First Year 2006-2007

FIRST YEAR 2006-2007

Intro to Sociology ~ Dr. Sylvia Hale: This was a full year course highlighting the basic theories of sociological perspectives.  This course taught me to think differently about the world around me and to question things rather than just accept them to be “so”.  As with all my sociology courses the reading was painful!   However Dr. Sylvia Hale made classes very lively with her anecdotes and she encouraged debate and discussion.  This course decided my minor in sociology and I became another member in Dr. Hale’s large fan club!

Intro to English Literature ~ Trevor Sawler: Another full year course where I became a fan of Oscar Wilde and others through this overview of poetry, short stories and theatrical scripts.  Trevor Sawler truly loves teaching and makes this first year course lively and engaging.  He loves to share his favourite puns and frequent anecdotes about being the only male in the home with his wife and four daughters.  This course taught me a lot about character development and description.

Intro to French ~ Jonathan Rahn/Sylvia Beaulieu: I termed this full year course “French for dummies” since it was the very most basic intro to grammar, reading and writing.  Besides me and a few other anglophones, this course was dominated by international students who wanted to learn both of Canada’s official languages.  While I did well in this class, it did little to prepare me for the next level up, an intro course for students who had some french training.  I dropped that course before Christmas break in my 2nd year feeling rushed and frustrated.  Hopefully I can resume French training through a job in the future since I believe bilingualism is important.

Journalism 1013 “The Messenger” ~ Michael Camp: This intro course taught me who and what a journalist is.  The course reader was easy to follow and the writing assignments were fun and challenging.  Michael Camp loves to lecture with Power Point and his class is very easy to follow.  This soft spoken and easy going man is readily available to his students and is supportive and encouraging to anyone who seeks his assistance.  I had walked through the doors of STU seeking a journalism major, Michael Camp confirmed for me that I was making the right choice. 

Intro to Psychology 1013 ~ Laurie Fitzgerald: My interest in psychology stems from the type of writing that first drove me to journalism.  Stories about people and why they do what they do.  Psychology courses are a really good way to flatten your gpa!  The exams are usually 90% or more multiple choice questions.  You MUST dazzle them with brilliance, you CAN’T baffle them with bullshit the way you can some essay questions.  Regardless, this course was interesting and challenging.  Laurie Fitzgerald is a soft spoken woman with a great sense of humor and an aversion to modern teaching techniques!  She’s a huge fan of the overhead projector, and in spite of agreeing to use PowerPoint when she subbed for another prof in my 2nd term, she bailed by saying she’d forgotten the key to the computer cabinet, andinstead used her stand-by overhead slides!   Sadly Laurie was lost to STU but I’m sure she’s happy to be back in her native BC teaching at UVIC. 

Journalism 1023 “The Message ~ Great Stories” ~ Michael Camp: This course was an obvious favourite for Michael Camp to teach.  And the stories in the course reader were indeed Great!  Michael expanded on the theme of the first course by showing us the power of journalism throughout history.  Writers such as Andy Rooney and Ernie Pyle covering the wars to the power of the media during the civil rights movement.  Each week we were required to write reviews answering specific questions about the stories in the course reader.  This was a powerful course that taught me to view life’s events from a perspective of sharing them with others, informing them, motivating them to seek changes.  This could be my favourite journalism course to date.

Intro to Psychology 1023 ~ Dr. Kim Fenwick: Part two of Intro to Psych was an expansion on the first course.  More in depth look at the different types of psychological disorders.  Dr. Fenwick obviously loves to teach the intro classes and kept the class lively and interested.  Many anecdotes from her own family, especially her children and her experiences at Grad school kept the class amused.  This course hooked me into pursuing a minor in psychology as well.

Depression and suicide: Henick speaks out

The crowd hadn’t yet settled into their seats when Mark Henick said:

“I was in the eighth grade the first time I tried to kill myself.”

The room became quiet. Henick paused for a moment, allowing his opening statement to sink in, and then he introduced himself.

Henick’s lecture on depression and suicide is a personal subject. He’s knowingly lived with for 8 years, although he believes he’s been unlike most people his entire life.

Mark Henick reviews his notes before his speech. Photo by Tammy Murray.

“I was a bit of a strange little kid; I liked to be alone a lot… I liked to play by myself. I was perhaps a little bit different than other kids – that signs very early on would have been evident for anybody who was looking.”

