Category: Uncategorized

My social identity is made up of quite a few characteristics that feed into the way I am both perceived and how I perceive the world around me, but two stand out as the most important. I have grown up and exist now in a space of privilege because I am white. Although I spent my childhood in a fairly diverse and progressive place, that does not take away from the fact that I experienced white privilege in ways I both recognized and did not. My social identity is also formed by my being a woman. This part of myself is something that I didn’t realize affected my life in such a great way until high school. I grew up in a very masculine household; with two brothers and a dad who deeply ingrained in me an excitement around sports, which I am grateful for. What came with that, however, were expectations that did not really fit how I viewed myself. I need to be serious, but not so much that I can’t have a little fun, I need to be gentle so as to not appear unladylike. I need to figure skate instead of play hockey like my brothers because there weren’t opportunities for young girls to play on a team altogether like the boys had. It was marked up to not enough interest from the girls, but when that interest isn’t sparked like it is for boys, how can that be the explanation? I always had to push a little harder to get where I wanted to be. I find that this has fueled my desire to become a sports reporter even more. These two identities can present bias in the way I consume and contribute to journalism, but also an alternate perspective that I think can be powerful. I will never understand how it feels to have a target on my back because of my race. This means that I need to do my research, I need to consume media from POC writers and sources and educate myself to be able to write and speak on these subjects through these people as a journalist. From being a woman and facing sexism on different levels, ranging from passive comments to fully being told that I cannot do something because of my gender, I can provide a perspective that may be important to the conversation.

It’s definitely interesting being a college student in the middle of all of this right now. The one thing that we are expected to focus on is school. What if we can’t focus?

When emails pour in about work that needs to be done, they always start with the same lines: “It’s easy to be stressed or anxious during this time,” “in these uncertain times,” “I hope everyone is staying positive,” and then it leads to an addition assignment or expectation that needs to be met. What if I can’t meet it?

It’s the lack of motivation, the lack of seeing school as something of importance when I haven’t seen my mom in two weeks because she’s the head of a respiratory department at a hospital. It’s hard to see the importance of school when people are dying, but it’s also hard to find the balance between allowing yourself to feel sad and angry and scared, and then calm and motivated enough to do school work.

In other news, life without sports sucks. It sucks even more this week with the news of the passing of former Bruin and present Oiler Colby Cave, who was only 25. Times like these are hard as it is, but I couldn’t imagine what his wife and family are going through right now. 

So that’s where I’m at. I’ve been thinking about Cave a lot, and talking about him with my dad. It’s all we can really do right now.