Editor’s Desk: Volume 50, Issue 20
Carlo Javier // Editor-in-Chief
“We’re all we got.” – Shea Serrano
Dear 18-year-old Carlo,
You will love going to Capilano University, even though nearly everyone from your high school will be attending “bigger” universities like UBC, SFU or UVic.
There will be people who will look down on you for going to the North Vancouver-based institution. They will call it “Capilano College” as an insult. They will devalue its recently gained university status, and thus devalue your education.
You might think that the political studies field is your calling and that transferring to UBC is the best move for you. You’ll only be partly wrong about the first one as political issues will remain a constant in your work and studies, but you’ll be embarrassingly off about your second thought.
You will luck out and get involved with the Capilano Courier. This will be your second home.
Like every student who steps foot on CapU grounds, you will seek to find your sense of community. You’ll be inspired by the show of the same name and you will strive to find your own “study group” of a motley crew of friends. You will fail.
Don’t worry, much of the school will fail, too. You will become an integral member of the campus publication and your friends from work will play integral roles in your life. In fact, in the six years you will spend at CapU – one of which will come after you graduate from the School of Communication Studies – you will find that just about all the friends you make will be through the Courier.
In the same way that the Capilano University Blues student-athletes will prosper in their own secluded community in the Sportsplex, and in the same way that the artists from the IDEA program will cultivate great work together in the Arbutus building, you will find that your “team” will exist entirely in the small and messy office in the far corner of the Maple building.
You guys will do great work over a five-year-span and again, like the other pocket communities on campus, you will feel that no one will care. You’re not entirely wrong either.
After a slow start academically, you will come to enjoy the classroom. You will find the fine line between creativity and academics, as well as between your work as a writer and as a student.
You and the Courier will get recognized by your peers from other campus publications – from the whole country, too. And again, much of the very school you service won’t care, or even know.
At the end of it all, before you leave the Courier office for the final time, you will come to accept that community at CapU does not exist holistically. It comes in small, independent pockets and you will be in one of those pockets.
You will love going to Capilano University, even though traffic and apathy can be unforgiving. Your work will be thankless, and there will be weeks where you will ask whether all the stories you write are even worth it – and every single time, you will have the same answer: yes.
The truth is, it will not be because of the audience; it will be because of the team with you. You will have your degree as Kanye promised, but you will also have a community – and not many people get to say that.