As a teenager trying to cope in a blended family in a rough neighbourhood in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Henick realized nobody was looking. Nobody looked until he pulled a knife from his bag while sitting in an office with the guidance counsellor.

“He just asked me, he recoiled a little, I remember that, he just asked me what I was going to do. I could hear his, I could hear the quiver in his voice as he asked me what, what I was going to do.”

Henick had left his classroom and wandered down to the cafeteria to ask for a long knife. He told the teacher there he’d been sent to get one to cut a cake in class. Henick’s requirements for the knife were quite specific; long, straight edged and non-serrated.

After securing the knife, he wandered around the school for awhile eventually going to the counsellor’s office.

“I went in and I was having this fight with myself. Well what am I doing now? I had this all planned out, but it didn’t seem like a great idea anymore.”

Whether too stubborn to give up on the idea or too desperate in his darkness to carry on Henick didn’t say but he twice refused the counsellors request to give up the knife.

“As I said ‘No’ I held the knife by the blade, I don’t know why, it had a handle,” he paused and chuckled. “But anyway, I held the knife by the very end of the blade… and I squeezed the knife in my fist, and I held it up to my throat… I could feel the blood dripping down my hand and down my arm because I was squeezing the blade. He said my name, he said Mark could you give me the knife please, then I said ‘No, I can’t do that. I need to do this’…”

Henick said they sat there for what seemed like forever until he got to a point of “almost clarity.”

“I came to a point where I just stopped thinking. I took a deep breath, I closed my eyes, and just before I pushed it into my throat he tackled me.”

Henick’s graphic testimony of this, his first of many attempts to commit suicide, is deliberate. He knows if he’s still feeling uncomfortable talking about it and the audience is uncomfortable hearing about it then there’s still a lot of work to be done de-stigmatizing mental illness.

Students, faculty and other guests crowd into the auditorium at Brian Mulroney Hall. Photo by Tammy Murray.

 

This was Henick’s fourth and last lecture at St. Thomas University. He graduates in the spring. Henick said when he first started the lectures he had only six or seven people listen to him, gradually expanding over the years.

“This was actually the biggest crowd I’ve ever had… I was pretty surprised when I looked back and saw that the room was full.”

Many students were present as well as some faculty and the director of counselling services for the University of New Brunswick.

Psychology students Erin Flower and Leanna Garrett waited their turn to speak with Henick after his lecture. Both had strong impressions of his story.

“It was really good to hear his experience and hear how he coped with it,” said Flower

STU student Samara Young talks with Mark Henick after his lecture. Photo by Tammy Murray.

 “I thought it was really touching and really heart warming that he’s able to tell his experience to all the university students and I think it touched a lot of people’s hearts and made them realize that people can relate to him too,” Garret said.

Samara Young is in her third year studying psychology and criminology. She has heard stories like Henick’s before while counselling youths in the Yukon, she admired his courage to be so open.

Henick can’t recall the exact number of attempts he’s made to take his own life but he did relive one which he said was the closest he’d come to dying. Henick put down his note book and prepared to climb up onto a table in front of the crowd.

Mark Henick. Photo by Tammy Murray.

 

“Actually I’m going to take my boots off so I don’t kill myself, that’d be kind of ironic,” he said to a chorus of laughter.

All joking aside, Henick was making it real, reliving his attempt to jump off a highway overpass.

“I climbed over the railing… I could feel the concrete, I could feel my toes dangling over, there was about five stories below me at least.”

Henick struggled with the memory more than once as he stood on the table, arms outstretched, eyes closed, face scrunched up with concentration. He describes the bridge being closed off and people lined up on each end. The bar crowd heading home, police officers preparing to intervene. Henick recalls one person yelling at him ‘jump you coward.’

“I again had a moment where I just cleared my thoughts, just stopped thinking… took a deep breath, took my hands off the railing, and I just let myself start to fall. It felt so good.”

Looking emotional, Henick relives his attempt to jump to his death from an overpass. Photo by Tammy Murray.

Henick paused a moment to clear his throat, apologized, and then carried on in a trembling voice.

“It was the first time I felt free in my less than two decades of life. Before I could fall I felt somebody’s arm grab me from around the back. I don’t know who it was, I still never did find out.”

Later Henick praised the unselfish efforts of the man who had saved him. He told his audience anyone of them had the power to change lives.

