You can be a contributor, too!
Sydney Marchand
Did you know that this beautiful paper you are reading was written and produced entirely by students? When I first started at UFV I was quite intimidated to reach out and contribute to UFV’s student press. I spent my first semester convincing myself that I was too inexperienced and too disconnected from UFV for the executives in charge to agree to publish my work. But one day I just said, “fuck it,” and I pitched an article to write. Since then, I haven’t looked back! So take it from me, if you have been thinking about contributing to the paper for a while, or if this is your first time reading this masterpiece of work, I encourage you to reach out to me via email at sydney@ufvcascade.ca and join our contributor list. Do you have a strong opinion about something? Want to review the next trashy Netflix show? Dream of chatting with some of UFV’s sports teams? We want to hear from you (seriously, we really do) and would love to read your articles. Let’s get you published, baby!
The Time is flying and Everything is dying
Emmaline Spencer
The days are passing me by faster and faster. I can’t help but constantly be astounded by how much time has gone by without my notice. I still recall the moment time seemingly slowed to a halt for me. My mother had died and I felt trapped. Whenever time felt like it would start moving again, someone else would die and I’d be left confused and grieving. Someone once told me I was like a car crash victim that didn’t know they were in a car crash yet.
Here I am, awake and aware of the crash, coming to terms with the fact that it has been nearly five years since the passing of my mother. I’ve lost so much more in this time and continue to anticipate further loss. Beyond the looming deaths that occur around me, I find that I’ve wasted my own time, hung up on my own grief. There’s a part of me that wishes to turn back time so that I could enjoy it, but all that’s left is to make the best of my time going forward without the weight of the past. Time is flying and everything is dying, but I can keep trying.
Becoming bespectacled
Jeff Mijo-Burch
I got glasses recently. Well, that’s not strictly true. I got glasses in December of 2016. But they had a very weak prescription and I only ever wore them for nighttime driving. It wasn’t until I recently started needing to lean towards my screen that I fully made the plunge.
Adjusting to glasses is a weird thing. The first few days are wild. My eyes hurt all the time, I couldn’t keep them on for very long, I was always conscious of how they sat on my nose and ears, and worst of all: smudges. Why are there always smudges? Fingerprints, a hair, a piece of dandruff, or almost worse, a glare that looks like a smudge. My glasses were so clean during that first month that I could’ve safely performed a very tiny surgery on the lenses.
Now, after a few months. I get confused seeing my face in the mirror without them. It’s surely a matter of days until I “lose” them without realizing I’m wearing them. But I still see every smudge. And I still constantly clean them, at least on my shirt. That part goes away eventually, right? Right?
The Purity of the Corn Kid
By Teryn Midzain
In the weeks leading up to this semester, saying that I was stressed, frustrated, and angry is an understatement. I hadn’t worked the entire month of August, which just isn’t an option for me as a full-time student who lives on his own, has to pay rent and take care of all the bills. Then I saw a blessing from a TikTok: the kid who loves corn. As a Chilliwack boy, corn is my town’s national vegetable, and so I immediately related to this kid’s genuine love for all the aspects of the delicious starchy vegetable. Corn is amazing. A big lump of knobs, it has the juice, you can’t imagine a more beautiful thing. The kid’s purity and genuine love for it reminded me of the little joys of summer that make the season amazing. Corn. It just made my summer better and less stressful. So thank you for saving summer, Corn Kid.
Sydney is a BA English major, creative writing student, who has been a content contributor for The Cascade and is now the Opinion editor. In 7th grade, she won $100 in a writing contest but hasn’t made an earning from writing since. In the meantime, she is hoping that her half-written novels will write themselves, be published, and help pay the bills.
Emmaline is working on her BA and ambitions to become an English teacher. They always say, those who cannot do, teach. She spends her free time buying, reading, and hoarding books with the hope that one day she will have no furniture and instead only have piles of books.
Jeff was The Cascade's Editor in Chief for the latter half of 2022, having previously served as Digital Media Manager, Culture & Events Editor, and Opinion Editor. One time he held all three of those positions for a month, and he's not sure how he survived that. He started at The Cascade in 2016.
Teryn Midzain is an English Major with ambitious goals to write movies and a full-time nerd, whose personality and eccentrics run on high-octane like the cars he loves. More importantly, Teryn loves sports [Formula One], and doesn’t care who knows. When not creating and running deadly schemes in his D&D sessions, Teryn tries to reach the core of what makes the romantic and dramatic World of Sports, the characters and people that make the events so spectacular.