Diary of a G Student

Monique Gendron
Team Member

fter high school, university seemed like it was going

to be a step up. And having a university basically on
my doorstep made it that much easier for me to transition
into a new educational landscape. I felt so much hope and
optimism, and all of my friends were wishing me good luck
and goodbye, even though I could still come around and visit
them regularly.

My first thought, walking into the wooden halls of the
University of Northern British Columbia, was “Oh my gosh,
this is going to be fun!” My second thought was that it
couldn’t be any harder than my last year of high school,
crammed with AP classes and my hardest tests yet.

Oh, how wrong I could be.

Nevertheless, I was still going to tumble headlong
into university, heedless of any of the many
dangers and obstacles that lay before
me. The summer before my long
misadventure, I had wandered into
the offices of Over the Edge, the
} very paper you happen to
hold in your hand at this
moment. I loved to
write, so I thought it
would be a great
opportunity
for me to
improve
my

writing and to learn

a thing or two about
journalism. Although,

to be completely honest,

I was actually mostly excited
about creating some comics and
expanding my artistic abilities. And

so I have, throughout this first semester,
contributed at least once per issue, despite
my struggles in the latter half of the terms.

Once midterms hit, I felt a little bit of pressure,
but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. I must’ve
tackled worse in high school, right? Once I got my
first paper back, I realized how wrong I was.

My high school career was, as my English teacher had
demonstrated what our elementary school successes were

in grade eight, a solid castle built on a foundation of sand.
The midterms made my very, very solid, A-plus and B range
castle sink to a very, very low C-minus. As my midterms kept
returning to me, and my grades kept falling short of my norm,
I realized that I wasn’t in the top tier of my grade any more.

I had become normal. But, the longer I thought about that
idea, being normal, the better I felt about it. “If I’m normal,”
I thought to myself, “that means that someone else has

a higher grade because I didn’t force them out of that
position.” On top of that, it meant I had room to improve.

So no, midterms didn’t go as well as I expected, but I still had
this. Or so I thought. November, I quickly learned, was called
Crunch Month for a reason, and not simply because it brought
a ridiculously heavy load of papers and midterms, but
because it would drain you of all ideas, feelings and energy,
and leave you stranded in the middle of your sea of
assignments. This is when both the best and the worst
emerge from deep within yourself. You become
snappier, bitter, testing the limits of your
friends’ patience, but at the same time you
complete volumes of work that you never
thought were possible for yourself.

That is exactly what
happened to me. And
I can say that 1 am

= 7
matelean®

Student Voice 7

unbc.ca

.

extremely
grateful
to have had

such excessively
patient friends.
From then on, it
was only downhill.

The number of my assignments

I had never decreased, and yet I was

supposed to somehow fit in at least

three hours of studying per class. November

finished, and December began slowly crawling

by at the pace of molasses flowing uphill in winter.
Finals were looming on the horizon, towering over
me like some eighty-foot giant. I had no time to spend
for myself any more, I never went on Facebook, didn’t
hang out with any of my friends. I had fallen into a
great, dark pit. The pre-final feelings and jammings.

By the time finals hit, I was a mess. I probably looked bad, but
I felt worse. I had never been through a harder school year

in my life, and I was only halfway done. But, I have made it
though okay. I lived. The finals are over. I don’t even really
care what grades I’ve gotten, as long as they are passing
grades. But because of what I’ve learned, what I’ve felt, I
know that I’ll do better next semester. I know better now.

Although, I did say that when I left high school.