A Letter

For some bizarre reason I was asked by my friend's sister to give advice to her friend on...well basically on life. On trying to find your way, figure out what you're passionate about and look for a job. I suppose I have had enough trouble finding my way after graduating that I...while not an expert...have certainly learned a lot from my mistakes and my successes. It can be easy to forget what you've learned and what you've accomplished. I'm not sure how much my letter helped this girl, but I think writing it helped me remember and reflect on my life thus far. Perhaps it can help other recent graduates as well...


Hello new friend,

Sorry for the delayed response. I wanted to give you a thoughtful response and then ran out of time for thinking.

So I'll start with background information on me. I started my undergrad straight out of high school, which may seem irrelevant, but I think it played a roll in my story. I studied Natural Resource Conservation in the Faculty of Forestry at UBC and absolutely loved it.

The summer after first year, I worked 7 days a week at two restaurant jobs (Subway and a local restaurant). I honestly think that it was great experience, but I had to work all the time (I only took 4 days off that summer because my boss forced me to) in order to make enough money to pay for the following school year at $8 an hour. Because of that, I decided to join the co-op program, which was a great decision. This meant that it took me a year longer to graduate, which I think helped in terms of being slightly less young when I graduated, and it meant that I had 20 months work experience when I graduated. The first summer I worked for BC Timber Sales, then the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, then for a university in South Africa.

They were all great experience (South Africa especially shaped who I am today and inspired the topic of my undergrad thesis: community participation in the management of parks), but each one paid less than the one before and I ended up having to take out a student loan for my last semester at UBC. This meant that when I graduate I was broke and in debt, so I decided to work in a restaurant, while I looked for other work. I cried a lot that summer because it was the first time my future was uncertain (hence the influence going straight into my undergrad had). My parents' graduation gift to me was a flight to Ireland (my father was born there), so I spent that summer making money for my trip and training because I had decided to cycle around the country, so I could see it better. This was good because it gave me a goal to work towards, but I was acutely aware that after that trip, I had nothing planned.

Now, looking for jobs is a depressing enough task and if you're not in a good mood when you go for interviews, you're likely not going to get the job...especially if you didn't use a contact to get that interview. I knew this, so to fend off the depression, I tried to keep busy. I would volunteer bird banding from 5am to 1pm, go home, nap, then work from 5pm to 1am. Keeping busy was good in that it made me feel like I was actually still doing something with my life. I was making money working in a restaurant and doing something I loved in my volunteer work (bird banding in the summer and being a girl guide leader in the school year). It was stuff that I always wanted to do while I was at school, but didn't have time for...one of the perks of graduating.

You asked me how I found the job market in the Lower Mainland. I found it hard. Keep in mind that I didn't put all my energy into looking for a job with everything else that was going on in my life, but I looked for work from May after I graduated until February with no luck and very few interviews. I don't say this to discourage you, but to tell you that mass applying for jobs rarely pays off. Though, that being said, a friend of mine sent her resume and cover letter to every law firm in Vancouver and got 3 interviews and 1 job as a result, so it can pay off, but the odds are not in your favour.

In January, I got an email from UBC saying that they were looking for applicants to a new Trans-Atlantic Forestry Masters program. It involved a $14,000 scholarship, two three week field courses (one in Europe and one in Canada), a year at a European university and a year at a Canadian university. You would graduate with two degrees (one from each university). It was the first year that they offered this program, so I decided to apply...not thinking I would get in (I originally wanted to work before going back to do my Masters), but laying down the foundation so they would know my interest if I decided to apply again in the future. To my surprise, I was accepted in February.

