I’ve always kind of been a pack rat. It began in middle school when I acquired an orange plastic mini-garbage can. Every time I visited a new place or met a new person, I always tried to take something tangible away from the experience that would remind me of it. When I travelled with my family to a swimming competition on Vancouver Island, I saved my ferry ticket and placed it in that can. Faded photo-booth photos of me and best friend Jenny were in there too, squished between an American dollar bill from my band trip to White Salmon, Wash., and an old pack of gum I bought while on a first date.

It’s Monday morning. Correction, Monday afternoon. The tips of my fingernails are non-existent, my brain is longing for caffeine, and my stomach is reminding me that I have not eaten since last night. My eyes gloss over as I stare at my computer screen, and curse the blinking cursor. It is the last day of production weekend. The newspaper you are holding in your hands is almost complete—complete except the article that I am currently writing.

One of my writerly friends was often fond of saying that the writing process could be likened to trying to extract water from a stone. I certianly am not Moses.

While researching last issue’s article on subversion at Trinity Western University, I came across an interesting little organization called MOOSA: the Motivated Organization of Opposition to the Student Association. The chief complaint of this student group, which existed during the academic year 1999-2000, was the unusually large number of students running unopposed for TWU Student Association positions.

However, I’m starting to wonder, seven years later, if this situation is really all that unusual. Last year four out of the five Executive candidates ran unopposed; this year, only two positions – President and Vice President of Student Relations – had more than one candidate.

In one of the best high school movies of all time, there’s a famous scene where John Keating, a teacher of English at prestigious Welton Academy, brings his students into the school’s trophy room. As the students look at pictures of former Welton students, Keating has them repeat the words, carpe diem – ‘seize the day.’

Following this scene, the rest of the movie is a process of awakening. For these young boys, ‘seizing the day’ leads them to search for their own identity apart from that which has merely been handed down to them from their elders.

Last year, something happened at a small university campus in Langley. When problems with administration came to light, dissatisfied students spoke out and the Dorey Report was born.

On Jan. 26, 2006, close to 80 people packed the TWUSA office for a ‘town hall meeting.’ Many different concerns were raised, including, among other things, the longstanding issue of the lack of student representation on the Board of Governors.

Fuelled by the feedback received at the meeting, the student association commissioned then-fourth year student Jay Dorey to create a report on governance structures and student involvement. This report, known as the Dorey Repot, was presented to and adopted by TWUSA on Jan. 31, and then presented to members of the Board’s Governance Committee on Feb. 3.

Having spent the majority of my life in a non-liturgical church, I was delighted as I walked into church last Sunday morning and discovered that the walls had taken on a rich royal blue hue.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about more and more as the number of credits I have left to take dwindles: life after Trinity. As I reflect on the last four years, I feel a lot like Prufrock, wondering, “And would it have been worth it?” After the classes and the papers and the never-ending nights; after the novels, after the coffee cups, after the books that cover every inch of my floor – my education at TWU has been all this and so much more.

Almost every reading break since my first year of college, I have returned to my hometown to visit my family.

My father always loved the outdoors. When I was growing up in the small coastal town of Powell River, my family often loaded into our over-sized GMC crewcab, taking only a light meal and a thermos of hot chocolate, and travelled for hours along countless miles of logging roads. These trips were always destination-less; journeys to nowhere.