Recapping four years at Capilano U.
Lea Krusemeyer (she/her) // Sports Editor
Andy Poystila (he/him) // Illustrator
It was the beginning of February and I was sitting at a Breka downtown. Coffee and snack ready, my best friend next to me, anxious to click the button I had eyed since my first day at Capilano University. ‘Apply to Graduate,’ had always seemed like something in a mystical far away world, not something that could be my immediate reality. We braced ourselves and clicked the button and after an incredibly underwhelming five minutes, had registered to graduate at the Spring 2025 ceremony.
Walking home that day, my last four years at CapU flashed before my inner eye. My memories of September 2021, my first semester, overshadowed by COVID-19 and Zoom classes. After having just moved to Canada, I was craving social interactions but instead, I got stuck in my shared apartment trying to listen to tired and exhausted professors who probably hated teaching on Zoom as much as I hated learning on Zoom. To be honest, my entire first year is somewhat of a blur, but I vividly remember feeling so lost. The Zoom chat boxes were my way of communicating with fellow students and it was messy and confusing; the blind really led the blind.
Emerging from that first COVID semester and the overall mess of my first year at CapU, I set out for 2022 to be my year! Spoilers: that didn’t happen either. While we were now finally in person and on campus, a new challenge arose. 8:30 a.m. classes became my most hated enemy and I folded at first sight. The amount of skipped early morning classes in my second year of school is embarrassingly high and surely cannot be counted on two hands. Coming from Germany, I also had this very specific image of North American universities in mind and CapU satisfied none of my imagined scenarios. No campus culture, crappy food, overpriced everything and my one-hour commute to campus didn’t help the overall feeling of, “What the hell am I even doing here?” that had crept into my mind.
So, logically, I had little expectations for my third year at CapU. But, just as they say when it comes to love—it finds you when you stop looking—CapU began to excite me. I had finally made it out of the trenches of 100 and 200-level classes and into the interesting stuff! I knew my way around campus, I began working for the Courier and—most importantly—I managed to find a handful of really great friends in my program. That’s when my long-lost need for academic validation was resurrected and I spent tiring and exhausting hours at the local library grinding out assignments like there was no tomorrow. My GPA, which had suffered due to my hate for 8:30 a.m. classes, was in desperate need of raising and I made it my mission to do so. A few minor hiccups along the way, like taking a class twice by accident, only made my already expensive degree even more outrageously pricey, but, hey, at least I was finally getting the As my ego was so desperately craving.
After setting myself up for success in year three, my fourth year at CapU began with academic anxiety and an overall feeling of, “Am I smart enough for this?” Through no one’s fault but my own, I had chosen classes that were challenging to a point I could barely handle—it didn’t help that I liked my prof so much that I desperately wanted to impress her—so, after having just escaped the trenches, I re-entered. Putting so much pressure on myself that I eventually ended up in therapy, but, hey, at least I managed to get my straight As. CapU was no help in all of this, inaccessible resources and a (most probably) underfunded Communication program only accelerated my already existing anxiety.
So, now about a month away from finishing classes for good, I walked home from Breka and came to the conclusion that even though my time here at Capilano University was a huge mess, I am who I am today because of it. Developing this academic anxiety forced me to reevaluate my priorities in life, and having close to no help from CapU forced me to become incredibly self-sufficient. Two skills that I now know to be invaluable. I started my journey through the trenches of CapU when I was 21 years old, and I often wonder how the people who come straight from high school do it. This recap of my journey through CapU hopefully makes some of you feel less alone in being lost and shows you that it really all is about not giving up. Shout out to all of you who keep grinding out assignments with the hope of one day clicking the “Apply to Graduate” button on myCapU.
