My career goals lie somewhere in the world of Anthony Bourdain’s long-running show Parts Unknown, and its predecessor No Reservations. I plan to teach English as a second language, both as a means of diversifying my access to explore different countries around the globe and learning the language and culture of wherever I may be teaching, so that I can be properly immersed and have a more genuine understanding of the cultures I wish to document.
I chose to attend TRU to work towards that goal. Although my time at Thompson Rivers University has had definite challenges for me on both a personal and educational level, I have met all of those challenges head-on.
My natural inclination to make connections has allowed me to garner a large network of intelligent, goal-oriented people connections that will likely be invaluable in my future, highlighted through the diverse membership of the TRUSU Photography Club I founded with a photographer associate.
Although group projects are the bane of many students during their time in post-secondary education, I somehow have yet to experience the dread generally associated with working collaboratively with others and have excelled in the group work I’ve completed. However, I couldn’t say that every single group project I’ve worked on has been smooth sailing. One such example would be a conceptual solution to the limited parking on campus at TRU that would have been beneficial to students, professors, and university employees, which was not very well received among the faculty members and professionals brought in to assess our assignment.
Similarly, joining and assisting in the founding of the communications, journalism, and fine arts peer mentorship program (now operating as the TRUSU Journalism and Communications Club) was a privilege and a phenomenal learning experience. I acted as event co-ordinator and public outreach representative, conceptualizing and initiating many of the recurring and most crucial events and opportunities the club has to offer, such as the Student-Staff Social, and the Alumni networking social.
Being in the journalism program has expanded my perspective in many beneficial ways. Although my time in the program has been much more prolonged than I originally planned, choosing to delay my return to TRU at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed me to make significant personal and professional connections to students within and outside of the program, from all over the world. I collaborated with a local student who specialized in videography, with my contribution being photography, in documenting the 2023 iteration of the Swish 3×3 basketball tournament organized by TRU students and held at TRU.
In addition, a business student, a marketing student, a local DJ and I began organizing Latin-culture-centric events for the large and growing Latin community that attends TRU and calls Kamloops home. We found success in these events, though not without challenges, and will be expanding to other non-culture-based events in the future.
One of the most enlightening opportunities the program has provided for me is working with and learning from our local Secwépemc people to bring their voices closer to the forefront of social narratives on issues that affect their community specifically and Kamloops as a whole. While the public education system in British Columbia does address the colonization, oppression, and abduction of the indigenous peoples of Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc and BC as a whole, in my experience TRU has been far more thorough in educating students on the extent of the colonial oppression and, in many cases genocide that took place to create the Canada we know today.
My time at Thompson Rivers University raised my standards for understanding the world in many ways. On a local level, growing a greater understanding within communities allows stronger bonds to develop between differing communities in an area facilitating shared growth and prosperity. On a larger scale, creating understanding and sharing knowledge in all of its forms encourages empathy to grow and cultures to overlap and intertwine themselves in a beautiful tangle of ideologies, beliefs, and practices.
My developing understanding of these aspects of the world, and the world itself, continue to inspire and motivate me to educate myself, and anybody else who will listen about how complex and beautiful life is. Everyone deserves the opportunity to understand how similar the lives and cultures of strangers around the globe can be to our own, while still being unique, distinct, and crucial to the development of humankind.