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Joel Bentley is finally graduating this April. After five years of university, he’s more than ready.
“It’s about time,” he says. “Most of my friends have already moved on.”
The difficult part is still ahead, though. Bentley has immediate plans of going to Africa for four months to film a musical, but he doesn’t know what September will bring when he gets back.
Bentley is just one of the 445 Trinity Western University students participating in the Undergraduate Commencement Ceremonies this April. Each graduate has his or her own story, and everyone is experiencing intense emotions, usually mixed with a healthy of dose of anxiety.
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April 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The life of a university student is constantly in flux. It’s a time of transition and growth, and change is just a part of the job. This principle also applies to the Trinity Western University campus – though the structures and atmosphere seem so permanent during a student’s four-year stint, they too are as variable as the people they accommodate.
Just ask Glen Forrester. As vice president of administration, Forrester has been heading the task of revising and cementing the Campus Master Plan, which outlines changes that will be seen over several decades of university growth.
Recently, the Plan has moved into what Forrester calls “phase two.”
Phase two involves looking at the campus layout and current structures to decide what changes will be made, where and how. With the help of local design firm Phillips, Farevaag, Smallenberg, the university will be presenting an open house of the work which has already been done, presenting assessments that have been made and directions that have been outlined to the student body. The open house will take place from 11:30 to 3:30 on the first floor of Reimer Student Centre on April 9.
Phase one, which took place first semester, was defining what principles the new Master Plan would follow in future design projects. These principles were set to give guidelines that protect and enhance the university’s identity and mission.
“The primary output of phase one was to understand who we are, and who we aspire to be,” said Forrester. The university worked with architectural firm Hanbury, Evans, Wright, Vlattas and Company of Virginia to analyze their needs.
According to Forrester, the Master Plan will not be finalized until April. But he calls all current plans “virtually final,” and said any changes until then will be minimal.
Once phase two is completed, fundraising will begin for the building of a new Live-Learn Centre (re: “Where are we going?” Mars’ Hill, Volume 12, Issue 1), as well as a new chapel.
While the Live-Learn Centre will be a brand-new building, elements of the chapel will be retained in the new design. For example, the design of the roof will be maintained in some form, as will the rock wall. Forrester said no final decisions have been made on how these elements are to be incorporated.
Construction will hopefully begin on both projects in the next two years, though Forrester stressed this was completely dependent on fundraising.
Forrester said the updated plan is quite different than the one displayed in the entrance of RSC. The old plan, still exhibited in 3-D and glass cases near the entrance to the cafeteria, dreamed big and was full of underground parking and eight story residencies. But, said Forrester, the school simply can’t afford it.
In addition, and more importantly, Forrester stresses that the old plan “didn’t capture [TWU’s] essence to the degree which we now want. It didn’t communicate who we were.”
This seems to be the main focus of the new plan: using structures and space to communicate a campus identity in line with the university mission. Forrester cites architecture which reflects the university’s placement in rural Langley and the West coast, paths and buildings which facilitate community and designs that respect the environment as possibilities for the university’s future.
Forrester hopes to redo the display in RSC in the next year. But, like all things in the university’s dreams, “only if we can afford it.”
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April 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I can’t stop thinking about it. I want to do it so badly, but my friends yell at me for even thinking about such a thing. It would break my Granny’s heart, for sure. And I know it’s a knotty thing to do, but it looks like so much fun! Doesn’t anyone understand my dilemma?
Kris, a 29-year-old working at Knotty Boy, does. She felt those same longings I have. Had those same fears of being called names and given weird glances. The difference between her and I? She did it. For nine months, they matured and then out they came. But, alas, they were too much for her. “I’m bad at commitment,” she explained at the beginning of our telephone conversation. “Aren’t we all?” I asked.
And they are a commitment. Dreadlocks take at least a year to mature and they do require a bit of maintenance to keep them tight and pristine. The good thing about Knotty Boy dreads is they already look about three months old right out of the salon, according to Kris who has worked at Knotty Boy Lock Shop and Salon for a little over a year and who has been a stylist for nine years.
Most people think dread-removal is done only with a sharp pair o’ skizzors, but that’s not necessarily the case. In fact, the reason Kris got dreads was to grow her hair out. First, her stylist put in human hair extensions which were then dreaded and crocheted with the rest of her hair. I’m not going to explain what crocheting is because it would require copious amounts of drawings, pie charts, and bar and line graphs, but feel free to check it out online. However, I will mention Kris’s warning that crocheting is not for the faint of heart. “Sometimes crochet hooks have been known to do some damage…I had some band aids in the beginning [of my career],” says Kris.
Let’s touch on some avenues of dreading, shall we? Kris prefers the popular back-combing technique which usually begins by sectioning the hair into uniform squares at the scalp. Then you grab a section and, using a fine-toothed metal comb, begin to brush the hair towards the scalp starting at the base. Then add dread wax as you twist from the base up. Now it’s time to palmroll which is, quite obviously, rolling your dread between your palms in a Speedy Gonzales fashion.