To be honest, it was mostly fear that made me accept my place in the program. Don't get me wrong, it was a great opportunity and I was flattered to get in. But I wasn't ready to go back to school. I went into the Masters defeated...I couldn't find a job, so I went back to school. I see from your message to me that you are thinking of going back to school to do a Masters. This is awesome and, if you love school and love academia, by all means you should go for it. But a Masters is not an out. By going into it and not being ready and passionate about, it is going to be much much harder than it has to be. I mean my grades were great in the courses I took and I was genuinely interested in the subject matter, but it is incredible hard to self-motivate for your thesis, if you a) go into it feeling defeated, and b) don't have a specific passion you want to study. From the sounds of it, you're not interested in academia. As tempting as it is to hide out in school for another 2 years, or probably more if you're not passionate, my advice would be to stick it out in the real world for a bit and really give yourself the opportunity to shine on your own.

If you want to go back to school, it will always be there and, if you work for a while on getting to know yourself and what you want out of life, you'll have a better idea of what to study. It sounds like you're a bit like me from your message. I also don't really know what types of jobs I want to pursue. From my work experience, I have learned what I don't like and some of what I like, but I'm still discovering myself. I think that this is something you're always doing and that there is no one perfect job for anyone, especially because we are always changing. So don't put too much pressure on yourself to find the one thing you're passionate about. Chances are there are many things you would love to do and many parts of those jobs you would love you will become less fond of with time. In this vein, apply for the jobs that you are truly passionate about. It will come across in your application and you won't waste time interviewing for jobs you'll feel obliged to accept even if they don't interest you.

The other piece of advice I have in terms of job hunting is something that you've heard a million times, but, if you're anything like me, it hasn't sunk in yet. The jobs you'll have, especially when you're starting out, are all about who you know. To me networking always seemed fake and manipulative. I felt I needed to get jobs on my own merit and not because my mom's friend owns such and such a business.

When I moved to Fredericton in the second year of my Masters (the first year was in Finland), I had one friend in the working world and the rest of them were students like me or recent graduates looking for work. My working friend was amazing. We had worked together in South Africa and she became a huge advocate for me (from this I suppose you can take the advice to always do a job you can be proud of even if you're not making any money...the stipend I got in South Africa didn't even cover my rent). My friend introduced me to her friend who was looking for help with her job. This friend ended up giving me her job and I went from poor student to the part-time executive director of a non-profit overnight. It was, quite obviously, a huge learning curve, but it made me excited about working and about my future again. Since then, my friend and the woman I replaced have both helped me find other short term work around Fredericton. I think that the importance of who you know is more obvious in a small town, like Fredericton, but it is just as relevant to job hunting in a big city as well.

Making use of your social network is incredible important and something that is super undervalued in our generation. We were raised to be strong and independent and able to move from bottom to top on our own, but that's not realistic and it's not fair to us. You studied biology, we are pack animals. We can work well alone, but we do so much better when we work together. Why waste energy doing it the hard way when we can put that energy to good use? Now, I say this confidently, but it is a lesson that I am still trying to learn myself. I know in my heart that it is true and logically it makes sense, but it is hard to untrain yourself to want to be independent. In conclusion, I'm working on it, dammit!

I think that is all I wanted to say to introduce myself. I hope it wasn't too overwhelming and a little bit helpful, but at least you don't have to feel bad that your email was too long!

Cheers,
April

Sandy

When the storm started, I decided it was time to go to bed. The lightening lit up my room and kept me awake through closed eyelids, as thunder rumbled in the distance. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three. I counted miles from the storm instead of sheep. As I began to drift off, residual thunder became the background noise to the start of my dreams.

Then the storm really hit. Strangely, it was the moment of quiet that woke me. Nothing had happened yet, but all my hairs stood on end and I felt like I was vibrating in anticipation. My eyes opened just in time to see the lightening, thunder cracking a second later and shaking the house. I felt exhilarated. Both helpless and alive!

We were talking in one of my classes about the concept of nature. Are we a part of nature or a separate entity? Can anything be unnatural, if it is the product of the minds of humans? Just another species altering its habitat to suit its needs.

During the storm I was lying in a man-made bed, beside my cell phone and computer, physically separated by the walls of an old house, but directly connected to the storm. The electricity flowed through the walls. I felt it. Within my unnatural, man-made construction, the energy of the storm had a physical effect on me. Is that not evidence that, despite our efforts to separate ourselves with physical and mental barriers, we are still a part of nature.

