme genius or of my extreme failure. I guess we’ll see. I managed to kill another half hour reviewing my essays so I guess I used all the time that I could.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about the very embarrassing and painful experience that was falling off my bike right before my exam. Yep. I’m that skilled. I wasn’t seriously hurt (twisted ankle and scraped knee and ripped jeans. I want mom.) But I was bleeding a little and obviously was completely mortified. And out of the more than three people that saw, only one quickly asked if I needed a hand. I was shocked when people actually laughed.

I sound old I guess, but I guess I would have liked to think that more people would offer a hand, or you know, hold in their laughter until they had walked past…

Anyway. I write the three hour exam with a napkin on my knee to try to stop bleeding and bike back home feeling confident about the test, not so much about my cycling skills.

I get into my dorm room and I just want to sleep/shower/call my mom/die. I think it’s hit me that I can’t go home for another TWO WEEKS. And I really want to be home.

Anyway, there is a silver lining I suppose. I’ve been in bed for a couple hours watching Friends on DVD (I know, I still use DVDs. I’m a loser.) and eating chocolate and almonds. Also, my wonderful roommate came in and spent time with me hitting a balloon back and forth. So that was great. Life is looking up.

Eighteen

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I turned eighteen last Wednesday. I sat on my bed as the clock changed from 11:59 to 12:00 holding my teddy bears and baby blanket and feeling rather morose.

I am not ready to be a grown up.

I had a great birthday though, many thanks to my amazing friends Valentina, Fiona, Amy, Afifa, May, and Jewel. They surprised me with cake and ice cream. And, as everyone knows, the quickest way to a girl’s heart is through cake. Remember that now.

Anyway. Now I’m an adult. I can’t do much though. I can vote, should the opportunity present itself. But that’s about it. I can’t drink (I don’t drink so this isn’t an issue) and I can’t own a credit card or cell phone. So really what’s the point of being called an adult when really you’re just a child?

My brother put it nicely: “You have to have one year in your life when you can’t vote drunk.”

I think he’s probably right. That’s why they did it. Maybe if they let people drink, adolescent voter turnout would be higher.

Just a thought.

Suspense

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I wrote Gateman’s 2nd midterm last Friday night. (I complained about it earlier. You probably remember. Or maybe not.)

The. Suspense. Is. Killing. Me. I have reached the point where I don’t even care what the mark is (that’s a lie, I totally do), I just want to know what it is so I can sleep/focus on my other classes/have a life again.

For those of you who don’t have Gateman as a prof, here is the honest truth.

Ready?

He is a fantastic professor and an amazing lecturer. For that reason alone, his class is worth taking. (Also before someone accuses me of sucking up to get a better exam mark, he doesn’t mark them. Just putting that out there.)

As for his exams?

They aren’t really that bad. Challenging? Yes. Oddly formatted? Sure. Fair? Yes. I think the reason people are scared of these exams is because he doesn’t test memorization, which was pretty much all of high school. He wants to make sure you know the theory behind what you are doing.

That said, his exam timing = harsh. Seven pm on a Friday night isn’t fun for anyone.

I don’t know whether or not this will influence anyone’s decision about his class, but I think it’s important to know that you CAN be successful in it. I hate math and numbers and am in Arts and I’m actually doing fairly well. So it is possible. You can beat Gateman.

It bugs me when people who have never taken his class say that he’s a difficult prof or that his exams are impossible. Assume nothing. You’ve never tried.

There’s a life lesson for you there, kids. If you never try it, you can’t possibly hope to beat it.

 

 

Stanley Park Adventures

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I apologize in advance. This is a weird post.

I forgot how much I missed photography.

I went to Stanley Park on Sunday. All alone.

My phone just randomly restarted which is weird.

Anyway, while I was at the park I saw a seagull eating a fish. And then I sat there for about ten minutes photographing it. People were walking by giving me that look: “Ugh. Teenagers.” I didn’t feel like this was entirely warranted, seeing as all I was doing was taking pictures. Maybe they were concerned for the seagull’s privacy.

He looks satisfied and not at all concerned about his privacy.

Anyway, I won’t lie. I’ve been feeling really disconnected and weird lately. It’s like a mix of homesickness and social awkwardness that makes me simultaneously want nothing more to be home and yet not want to leave Vancouver. I wasn’t sure what to do with this feeling and I’m still not quite sure. But a walk in the park helped, as cheesy as it sounds.

Maybe it’s stress. Although that would be odd because usually that’s not how stress manifests itself in me. Usually I just feel headachy and grumpy, not socially disconnected. I won’t say that the walk cleared up everything, because that would be a lie and I don’t lie, but it certainly helped.

How could this not help?

 

Maybe I should have talked to the seagull. Maybe then I would feel less lonely. (If indeed I am feeling lonely. Which I’m not sure that I am.)

I think I started this post with a point in mind but it’s gone now. Maybe later I’ll post something substantial. But knowing me, probably not.

#No edit #No filter
But actually, this is the real photo.

Best Halloween Ever

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Tonight I will be:

  • Dressing up as… a stressed university student. Ironically, I dress like this every night before an exam. So I saved some money this Halloween.
  • Drinking… caffeinated tea. LOTS of caffeinated tea.
  • Partying with… my econ textbook. Good times.
  • Eating… actually, I do have some candy. So the whole night’s not a total wash, at least.
  • Getting scared by… this pumpkin my cousin  Andrew carved for me. It’s –OH MY GOD IT MOVED IT’S GOING TO KILL ME!!!

