This is an impersonal history of my time at Kwantlen University College (where I did the first two years of my undergraduate) as I remember it right now. Some facts are probably wrong.
When I was 17, I graduated from Tamanawis Secondary School. The same year, I enrolled at Kwantlen University College, and went there for 5 semesters. It should have been 4 semesters if I was to have done things properly full time, but the first semester I only took 4 courses, and failed one of them (it was first period, and Calculus), so after “two years” (four semesters), I took the summer semester as well, and was able to finish two years of university courses in two years.

My first semester I think I was probably a little high school shit, treating everything like high school. Kwantlen was just a little bit further of a walk. I got bored and talked through Sociology, got a C in Political Science after not wanting to include references in my paper, failed Calculus (mentioned above), and I have absolutely zero memory of the English course I took that semester. There was a girl I think I “liked” who was in the English class though. I think the course was on academic writing, and I am unfortunately still bad at writing.

9/11 happened in this first semester, and I remember a person from my high school told me about it as I arrived on the campus. I had people from high school in two classes. I thought the guy sitting at the front of the class wearing a trench coat was so smart for being able to converse with the instructor.

My second semester started in January of 2002. I was 18 then. I was thinking of trying hard this semester, and was tired of the lazy me. I think it was then I learned one couldn’t snap their fingers and stop being a lazy person. It was a crappy realization. I took an English literature course with a professor I had heard things about. Because of him I read all those JD Salinger books, and realized that Shakespeare wasn’t boring and stupid. He gave me 40% on a paper and said it sucked. I think it was around this time I got tired of getting my hair cut, so I had longer hair. I took a history course on Canadian history. I believe the instructor really didn’t like me, but I really liked his course. I took an Anthropology course where the instructor said to “write your biases” in your work as that’s what good anthropologists do, so I wrote that my bias was that I was an apathetic shit from the suburbs. She didn’t like that, and told the entire class how amazing she was for reading such drivel, and for being academic enough to not fail “that person” then and there. I still haven’t forgiven her for that. My psychology class was all scientific, and I think that’s when I realized that psychology, despite sounding like a cool word when I was in high school, wasn’t for me. He made us buy a huge textbook. I believe it was also this semester I took a Philosophy of Religion course, with a who would now be called a New Atheist for an instructor. He wrote his own (unpublished) textbook. If I remember correctly, his all convincing academic argument against God was that children die. I took the course with a person I knew from high school.

After taking subjects from eight different fields, I had thought that I should probably decide on something for my second year. I decided on Sociology.

I think I took three Sociology courses, one English literature course, and that Math course I failed for the fall of my second year. I got an A- in the Math class, and I was really happy about that because I had found it so hard a year previous. At that time my favorite album was Pinkerton, and near the end of the semester I found out the guy I sat beside in Calculus also had it as is favorite album. The English literature course I think I mainly took because I took the same instructor the previous semester, and he wowed me. We read Canterbury Tales, so maybe it was about older literature. We also read Hamlet, but I forget the rest. Oh, and John Donne. The Flea. The Sociology courses were a theory one, a methods one, and then one on the mass media (Bush lies, kill your television, etc.). I really enjoyed the people I took these classes with, and I think I scoffed at the little high school shits. I really enjoyed the social theory stuff, and remember that the instructor had thrown a lot of good stuff our way that I was eating up. I didn’t really “like” the methods class, but I remember talking a lot in it, and I may have said funny things every now and then. I have conflicting feelings about the mass media course, and this is not the place to resolve them. I mainly think how different the world was in the fall of 2002 when I took the course compared to today. It blows my mind.

Thinking about it, I think I didn’t take the media course in the fall, it was in the spring of 2003 I think. I took another Psychology course with an instructor who was American, and who had a reputation for being easy (she gave As), which she did. Like the previous psychology class, I remember nothing at all from this class.

To fulfill my science requirement, I needed to take this Atmospheric Geography course, which was basically the course people that were in Social Sciences or Arts took for their science requirement. As someone who enjoyed math and all that stuff quite a bit, it was incredibly easy. I’m not sure if this is the spring or summer of 2003. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was the summer.

I took a world history course too, where I really couldn’t gel with the instructor. In the first class, there was a big debate on if Egypt was an African country or not, and I just could not understand. My answer “it’s in Africa, so yes” gave me a pat on the head and a “thanks for playing university today”.

I took a Social Psychology course with the same instructor who gave the As easily. I got an A again I believe. I also took another Sociology methodology course with the same instructor as last time, but with a friend. I had liked the professor, but my friend showed me how he was a bit of a weirdo. I’m not sure what I eventually thought.

There was another Sociology course I took and I think the number was 1225. I have no idea what it was about, but I think like the Intro to Sociology course I took, I didn’t like it, and thought it was silly. I really liked that theory course (which was 1235 I believe).

I think it was Geography, World History, and weird Sociology course in the summer.

At this time, to transfer to a university (UBC or SFU), you needed a C average (2.0 GPA). I think it changed the semester after I did so, but because it was a relatively low requirement, after the summer semester I went right into SFU (Simon Fraser University) in the fall of 2003.

Thinking about all these classes, it’s amazing how many people (whose names I don’t recall) I remember for the first time in years.

That was an impersonal history of my time at Kwantlen University College.