Hopeful Apocalypse
By Darien Johnsen
I’m gonna be totally honest here and say that I’m kind of waiting for the apocalypse to happen so I can stop worrying about what to do with my future. I won’t have to become anything because I’ll probably be backpacking across the country searching for fellow survivors (I’ve always wanted to travel to Northern Canada) and trying not to get eaten by whatever horrible beasts have invaded the earth. Sure, there’s a huge likelihood that I’ll be eaten alive, but hey, at least I won’t have to hand over my last hundred dollars every month to pay off my student loans (it’s cool though; I didn’t want to eat this month anyway) while I take more and more courses with less and less of an idea of what I actually want to do with my life. Anyways, I wouldn’t be overly devastated if the world happened to cave in on itself tomorrow
To the first-years
By Carissa Wiens
UFV just added a volleyball net over the basketball court outside the SUB. Add that new piece of sports equipment plus copious amounts of first-year students looking to make lifelong friendships at this commuter campus, and bam, you’ve got commercial-worthy laughter in the sunshine.
All of this first-week merriment causes me to feel uneasy. I wish these naive first-years could see that after today or tomorrow they probably will never talk to those randoms again whom they played a match of clumsy volleyball with. I want to let the first-years know that they can only try so hard in classes, but no matter what, they’re going to fail a quiz. I want to tell them that no matter how chic/minimalist-looking their planners are, they will still end up procrastinating on their final projects. And lastly, I want to let them know that they better play all the volleyball that they can now, because soon enough, the rain will come and never leave until June.
SUBpar food options
By Chandy Dancey
I have a confession to make: I’m a campus food virgin. I’m in my fourth year at UFV, and I have yet to order food on campus. It’s gonna take a lot more than a weekly special at Triple O’s to sway this chick from her hard-earned cash. After all, I’m the kind of independent woman who brings her own snacks to movie theatres and who has an impressive arsenal of coupons. Truth be told, though, I’m ready to be wooed. How I long for a food vendor on campus with more affordable food options. How I hunger for a sandwich that I can customize myself. How I yearn for the smell of footlong buns baking in the oven. How I hope and pray for a survey at the bottom of my receipt that’ll give me a free cookie with its completion! Oh, wait a second. I’m just craving Subway again. Whoops!
A rant against textbooks
By Andrea Sadowski
It’s the first week of a new semester, and my to-do list is the length of my arm: update my U-Pass, buy a parking pass, get an oil change, buy a new bike lock ‘cause my old one was stolen last semester, organize my binders for all five courses, get my schedule for my on-campus job, and the task I hate most of all — buy textbooks. With every class comes at least one textbook, if not two or three, and with nearly every new school year comes a new edition of that textbook, making re-selling your used textbooks difficult, and finding the right questions you are assigned for homework impossible. What’s even worse than buying textbooks that cost almost as much as the course’s tuition is buying the freaking access code to be able to take part in some online assignment that is required for no more than five per cent of your grade. I will never pick up one of my old textbooks, nor remember anything I read in one of them again. Their sole purpose is to be read, memorized, and regurgitated in an essay, midterm, or final exam, and then forgotten. Let’s just do away with bulky textbooks and their stupid access codes forever.
Illustrations: Mikaela Collins
Darien Johnsen is a UFV alumni who obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree with double extended minors in Global Development Studies and Sociology in 2020. She started writing for The Cascade in 2018, taking on the role of features editor shortly after. She’s passionate about justice, sustainable development, and education.
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
Andrea Sadowski is working towards her BA in Global Development Studies, with a minor in anthropology and Mennonite studies. When she's not sitting in front of her computer, Andrea enjoys climbing mountains, sleeping outside, cooking delicious plant-based food, talking to animals, and dismantling the patriarchy.
