Most of us have heard the term “community” used countless times throughout our Trinity Western University education. Overusing the word desensitizes us to the depths of what it actually stands for. Our community offers a sense of belonging and is made up of the daily interactions of the people at TWU and the life-changing relationships that are fostered here. It’s also broader than we might think and more effective in people’s lives we often realize.

Going to the cafeteria is usually a monotonous but necessary part of our daily routine. We momentarily pause to contemplate our choice of nourishment and then mechanically get our food, grab a drink and look for the nearest “till open” sign to get our poorly budgeted food cards swiped. Then it’s off to find a seat to talk and eat with friends for the five minutes we have before our next class. We take little to no notice of the people who work so that our mechanical flow isn’t interrupted, but they do have an impact on us and we, blind and unaware, have an impact on them.

One of the people we breeze by with a smile, and hopefully a “thank-you,” is the till operator, Carol Ann Critchley, known to us students as simply Carol. A Sodexho employee for the past two and a half years, Carol loves working as the cashier so that she can experience and contribute to the TWU community with as many students as possible. We’ve all been on the receiving end of her warm maternal kindness, but her story remains largely unknown to most students.

Before moving to Langley, Carol lived in Victoria, Maple Ridge and Vancouver. Living in Langley, she is hesitant to admit, has expanded her music taste beyond the rock ‘n roll of her generation to the new frontier of country music. When she’s not sight-seeing with her sister or visiting old hang-outs with her brother-in-law, you might find her staining glass windows or working on oil paintings of still-life, scenery, or her most recent endeavor, abstract art. If it’s around 10 PM you might find her watching CSI, Without a Trace, Law & Order, or her newest obsession, Men in Trees.

When she moved to Langley three years ago, after her divorce, she spent five months readjusting to living in the Lower Mainland before she started looking for a job. When she decided to begin job searching, it seemed that fate led her to open the newspaper and see Sodexho’s ad for a job with the hours and days perfectly suited to her lifestyle.

Since being at TWU, Carol has watched it grow internationally and has noted the consistently positive attitudes of the students within the community here. Dealing daily with those positive attitudes gives her a sense of joy and love in her life. She wants the students to know that she “loves them very much” and adds that they “have no idea how much they have done for me personally since moving here from my divorce. They have upped my self-esteem.”

She’s right, we didn’t know we have such a positive affect on her life at all. Most of us were unaware that our community included, benefited from and helped her with any of this. So, even though we may feel that the idea of “community” is overwhelming, try not to forget that it impacts the lives of the students, faculty and campus employees daily in a very real way.