Hello! My name is Sheryl. For the past two terms I’ve been volunteering with the Writers’ Exchange at the Queen Alexandra location. Personally for me, TREK has been an amazing experience and I highly recommend anyone who is considering joining to sign up.
To take the program at face value, you trade off volunteering for your discussion sections. This means you don’t go to SOCI discussion every week, and instead you meet with other TREK students once a month. The nicest part about this deal is you don’t have do the work that is required in discussion- including the 16 page research essay due at the end of the term. This has been extremely helpful because around the time the research essay is due, a million other things in other classes will be due. Including a billion other research papers. You and your GPA will be glad to have the extra time to focus on other things.
TREK, however, is so much more then an easy ride through Sociology. Yes, trading off discussion work/the term essay is extremely nice, but TREK’s has meant so much more to me and the others who have chosen to go through the program than that. For starters, you get to go into the community and make change. In my job at the Writers’ Exchange, I helped kids in multiple grade levels learn how to read/write for around an hour and a half after school. I’ve had a lot of fun volunteering with the Writers’ Exchange as they try and shy away from traditional methods of teaching (exe: sitting in a chair and writing out sentences) and try to make learning fun by incorporating new things like writing a story about UFO’s invading earth or writing stories about who left a jar of Jelly Beans in the classroom and why. One kid I was working with said that the UFO’s that were invading were going to demand all the eggs and Power Rangers we had. Why? The Aliens really wanted to make scrambled eggs and apparently really like Power Rangers. The changes you make at your placement can be as big as teaching as teaching a kid life long writing skills, becoming one of the first stable adult connections that a child has ever had, or as little as making a kid laugh when you stick 6 Marshmallow in your mouth while trying to read them Diary of the Wimpy Kid.
Change is a two way street. While you help the people you volunteer with at your placements, they also can help change you. Again, this can be a little and big change. In my personal experience, volunteering has helped me integrate into Vancouver and Canadian society as a whole. Before I had come to UBC, I had little knowledge of Vancouver itself as I came from the U.S and because I had only visited occasionally. However, now I’m an expert at taking the Skytain/Bus system because TREK forced me to explore. Without TREK I probably would have stayed in the UBC “bubble” for all 4 years. I would have never gone to the area near my placement (Commercial-Broadway) because most people would regard it as the “ghetto”. The placements that most TREK programs are located in are mainly low-income areas, as they are the ones that need the most help due to the lack of government offered social services. TREK made me aware of the unseen side of the Canadian society. For example, many students at my placement were First Nation’s children, and many of them were at a disadvantage educationally and needed the program because of the legacy of residential schools and discrimination First Nations people have faced in Canadian history. SOCI 100 taught me some ways I could help change society for the better, like through trying to change legislation, ect. Other ways that TREK has changed my perspective is that before I started volunteering, I didn’t really like kids. (I lied about this only my application to Writers’ Exchange, shhh). However, my placement made me slowly like kids as I worked with them more and more. Teaching them was one of the most humbling and rewarding experiences of my life but it’s also something I feel good about and take pride in. All the children I worked with were great (thought a bit rowdy at times) and I hope for all of them to have a successful future.
The only regret I have about my placement is letting the kids know I could draw. This has lead to a lot of temper tantrums when I refused to draw the kids Pokemon for the 10th time (I’m not even kidding about this, I counted), and fights over which kid I was I was next going to help with designing their Ninjago characters. Basically, if you volunteer where there is children, deny any and all artistic talents you have, no matter how much they beg you to draw. It’ll save you a headache.
Another nice thing outside of your placements itself is the once a month meetings with other TREK students. I personally found this good because we have a little community going with each other. During the discussions we get to share similar experiences, and it’s a good opportunity to get to know a small chunk of your CAP stream. Even though you see the same faces for the whole year, when friend groups are cemented at the beginning of the year, it’s difficult to get to know some people in the stream. This is a good opportunity to interact with people you’d otherwise would not be talking to. Who knows, maybe one of your fellow students in TREK will become the connection/tie that’ll help you get your job in the future, or become your significant other 😉
Finally, if you’re worried you’d be missing out on extra learning/understanding of the class through discussion sections, you really won’t be missing it. Personally, my grade has been fine throughout SOCI. As for learning the course material, a lot of things at my placement has related back to the things we learn in class. Throughout the year I’ve had little “aha” moments whenever I connected something at my placement back to a Sociological concept. Learning things in Sociology has helped me understand why some things at my placement are the way they are. For example, learning about Neoliberalist governments pulling back funding for social services in the 1980’s to the present helped me understand why there was a need for volunteering organizations such as the Writers’ Exchange. Another example would be that Canada has a smaller amount of private schools then the U.S, but still has a major imbalance between the quality of education in public schools, such as Queen Alexandra, compared to private schools, which again is due to Neo-liberalism making the public regard education as a good rather than a right. Another would be the reason behind the need of after school programs like the Writers’ Exchange, which can be attributed to the shift in the Global North from an industrial economy to a service economy in the 1970’s/1980’s- which lead to more women in the workforce working longer hours, leaving a need for daycare and after school programs. If you have no idea what I’m talking about don’t worry, you’ll learn it soon! Generally at all placements, you’ll be able to connect back something you see to what you’re learning in class. Working at a placement really helps you actively learn about the class, and about the world in general. Not to sound like a broken record but TREK has been a great opportunity, and please consider volunteering for a great cause (and so you don’t have to write a massive research paper)! I hope to see you in the program next year!
P.S, not to shamelessly plug the Writers’ Exchange, but you should definitely consider volunteering for the Writers’ Exchange 😉