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I haven’t forgotten about this little slice of the internet I like to call home, I’ve just been rather busy lately.

Last week was ‘Dailies Week’ at school, plus George Stroumboulopoulos was in town filming his show, so naturally I went to a couple of tapings. I saw Sarah McLachlan in the red chair and Nick Gilder and Mother Mother perform Gilder’s 70’s hit (the first song he ever wrote, if you can believe it!) Roxy Roller.

Cut to the weekend, and my body decided to get some revenge on me for evidently pushing myself so hard the past few months to make it through the semestre, and I got sick. So I had a terrible head cold all weekend, then when I went back to school on Tuesday, I added the stomach flu to the mix and spend about 11 hours from Tuesday night well into Wednesday morning throwing up (just to be graphic) every 30 to 90 minutes. I couldn’t even keep water or Pepto Bismol down.

So basically, I’ve been in bed pretty much all week. I’m inching closer to finishing my last two assignments (tomorrow’s the day!), then I’ll be a free bird. Well, at least until the summer semestre starts in May, haha!

I’m actually looking forward to it, though. My courseload will be significantly lightened with only three classes instead of seven, so I’ll have time to get started on a couple of book projects, as well as invest some time learning to play the guitar and working on my music. Plus I plan to dedicate some time to reading and getting outside more (doctor’s orders, after all!). I’m also going to start writing for This Dish Is Veg now that I have more time.

Though I must say, one thing I’m not looking forward to for the summer is not having access to a camera. I had to give the one I borrowed from school back today. I guess it’s back to kinda-bland blog posts. Wah wahhhh.

George Stroumboulopoulos Arts Last Lecture Article

As promised, here is what I wrote for this week’s edition of The Voice. It was shortened for publication, but here is the full version for you.

Failure is not only a part of life, but also a part of success. That was the message George Stroumboulopoulos left graduating UBC arts students with last Friday night.

Stroumboulopoulos was the special guest at the sold-out UBC Arts Undergraduate Society’s Last Lecture in the 525-seat Old Auditorium on campus.

Typically, the last lecture is a speech given by a keynote speaker to graduates on the precipice of entering the working world. Instead, Stroumboulopoulos reimagined the night as more of a conversation.

“If 10 years from now you’re not doing what you want but you’re alive, you’ve won. And that’s how I approach every day at work,” he told the crowd. Stroumboulopoulos noted that no one is qualified to predict where they or the world will be in five or ten years, and advised not to place so much weight on cliché five and ten year plans.

After being rejected by an arts school, Stroumboulopoulos more or less stumbled into journalism when he saw an ad for Humber College, realizing he could make a career out of being on the radio.

Stroumboulopoulos shared some of his moments of challenge with the audience, including failing high school chemistry and his short-lived stint hosting the ill-fated reality series The One. At the time, the show was considered to be the biggest failure in US network history.

“You have to not care if people like you,” Stroumboulopoulos told the crowd. “You have to like you.”

Engineering graduate Marianne Black, 23, said she was really impressed with the talk. She said she took away the message that, “Failures are okay.”

That sentiment was echoed by Meghan Anderson, 21, a graduating international relations student who said, “It’s not the end of the world. You’re going to have failures.”

Andrew Lavers, who coordinated the event, said the audience response was “really positive. In fact, people said they wish it could have gone on longer.”

Stroumboulopoulos will be bringing his popular late-night television show to Vancouver to film at CBC the first week of April. Tickets to the tapings are already sold out.

UBC Arts Undergraduate Society Last Lecture

On Friday night I went to the UBC Arts Undergraduate Society’s ‘Last Lecture’ featuring CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos.

The event normally centres on a speech by the guest speaker to graduating students as they approach release into the ‘real world,’ but George opted for something a little different.

Instead, the night took the form of a question and answer session, led by three UBC students who had won the chance to interview the Canadian journalist. There were also some questions from the audience, and Stroumboulopoulos stuck around until midnight taking photos, telling stories, and shooting the breeze with event attendees.

I’ll be writing my story for The Voice this week on the event, so I’ll post that here once I have it written.

In the meanwhile, here are a couple of photos from Friday night.

George pondering how to respond to an audience question about how to move forward in getting a campus radio show back on the air.

George poses with graduating students Alivia Prattas and Meghan Anderson at the wine and cheese after reception.

p.s. – I was excited to hear George confirm that he is now a vegan, though he said he prefers to say he eats a whole foods plant-based diet. He also was telling someone that he still has leather riding gear for when he’s on his motorcycle, and that his shoes are leather. I asked him if it’s more for health than ethical reasons that he’s vegan then, and he said it is for health, but there is some ethical to it. Granted, I’m not stoked to hear someone say they still wear leather, but there’s still hope!