Introductions - Hi I'm Sydney!

Hi everyone, my name is Sydney. I am originally from Calgary, Alberta, and moved to Vancouver in 2023. I chose this city so I could stay close-ish to home while still experiencing life away from familiarity. And of course, because Vancouver is so beautiful! Among my favourite things to do here are going on walks in Pacific Spirit Forest and trying new coffee shops. Looking back, I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to spend my undergrad at UBC :)

As for my academic background, I am a fourth-year Political Science and Law and Society student with aspirations of attending law school. Over the past two years, I have spent my summers volunteering within the pro bono sector and supporting access to justice initiatives. This work has given me a strong sense of passion for pursuing a future in law and I can't wait to see where the field takes me.

I'll be graduating in May, and it feels so surreal to be taking my last few courses at UBC - but I am very glad that RMST 495 gets to be among one of them! I'm looking forward to this course particularly because it is very different than the topics I usually encounter within my discipline (e.g. global politics, public policy, international law). I feel like engaging with these new books will allow me to divert my attention towards a new type of exploration, one that is creative insomuch as it is academic. Over the past few years I honestly rarely have picked up a book on my own time, as I am always swamped with completing readings from my courses (often journal articles, news stories, and textbooks). So I am excited to be in a course that is crafted to give students the opportunity to step a bit away from academic forms of reading and spend time with narrative books!

I really enjoyed our first class yesterday, and was especially intrigued by our discussion about the assumptions that individuals bring forth when reading women's literature. On another note, I recall a few peers noting that they felt they were able to gauge whether a work was written by a female or a male. As the course progresses, I'm interested in seeing if reading exclusively women's literature will lead me to start picking up on what characterizes this particular type of writing.

Last year in RMST 202, I tried to make my blog post unique by adding an image of what I believed encapsulates the book in question. This was a fun exercise for me, as it was often challenging to try to capture such complex themes and stories in a singular photograph. I plan to continue this tradition going forward in RMST 495, and I look forward to seeing what you all have to think about the images I choose, and whether you viewed the stories in a similar light.

My question for the class: to what extent does the reader, versus the writer, determine the "message" that a given narrative seeks to present?

Today's photo is one I took in Pacific Spirit Forest this summer :)