Then there is the wool sweater method where you rub, well, a wool sweater on your head in a circular motion until dreads magically (and painfully) appear. Actually, there is a lot of tearing of knotted hair into sections and more circular rubbing and more tearing, so it’s not as simple as kneading an itchy garment into your head. But it’s close.
Another approach is that which means, “to be remiss in the care or treatment of:” neglect. (Cue climactic music of a Charlie Chaplin film.) All you have to do for this one is, as the Beatles suggest, “Let it be.” OK, so there’s a catch to this one too. You do have to keep your hair clean.
My sojourn in the dreaded realm has just begun, and my reasoning is solely style. But some people do it for spiritual purposes and others as a result of lethargy. All kinds of people get them. “You’d be really surprised who comes in,” says Kris who has a customer who is a surgeon in his 40s and flies to the Knotty Boy Salon in Vancouver all the way from Texas. A nine-year-old girl with cerebral palsy got dreads because she hated her mom brushing her hair. And then you have the people who are overly excited about holidays. “You don’t understand how many requests we get around Halloween for Johnny Depp dreads. It’s definitely the busiest time for us,” says Kris.
The Knotty Boy atmosphere is a place for community, diversity and acceptance. “People have e-mailed saying people have stopped making fun of them at school after getting dreadlocks.” Stories like this “warm my heart,” says Kris. “We take a lot of pride in being personal with our clients.”
From that 41 minute and 1 second conversation we had together, I knew she wasn’t faking. And in her own words I’ll conclude, “I can’t think of anything witty right now and there’s a lady who’s been waiting patiently to buy a jar of tightening gel.”
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April 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
When you think of the word art, what do you picture? The Sistine Chapel? And what is its end or purpose?
Graduating seniors, Andrea Wilburn and Alma Visscher, both art majors at Trinity Western University, are coordinating in Underground: The Senior Art Show, which will take place on April 11 and 12 in the Reimer Student Centre underground parking lot.
This event is created to showcase the talents of graduating art students as well as guest artists Russell Leng and Mike Rathjen. It will be similar to a gala, with some toasts and speeches. Admission is free so that everyone gets the chance to see the incredible works on display.
Art students begin developing concepts as early as September. The projects themselves are similar to a thesis in English or a recital in Music, but are far more pleasing visually. The final pieces of art range from sculptures to paintings and drawings with various themes encompassing the artist’s passions.
Alma Visscher deals with the concept of “what separates us from each other” in her works and uses simple materials, like nails or other everyday objects, to portray her ideas. Humour and the temporal and fleeting aspects of life intrigue Andrea Wilburn – an art lover since high school. She wants to show “how our experiences form us” and creates “each piece [of art] to speak for itself.”
I wondered what the role of training plays as opposed to how one’s heart figures into art. As Visscher says, “Technical is something you don’t think, it’s something inside of you coming out. It’s hard to put words to it – art can help you understand the world better.”
This kind of art is not really intended to be explained with words anyway; otherwise, there would probably be paper-clipped essays displayed instead of tangible creations. Wilburn says that these projects are “very processed and concept-driven” and finds that they can be “almost selfishly created,” but that we can also “move beyond that.”
“Art is a process,” Wilburn says, “and always brings about other questions.” What about answers?
“I get a resolved canvas, I get a satisfaction, but I don’t know about answers.” Visscher says. “We try not to make the artist statement too narrow – the viewer can continue the question.”
Wilburn agrees, “We want people to bring their experiences.”
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April 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Last week I happened to walk through the Atrium when the Trinity Western University nurses were having a Stress Clinic. How fitting for this time of the year, I thought. I made my way to the counter, signed up, and waited a few minutes before a friendly nurse sat me down, checked my heart rate, and gave me a warm cup of chamomile tea. Then I spent a few minutes on a mat doing pilates with a few other girls. Like magic, the stress slowly began to lift. After 10 minutes, I left the Atrium feeling better about myself and everything else that I had to do that day.
Right now, I don’t know of a single student who is not stressed out. We all have these giant to-do lists, yet there’s so little time left in the semester. Can you believe it? In just a few short weeks, we will be done with our papers and done with our finals. How do we deal with the stress in these last few weeks of classes and finals?
My answer is exercise. Exercise is by far one of the best, most effective stress relievers. This is because exercise decreases cortisol, one of our stress hormones, and increase endorphins and serotonin, our bodies’ feel-good chemicals, giving your mood a natural boost.
Exercise can also be a wonderful distraction by temporarily taking your mind off that to-do list, as it often involves a change of scenery. It is good to take a break from that computer screen and get to a gym, a park, a biking trail, a swimming pool, a neighborhood sidewalk, all of which can be pleasant and low-stress places.
There are so many different ways to exercise. Have you ever tried water aerobics or a spinning class? One of my favorites is Hot Yoga. My roommate goes deep water running at the pool.
Now, if you are not much of an exerciser, the last thing you want to do right now is begin an intensive seven days per week program that will get you ready for bikini season in the next three weeks. That will stress you out even more. But even taking a 20-30 minute walk will decrease your stress levels enormously.
So when you are feeling overwhelmed at this time of the year, a short exercise break just may do the trick. Remember that every minute of physical activity can help you feel better, think better and ultimately get you through these stressful last weeks.