Tiny. Significant. Electric. A part.

You know you've lived in Finland for too long when...

You bike home at 2:30 in the morning for 30 minutes when it's -2 degrees wearing a tank top and shorts.

Mission Impossible

I might regret this post if my current roommates ever read it, but I hope that if they do they are not offended and realize that I write it out of endearment (and mild exaggeration for comedic value...of course).

I know that I have been terrible about writing this year and I apologize, oh one person who reads this (read: mom). I think the problem I have with writing my blog is that I have too many ideas for posts. So many that I get overwhelmed with all the "work" I have to do and end up not writing anything. So, I am going to not write any of the ideas I have had up til now. If I have not written them yet, they are not important enough. And I will start with a blank slate.

However, you do require a bit of background. I have just moved to Rovaniemi (Northern Finland though not quite Lapland I am told) for my summer internship at the Arctic Center. The move was filled with insane coincidences that I would love to tell you about, but they fell before my decision to give up on my former ideas...so too bad! No, if there is demand (ie. if I have not already told you in person), I can maybe find the time to write about it.

No niin, I am now living with two Finnish girls. Although I had a Finnish roommate in Joensuu, as my lovely Finnish friend put it, she was "special". This means that she enjoyed socializing with me and my Japanese roommate and did not think twice about letting us use her stuff or coming to talk to us when we were in our rooms. All seemingly normal things to a Canadian. And, while I knew that this behaviour was not normal by Finnish standards, I did not have to confront that reality head on.

By Canadian standards, Finnish people can seem rude. They are very direct. This can be seen in the language where there is no word for please and you say "what?" when you didn't hear someone. Their attempts at small talk are awkwardly adorable at best or altogether non-existent. And in their mannerisms, such as pushing past someone who is in your way because you don't to bother them and/or don't think it is necessary to say excuse me. Coming from a world where everyday I have extended conversations with my bus driver or cashier and absolutely nothing is actually said, this can be quite shocking. Though it does make learning the language easier, as you can get by just saying moi (hi), joo (yes), hyvää (good/cool) and kiitos (thank you). They are also very private and it is common to live with someone for extended periods of time and never say more than hello as you pass each other in the hallway.

Usually, when I go to a country, I like to try to blend in. But I have always been to countries where I do kinda blend in or at least countries that suit my personality. So, I have decided that trying to be Finnish does not make me happy because it is not who I am, so I will just be myself and Finnish people and I will just have to work something out. Hence, Mission Impossible: befriend my roommates, so they act less like Finnish roommates and more like Finnish friends (who are absolutely fantastic by the way).

Here is my game plan. It's actually quite simple really. I will just force myself upon them. I will hang out in the kitchen (like I am doing now). They have to eat or go to the bathroom eventually and will be forced to say hi enroute. I will bake them delicious baked things and they will feel like they have to socialize with me in return. Finally, I will ask them how they are every time I see them and when they finally ask it back in response, I will talk about my day in great detail. I shall keep you updated, but so far so good and the cookies haven't yet come out of the oven.

The Bright Side of a Flicker

I realize that I spent the last post complaining about my bathroom disco, but, in an attempt to look on the bright side, I have come up with a new favourite past time. I now spend far to long staring at my eyes in the mirror and watching my pupils constrict every time the light flickers on.

Unenthused Mercury

For the last week and a half my bathroom has been turned into a disco. It contains everything that you could find in a disco: it probably could be cleaned more often than it is; it's best not to think about how many people have been there before you and what they have done; you have a feeling of excitement to get there and disappointment once you're there; and most of all, you are consistently being blinded by a strobe light every time you enter.

Now I have never had to deal with fluorescent lights in my life time. Sure, I have been harassed by them at school, slowly driving insane by the ever so slight flicker. One of those things that if you concentrate on it to make sure it's there, it goes away with the sole desire of making you twitch spasmodically and yell to the heavens that you will do anything just to confirm that it's not in your head. To this I have grown accustomed. One of life's many annoyances that you become numb to until the day when they go away and return a thousand times worse than before. However, when it gets to the point where you have to uhn tiss uhn tiss uhn tiss your way through every bathroom break...something needs to be done.

