I'm getting kicked out of my program. I suppose the correct way to state it would be "I'm not getting accepted into second year", but it's hard to look at it that way right now.

A year ago I had a passion for writing and I had naive dream that I could be a journalist. Someone told me that writing was just a hobby and I needed to put myself on a path that would lead to a "real career", but I told him to fuck himself because I knew what I wanted.

But I don't anymore.

To tell the truth, I didn't move halfway across the country just for a journalism faculty. I was running away from my past and all of the shit that I couldn't handle here anymore. But I saw it as a chance to start a life that didn't revolve around what had happened to me or what I had done. And I can't say I didn't get exactly that, because I did. But it feels pointless, in a way, now.

I don't blame the school. I may get angry and trash talk how political it all is and how unfair the decision process is, but it isn't their fault. It's my own. I lost sight of what I actually wanted. I turned into a stupid bitch, and I stopped being the person that would fight for anything that mattered to me.

I hate what the last eight months have done to me. I hate the way I look at everything, I hate the way I was foolish enough to change everything I was and think that's okay.

I don't know what to say anymore. I'm not angry, I'm heartbroken. I wanted it but I didn't try hard enough. The fault's all mine, but it stings.

"No dress rehearsal, this is our life."

This city is nice. I wish I could conceive of a better adjective, but it's hard to describe a place when you feel like you've given a piece of yourself to it.

The last eight months, my first eight months of university, have been calm in comparison to the rest of my life. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that right now there is nowhere else better for me to be, and that has offered a contentment that I've never felt before. The island always had me itching for more and struggling to find myself in a place where the me I was looking for simply didn't fit.

Eight months ago I was a wreck. I was emotionally numb and had no grasp of myself, much less the world around me. I had wanted to leave so badly, and now that the time had come I didn't feel what I wanted to; I didn't feel happy. I had no idea at all why or what it meant, but I was extremely aware that it wasn't enough for me.

How do I describe what happened? I'm not sure there's any chronological way, just to say that somehow I changed. Somewhere in the midst of stress, loneliness, anger, and a mess of other emotions, I came face-to-face with the person I didn't realize I was somewhere inside. And that person refused to talk herself down, refused to keep quite to save face, and refused to ever let a crack show in a shining layer of armor covering some very new emotions.

Daily, I miss the old me. Not constantly, not overwhelming...but daily. Being who I am now has some of the greatest effects on my life. I'm not afraid of being hurt, I'm not afraid to stand my ground, and I'm not afraid of getting close to people. But along the way I lost my compassion and I lost my humility. Somewhere on the road between then and now, I lost what made me the person that brought me here. I stopped wanting more and pining for a difference. I became content with living a life that protects my heart from the hurt I faced what seems years ago.

In coming here, I did get what I was looking for. More than that, I found people who like the person I've become. Those aren't strong enough words to describe the incredible friends I've made or the impact they have had on me, but once again: how can adjectives describe those that hold a piece of you?

I despise the seriousness in which this is written. I despise the hint of regret. I know that when I recount this year I'm going to describe it as the best I've ever had, because it's the truth. But at the same time, I can't hide that I miss who I was. My life before eight months ago was full of regretful situations (to put it lightly), but those situations allowed me passion, they forced me to care about others so as not to drown in myself.

However, I've started to realize that it's impossible to categorize life as "before this" and "until then". Life is that fragmented, surely, but it's one complete life at the same time. Who I was, who I am...they're the same person. I just have to learn to live with that

The Bullies of the Air

I, like 1.6 million other people, follow Kevin Smith on twitter. He's one of the only people I actually take the time out to read nearly every tweet (which is a real feat when you consider that this is the guy that did a 24-hour tweetathon). So, when he was raving this morning/afternoon on twitter about a flight on Southwest airlines I had to do some googling to get the whole story. Thus, I found this story about last night.

