If you’re reading this, you’ve likely deduced by now, just by glancing at this page, that my name is Tanvi and I’m a student at UBC. If you looked a little harder, you might have even found my last name (Bhatia) and if you followed the right link to get here, you know that I’m a first year student in the Coordinated Arts Program’s Global Citizens stream. What you might not know about me is that I was born in India, though I have no accent to prove it. I moved to Canada with my family when I was two years old, and have lived in Burnaby, BC ever since. I love writing and reading, watching movies and acting in plays, and trying to find a better understanding of the world around me. In ASTU this year I want to strive for better understanding, but more specifically relating to the life narratives we’ll be studying. I want to know why certain narratives are so much more prominent than others in our society and discuss why the public is outraged by the story of Alan Kurdi, the boy who washed up on a beach and woke up the world to the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis when the story of Lucia Vega Jimenez, a refugee woman who was found hanging in a shower stall here in Canada never reached most of the general public. For the past three years, I’ve been volunteering with a group called the Youth Advisory Team, supported by Vancouver Foundation, trying to improve the lives of immigrant and refugee youth in Canada. I’ve heard hundreds of stories from people who have faced immense amounts of hardship, some at a very young age, and yet these stories never seem to be the ones that make it to the news. There are stories I’ve never heard anywhere else. In ASTU, I hope to discover why certain narratives resonate more than others and what attracts global notice and why, so that I can not only better understand what’s around me, but also look a little harder and uncover the narratives so often lost in our society.