Today I took the initiative. At some point in my life I came across the piece of knowledge that shaking a fluorescent light will prolong its life. My subconscious stored this piece of information away, somehow knowing that I would need it when rooms in my very home would start "jumpin'" and need to be tamed. Now I just needed to get the light out of its bizarrely shaped socket. After much almost breaking of the plastic, I remove the affronting tube. I shake it excitedly hoping that my excitement will translate into the excitement of the mercury molecules who have sunk into a deep depression in contrast to the clubbing feel given to the rest of the room. I even threw in a couple disco moves humming a few bars of Lady's Night.

One would think that the biggest challenge had already been surmounted, but alas! that would just be wishful thinking. I don't know whose idea it was to build a light socket out of plastic, but it is not conducive to remove or replacing light tubes. After successfully dismantling the contraption, I have absolutely no idea how to get it back in without the tube shattering in my hand in frustration. I hope my roommates are ok peeing in the dark or are more skilled light-putter-iners than I. I feel we will never know if the shaking actually does work...

And now my fingers smell funny.

Bye, Baby Bunting

I had my first real step into non-...shall we say marinated Finnish culture a couple weekends ago, when a Finnish friend took myself and another Canadian hunting with him at his home near Kuopio. My Canadian friend had been hunting before and shot a gun multiple times in her life as she competed in biathlon, so I was the only one new to both the hunting and firearms "scene". The Finn was concerned (and I must admit that I was, too) that I would "lose it" when they killed a rabbit and he would have to deal with female emotions; an unpleasant scenario even when you don't have a dead animal lying at your feet waiting to be gutted.

After a nice breakfast of leftover's from our hostess' restaurant, we started off the morning with firing practice. As I had never held a gun before, let alone fired one...this seemed like a good idea. Our Finnish friend had two guns that he took out hunting. One was a double barreled shotgun and the other was a pumping shot gun. Please note that I have no idea what the technical terms for these guns are, so excuse my juvenile nomenclature. The double barreled gun had the barrels stacked on top of each other and two triggers, one for each. You used the same sight for both barrels and picked which one you used based on how far away your target was. The lower barrel was for when the target was close to you and you use the trigger that is further way from your hand to fire it. They put one bullet in and let me try this gun first. My target was a pop bottle stuck onto a tree branch and we fired from the side of the road. Thus fulfilling all hicks with shotgun stereotypes in one go. To make it even more Rambo-esque I got to try out the pumping one as well, ejecting the cartridge like the veteran himself...well, kinda.

After target practice we went to a woodlot and met up with my friend's dad for the actual hunting. As much of the land is privately owned in Finland, if you are interested in hunting, you belong to (and pay dues to) a hunting club in your area. These hunting clubs talk to local woodlot owners in the area and organize permission to hunt on their land or really to have access to the land for hunting. Besides that, there are a certain number of licenses allocated to each species for each hunting club. So, if you were hunting something big, like a moose, everyone would go out together and you would share what you killed. We were just hunting bunnies (technically hares) though, so it was just a small group of us.

To start off with my friend's dad was going to be the "dog", meaning that he would go on the other side of the bushes and try to scare the rabbits out. Our mission was simple....shoot the bunnies, not him. As resident photographer and person not allowed to shoot a gun at living things (rightly so I might add), I took my place firmly behind both hunters and "dog" while we waited for the rabbits to be scared out of their homes. Despite the best efforts of our pseudo-canine friend, there were no rabbits to be seen. Our next attempt was to move into the more forested area and look for rabbits hiding in their. Again the dog walked along the outskirts of the woodlot trying to scare the rabbits in our direction. We had been walking around for only about 5 minutes before a white flash passed by just in front of us. My Canadian friend had enough time to say "Th..." before our Finnish friend had shot it. There's that mandatory military training paying off!