Try not to be too jealous.

Happy Halloween, UBC!

Study Snacks

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Oreos and chai tea have become my thing. It’s the only major change I’ve undergone since coming to university…I’m now having tea and biscuits. “I’m a proper lady,” I tell myself, “and I shall drink tea at high 10:30!”  Except as I dunk an oreo into Bengal Spicey heaven (no product placement I swear), I realize that I’m not even close to being that classy.

 

Oreos + Chai Tea = A Happy Mary.

Maybe not classy at all. Oh well.

Anywho, I’m done midterms until date night with Gateman on November 1st. And I have to say, when there’s studying to be done… I’m not doing it. Instead, I’m obsessively cleaning.

Everything.

Like that.

And then I’m surprised when I have two hours to do two days of work. And I get tired, stressed, and grumpy. Yet I can’t stop cleaning. Eventually though, I run out of things, as is to be expected in a 120 sq ft dorm room. There is a brief period of mourning, and then I hit the books. Everything is worse than I expected.

At least my windowsill is sanitized.

 

An Open Letter to Fire Alarm- Pullers

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If you pull fire alarms as a prank…

…You deserve to be pushed down all seven flights of stairs in q’əleχən.* At the bottom, as you stand up and brush yourself off, you should be handed your letter of expulsion from UBC. Then you should pick up your bags and leave. Hopefully the door hits you in the backside on the way out.

Does it sound harsh? Yes. But here’s why it needs to be:

When you pull a fire alarm, especially in the middle of the night, you create a panic, never mind an inconvenience. You have created an emergency situation where none needed to exist. And that’s not funny. You put your fellow students in danger by creating a hazard.

What’s more, pulling the fire alarm activates emergency services. And because we’re a building full of people, instead of just one person calling 911, the fire trucks and ambulances put us in priority. This means that, false alarm or not, they will start making their way to UBC. By pulling that alarm, you have potentially taken away the emergency services from someone in an actual emergency.

At my middle school, a teacher caught a student trying to pull an alarm. (Yes, that’s how juvenile this behaviour is). He sat the student down and told him a story. The last school he taught at had a prank fire alarm. There was no fire drill planned so EMS came to the school. Because the school got priority, a little boy on the other side of town who was having a real medical emergency died. You don’t want to be the cause of that kind of suffering in your own community. You really don’t.

Finally, it costs your residence a certain amount of cash every time you pull that alarm. That’s not coming out of UBC’s pocket; it’s coming out of the funds that go towards your services and parties here on res. If you want the good times to continue, stop wasting our funds on an annoying alarm.

So as you can probably tell, I was woken up last night by a fire alarm.  It was 1:47 am, and the first thing that crossed my mind was “that doesn’t sound like a fire alarm. (It’s a very industrial noise. Sounds more like a radiation warning alarm.)” Second was “whoever pulled that the night before midterms—especially Gateman’s midterm—is a real ass.” It’s not a good thing when students come to expect that when the alarm goes off, nothing is actually wrong. A fire alarm signifies an emergency. Don’t desensitize your neighbours to that alarm, or in the event of a real fire, people might not bother getting up. And again, you don’t want that to be your fault.

If you pulled the alarm last night, shame on you. You’re attending one of the best universities in the world. You should know better.

This concludes my rant. Have a happy, fire alarm-free day.

*Engineers: before you say that that’s not possible as our fire alarm puller will simply roll out the window, know that I plan to allow students affected by the alarm stand on each landing with plywood to bounce our roller off of… and also the stairs part of the punishment is purely wishful thinking.

Sun in the Sky and Bubbles in the Fountain

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My name is Mary, and I’m a first year Arts student. Today (okay, technically tomorrow) marks two weeks since I moved into Totem Park from Kelowna.  I’ve had two weeks to get acclimatized to res, two weeks to shake hands and learn names, two weeks of lectures to test the water here. And it’s been great. It really has.

But honestly? Nothing made me feel really connected to my campus until four things happened, in quick succession, like dominoes:

  1. My first practice debate with the UBC debate club. It felt like home. (Yes, I’m cool and you’re very jealous.)
  2. My visit to the Ubyssey’s office. (I <3 writing.)
  3. Starting this blog. (I put up the background pictures last night, even though I hadn’t actually posted anything yet.)
  4. Waking up this morning to find the fountain overflowing with bubbles.

For some reason, seeing our gorgeous, if rather austere fountain overflowing with what must have been half a dozen bottles of dish soap made me feel like I was going to be fine here. This sense of relief washed over me, and I realized that UBC isn’t just made up of partiers and academics. There are also partiers and academics with a sense of humour.

Coming back from my early class around nine, something else happened. In what I can only assume to be an on-the-spot expression of glee, a student stripped down to his shorts and waded into the fountain. He threw bubbles up into the air as the Plant Operations men used skimmers to help. I didn’t get his name, so I’ll call him “Bubbles.”

My hero. Thank you, Bubbles, for being a kid again.

Well, Bubbles, you’re my hero. I don’t know if you put the soap in the fountain or if you just enjoyed the results, but the fact that you were comfortable enough in your own skin to jump in the fountain and play with the bubbles gives me hope for this generation.

Because I was getting a little worried about growing up, and it’s nice to know that it’s not time to.

Not quite yet.