[2021-05-23] University
On my morning walk with Mel, we talked about our university days. I shared that university was a tremendous learning opportunity for me. Not only did I take away academic knowledge, but I also grew as a person.
As a simple girl from the country heading to the big city at the age of 18, I had so much to learn (including, apparently, how to spell and pronounce "shindig"). These were pre-Internet and pre-smartphone days: we did not have all the world's knowledge in our pockets.
Because we had limited books on the farm and always so much to do, I didn't spend a lot of time reading literature. When I did read, I turned mainly to Agatha Christie murder mysteries, which I picked up at thrift stores. I fell in love with her novels after reading And Then There Were None in high school and Death on the Nile, which my mom bought me for Christmas one year.
We also had no cable TV, just two English channels and one French one. So I didn't spend time watching documentaries or educational programs, aside from Sesame Street as a kid.
The most scholarly resource we had at home was an almost complete set of Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia. Every week or two, my mom would buy the latest book in the series at the IGA grocery store. As I recall, they covered lots of topics, though nothing in great depth. So I wasn't ever going to become an expert on any one thing.
Moving to Ottawa to attend Carleton University opened up a whole new world for me. With a library that took up not just a room (as was the case at my high school) but an entire building, the university seemed full of information and knowledgeable people. I enrolled in Journalism and gained so much in my four years in the program, skills that I would apply in work and life for years to come.
One of the most practical talents I developed was the ability to pick up the phone and call someone I didn't know to get information I needed. Every week, I wrote stories for which I required sources. I might call a school principal one week, a physician the next, and the head of a nonprofit the week after that. I couldn't be shy or get intimidated if I didn't succeed in reaching my intended source on the first call. I discovered how to be persistent while remaining polite—habits that I apply to this day whenever I need to make a cold call.
I learned to take criticism. I still have all the stories I wrote in Journalism School. My daughter has read some of the comments on them and thought they were unnecessarily harsh. Perhaps they were harsh, but they helped me to quickly realize not to bury the lede, to spell every name correctly (a typo in a name resulted in an automatic F no matter how good the article) and to proofread more than once.
I was encouraged to think critically about everything that I read or was told. There were always at least two sides to every story, and my job was to present the opposing angles. I learned to attribute statements to others unless I could verify a fact independently or had observed something directly. This was probably the hardest lesson to master. Throughout my life and career, I can look back on occasions when I believed wholeheartedly the story one person told me without seeking out other versions of the same situation. Generally, though, I have learned to be skeptical about what I read or hear, especially when someone is benefiting financially by espousing a particular position.
Moving from a rural, fairly homogeneous community to an urban, largely heterogeneous city exposed me to many views and experiences. It was eye opening, mind expanding and life changing to meet people who had backgrounds and trials that differed so significantly from mine. I witnessed this both when I interviewed strangers for stories and when I interacted with fellow students.
Perhaps most importantly, my time in university taught me how to write a story. And by story, I mean simply words that convey something about a person's life. I grasped the power of stories. For writers, stories can expose them and make them vulnerable, but also enable them to connect in profound ways with others. For readers, stories can inform them, touch them, and change not just how they see the writer but also how they see themselves. The journalism program also gave me the courage to write, which is often the most difficult obstacle to overcome when preparing to write.
More than three decades after graduating from university, I'm still writing—in fact, more than ever. This blog is both the most significant thing I've written and the most vulnerable I've been. It's also the most meaningful writing project I've undertaken. I'm not sure that I would find myself writing my story of living with ovarian cancer if it weren't for the skills I acquired in Journalism School.
Documenting my story is my gift to my children. It's pretty cool that so many other people are enjoying my stories as well.