The waiting and being a photographer was fun, but this was the part I found the most interesting. Keeping an eye on me to see if I was going to "lose it" the Finn brought the bunny over to us. I was surprised at how big it was and the lack of blood. He explained that because the shot gun releases tons of little pellets, the animal gets shocked into dying by the physical impact rather than from the bullet piercing their skin. The next step was to gut the rabbit (a girl that I named Jana after the Finnish work for hare: janis). To do this you make a small cut just below the belly button and rip the hole big enough to fit your hand in and then some. Then you stick your hand in a just pull out all of the intestines and organs. The scientist in me came out as I looked through all the different organs and partially digested food, but I think the part that really struck me was how simple it was to do. Just a small cut and you can take out all of an animal's (or a person's) organs, it makes it seem like a natural process. After the rabbit had been gutted, they put branches into its body cavity to keep it from collapsing and put the rabbit on its stomach to drain the blood.

While waiting for the blood to drain, toasted (without my prompting I swear!) the life of the rabbit with yrttisnapsi (herb schnapps, which tastes kinda of like Jägermeister). Something that I have always found really interesting is how there is so much negative publicity about hunters when generally they're quite an environmental bunch. They are usually very considerate of the impact they have on the environment and are often the first ones to notice changes in wildlife populations. It's such a shame that their intimate relationship with wildlife is not better exploited in conservation policies, but back to the hunting trip!

We said goodbye to my friend's father and safely tucked Jana in the trunk on a newspaper bed before heading to our next hunting spot. I was always under the impression that hunting was a lot of standing around waiting for animals to show up (which I still think that it is), but we were lucky enough to catch our rabbit within the first 30 minutes of hunting. As we were already successful in our mission, the rest of the day involved less effort on our part in terms of the hunting and was more about wandering around in the woods. We looked for animal tracks in the mud and tried to attract birds with a call whistle. For lunch we made a small campfire and roasted sausages over it on sticks. It was so peaceful to sit out in the woods, eating sausages and warming ourselves by the fire.

We ended up cutting our day a little short because we still had to look for a couple Christmas trees for my friend's house and his neighbour's. In Finnish Christmas tree is joulukuusi or Christmas spruce because they only every use Norway spruce (the original Christmas tree I am told). We had a lot of fun wandering around the forest looking for the perfect Christmas tree. I am a huge fan of weirdly shaped Christmas trees, so I kept getting out voted in favour of a more traditional style. The benefit of spruce is that they are usually very beautifully shaped for Christmas trees, but in terms of ornament possibilities, the lack of branches is very limiting. It all depends on what you like though and we had a lot of fun wandering around in the woods some more anyway.

After our Christmas tree hunt we went back to the house to skin and butcher the rabbit. To do this we went to the wood shed and hung the rabbit up by its neck. To start you make a cut in the skin around the neck and then you just pull downwards. It does not come off quite as easily as pulling down clothing would be, but it looks very similar. It is quite a surreal thing to watch an animal being skinned. It starts to look a bit more human when it loses its fur, but not in a way that creeped me out, more just the realization that all mammals are really very closely related in the grande scheme of things. The only part of the skinning and butchering that irked me was when my friend got to the wrists and ankles, he broke them off rather than attempt to skin their hands. I mean it makes sense because there would be little meat on them and it would be very hard to skin, but that act of breaking bones, or maybe the sound of bones breaking, was the only part that made me twinge a little.

I cannot claim that the experience made me not want to eat meat. On the contrary, the whole process seemed a lot more natural, even more respectful, to me than buying pre-marinated meat wrapped in plastic from a grocery store. I am not 100% sure that the experience changed me at all, but I am glad that I had the opportunity to experience it. I like the idea of hunting and eating hunted meat, but, to be perfectly honest, wandering around in the woods waiting to kill something is a little boring. I would much rather go for a hike and see animals that way...though to be honest, there's not much difference in the two activities. And maybe that says a lot. That the intention behind the activity can change the way the actions feel, but I don't know that it even really does. Maybe it's all in our heads...isn't it usually.