“The person who pulled me over that railing on the overpass, I never met in my life, never met him again. I don’t know his name, I’ve always wanted to thank him, but that’s not why he did it. He didn’t do it to be thanked. He did it because he saw somebody on the edge, and reached out. So I ask these things of you, to be the person who reaches out.”

New media option for New Brunswick

Stop the presses! There’s a new kid in town. Well really, it’s a new media source for New Brunswick.

The Brief is a one-page, double-sided publication printed on 30 per cent recycled paper. On average it contains five or six stories and a list of community events. Oh, and it’s a monthly publication with stories to get people asking questions.  Stories like ”many felt it took too long to get police to respond to missing N. B. First Nations teen Hilary Bonnell.”

The Brief could also be considered the baby of the much larger and more sophisticated parent: nbmediacoop.org. This web based publication launched in August of this year.

Marie-Christine Allard with a copy of The Brief, a new publication in N.B. Photo by Tammy Murray

Marie-Christine Allard describes her position as being one of the founding members and a part of the editorial collective. She and other members feel it’s important for N.B. to have an alternative news source.

“The idea was that it would be accessible and it would be critical and independent,” said Allard.

Allard said the idea for the media co-op was inspired at the New Brunswick Social Forum in Sept. 2008 and was spurred on by the closure of the Carlton Free Press in Woodstock just one month later.

Click here for Marie’s audio comment

“Because of what we consider to be Irving’s anti-competitive practices. Which it’s very clear, legally they didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s very clear that they were just trying to get the Carlton Free Press out of business. So we kind of felt a certain sense of urgency there, that we really needed to get something together,” said Allard.

Via email correspondence and frequent meetings in Fredericton, the concept of the media co-op was formed.

“It was mostly just people that were really concerned about this,” Allard said.

The project consists of the “editorial collective” and a “broader organizing body”. Allard said they are mainly based in Fredericton at this time but plan to spread throughout the province with an “advisory committee.”

“It’s a group of 14 people who are democratically elected, who represent just different sectors of underrepresented communities or issues in the province.”

Allard said they currently have representatives for gay and lesbian issues, women’s issues, Acadian and Francophone, First Nations and rural farming issues.

“It’s all these issues and communities that we feel are often underrepresented in the media.”

She said the job of these representatives is to ensure they’re not ignoring an issue or certain sector of society.

“The role of that rep is also to seek out stories or seek out people who could offer commentary or that kind of thing.”

Michael Camp is an assistant professor and the chair of journalism at St. Thomas University. He said the ability for citizens to write and publish things they care about on the internet, “is a wonderful thing.”

“There is definitely room and I think a desire, in this province in particular to have a completely free and unfettered journalistic outlet. We have a few, we could use more. So it’s a good thing,” Camp said.

Michael Camp has a look at the website for NB Media Co-op, a new online media option for New Brunswick. Photo by Tammy Murray

Camp said with internet access and word of mouth, small publications have the potential to reach an enormous audience.

“All it takes is a few friends telling a few friends telling a few friends that this new website for example is out there and suddenly you’ve got a core of people reading something that has as much reach as the Telegraph Journal. I think these can be explosive.”

Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation was the guest lecturer at St. Thomas University’s annual Dalton Camp Lecture last week. Her assertion that professional journalism could survive alongside the volunteers on the internet was compelling but not entirely convincing. Many in the field are wondering just who is going to pay journalists to do their jobs when there’s so much news available for free.

While the organizers for The Brief and the website nbmediacoop.org are currently all volunteers, Allard said they are working to change that.

“We do want to have a paid staff and be able to pay for stories. But that’s going to come when we’re able to have a solid business plan and can get some grants, get some funding,” said Allard.

The Brief and STU campus newspaper the Aquinian, side by side at McCain Hall. Photo by Tammy Murray

Allard feels the media concentration by the Irving empire in N. B. is a problem because some issues are glossed over or don’t get coverage at all.

“I do feel that a lot of things aren’t being covered in the Irving media and I’m not blaming the journalists at all… I’ve actually been talking to some former Irving employees or current Irving employees that said ‘Yeah, we do know who our employer is and you can’t help that’ and even if there isn’t that actual person looking over your shoulder, they felt there was a certain amount of self-censorship knowing that you can’t write certain things about the Irvings or you can’t cover certain issues or certain criticisms. We’re not funded by them so we don’t have that obligations, we’re member funded… so we hope to offer an independent perspective.”