In a nutshell, Kev Smith was kicked off of a flight headed to Oakland, California by the pilot who deemed him a "safety risk". A safety risk because (and here comes my favourite part) he's too big.

The internet is all a-buzz about the situation, mostly because Southwest airlines and Smith are in a twitter war, and everyone knows that you can't really get much more public than that these days. So, naturally, I have a take on this situation. A completely subjective take, but one that can't be seen as invalid for that. What's objectivity really proving, when there's clear targeting coming through in the situation itself?

As a student living far enough away from home that I have no choice but to fly back and forth, I know too well how airlines can try and mess with people. And I know how often they get away with it, because there's plenty of people who don't have any other option but to fly where they need to be. And I also know that those painted-on smiles can be hiding some pretty ferocious opinions about the people boarding a plane.

That really brings me to a main reason why I feel like I'm justified in finding this to be an outrage; I'm not a small individual. I've never had any need to buy a second seat, mind you, but it's very clearly there and it's very clearly an impending factor that someday I might be kicked off of a flight myself. The problem is that I can't start a twitter war, I can't make 1.6 million people pay attention to my situation. But Kevin Smith can, and it makes me very glad that he is.

They called the man a "safety risk"...to who? I can hardly even consider that he was a safety risk to himself, let alone any other passenger or worker on the plane. If he can buckle himself in, where is the risk? So here comes that question: was it just because he's a big man? Has discrimination against big people really been taken to the level where they'll kick someone off of a plane just for being what they deem "too big"?

Just over a month ago I was on a flight from St. John's to Ottawa. At a stop-over in Halifax a child, no older than 3 or 4, was sat next to me by itself. His mother was in the row across from him with an infant, and the father was somewhere towards the back of the plane. Had I been awake during the stop-over I would have certainly offered up my seat to the father. Unfortunately, I only woke up during take-off to find a wide-eyed kid staring me in the face. Over the next hour and a half the kid proceeded to throw toys, run rampant around the plane, and all-in-all make a terror of himself. But of course, no one said a word about that particular safety risk. The flight attendants looked at the parents with a simple" oh, kids will be kids" understanding and went about their work.

Honestly, can "safety risks" really be so subjective as to allow discrimination that doesn't even make any sense? I suppose getting enraged by this particular instance without having mentioned racial profiling seems fairly "typical", but why is it that Southwest is just allowed to be so blatantly ignorant without groups rising up?

Being big isn't a crime, and it isn't hurting anyone else. Grow up, Southwest. This isn't middle school, we don't get picked last anymore.

Going through the news for the week I came across this story about an appeal against the safe-injection site in Vancouver. I was aware it existed, and I was aware it was a provincial rather than federal decision. What I didn't know is that having one dissenting opinion was grounds enough for the feds to open a can of worms better left shut. Of course, the feds have really taken on a holier-than-thou view of themselves (prorougation, anyone?), but the stupidity in this one really takes the cake, in my humble opinion.

Being on the outside looking at the site, I suppose there can be one of two solid ways to see this:

1) It is unfair to the public for the government to give junkies a place which specifically enables them to do illegal drugs. Or:

2) At least they're being protected from HIV under the supervision of medical professionals.

There's obviously going to be objections to a government-sanctioned site for intravenous drug-users, but if there has ever been such a thing as a necessary evil, how can it be said that this is not it?

It seems sometimes that the fear of HIV has become almost too small. It's as if people have placed themselves in a 'not-at-risk' category, and thus in an 'I-don't-really-care' category. Looking at the HIV/AIDs situation in countries such as Africa is, of course, important; but why is it that the home-grown problem gets swept under the rug in the meantime?

There are provinces in Canada that don't even have their own HIV/AIDs doctor(s) (Newfoundland, being key), and the feds are looking at the other side of the country hoping to shut down an institution which attempts to prevent people from catching the virus?

It's simple enough to say 'But they're heroin addicts!' or something akin, but that makes no one less of a person. Why deny people simple safety from such a terrible disease?