Michael Camp understands the issue of media concentration; he started his career with the Irvings.

Click here for Michael’s audio comment

“Knowing some of the Irvings as I do, they feel that they’re helping New Brunswick… they feel without them this would be a much more troubled place with many fewer jobs… That’s the sort of bias I would have if I was an Irving, but it is a bias and I think it’s impossible for it not to rub off on the editorial and news content of their newspapers.”

Allard said it’s about accountability.

“I personally feel like that’s the role, like the role of media is accountability, to keep leaders accountable and companies, so that’s really what we’re going for… Not only do we have a media monopoly in New Brunswick, but the family that owns that monopoly also owns a really big part of the industrial base. That’s pretty much unprecedented in what we call the developed world. The company that’s supposed to bring accountability to those companies, they’re the same. It’s a really big conflict and a really big problem in our democracy.”

Allard describes herself as an optimist but concedes “grassroots” projects alone won’t fix the media monopoly in N. B.

The Brief is currently circulated in coffee shops, on campuses and other community outlets. It's a tool to draw people to the website. Photo by Tammy Murray

“We need to have some legislation around media concentration, there’s some of that legislation pretty much everywhere except for here, from what I understand.”

See the NB Media Co-op website here:

The economy and graduating students.

Students graduating from post secondary institutions this year are facing some tough choices.  Get into the job market and try to find employment they can live on or remain in school and incur even more debt.

In spite of the many recent assertions by government that the economy is on the upswing, students are still feeling apprehensive.  Many have high student loan debt and are wondering how they’ll be able to pay off hundreds of dollars per month as well as day to day living expenses.

That’s assuming they can find a job at all.  This month’s Statistics Canada report states the summer student unemployment rate was the worst in more than 25 years.  

Katy Lee Benson is a fourth year student at St. Thomas University (STU).  Benson said job hunting this summer was difficult but she did eventually find work at her community’s museum.  

“… I live in a very small community which makes things even more difficult.”

Benson was able to work 40 hours per week for 10 weeks at the museum through a government employment program.

“If it weren’t for that I probably wouldn’t have been able to get one at all, she said.”

Benson was able to stay on at the museum for an extra week and a half, saying they scraped up enough money to pay her for the extra.  She said she would have taken more work if it was available.

Benson said financially she just couldn’t stay in the city, going home to her family was the better option, since she was able to save her earnings for her school year expenses.

“I didn’t have to pay rent or groceries because my parents are wonderful, Benson said.”

Benson expects she’ll be heading back home after graduation in May as well.

“If I go home, even if the job is shorter term, I can bank the majority of what I earn.  It just makes better financial sense.”

The Statistics Canada report also stated:

“In addition to a high unemployment rate, the average number of hours worked during the summer by students was the lowest since 1977, at 23.4 hours per week.” 

This translates to fewer dollars in students’ pockets and a higher debt load overall.  To make up for the shortfall students are relying more heavily on credit cards and bank lines of credit to help them make ends meet. 

Students like Benson are also choosing more education in spite of the increase to their debt load.  Melissa Munn graduated from STU in May and felt her Bachelor degree did little to make her employable.

“Being able to write a 15 page paper isn’t a skill listed for the majority of jobs out there.  I’ve found myself with little options for employment beyond what I could have done previous to my degree, Munn said.”

Munn decided to resume her studies in Nova Scotia even thought it meant leaving her family home to live on her own in an apartment. 

“I have decided to go back to school, at Mount Saint Vincent University, to get my Bachelor of Public Relations. This professional degree will train me for a specific job and
the job placement rate within the industry at graduation is very high, she said.”

Rice Fuller is the director of counselling services at the University of New Brunswick (UNB).  The centre provides personal as well as career counselling for students of UNB and STU.  Fuller said clients are feeling the pressure of the economy.  He said some of the counsellors are hearing things such as “why even try, no one is hiring” from students who are frustrated with job hunting.

“In addition students who graduated this past spring do seem to be having difficulty finding full-time employment in their chosen fields, Fuller said.”

Benson said she could teach in the public school system after she graduates but she’s determined to achieve her Master’s degree.

“… so I think I would probably go and teach overseas for a couple years to pay off what I have and try and earn enough money to come back and get my masters.”

High School Wrestlers at UNB

A long form story from my third year TV class.

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