At the time, we were frankly glad just to be done and to get on with our lives as, well, whatever we'd end up becoming after insane months of perpetual scribbling. But we also knew that we had just experienced one of the greatest years of our lives and met some of the most intelligent and enjoyable people we'd ever know.
Sap that I am, I can't help but get a little emotional looking back. Wishing I could sit in that lecture theatre, listen to our teachers wax eloquent (or even not so eloquent), take part in a workshop - heck, just stand in line ordering a coffee and commiserating about an assignment! - one more time. I know we're supposed to move on and it looks like we've all done a pretty good job of that. I just miss it sometimes, dagnabbit!
A few of my personal highlights from that golden (bagel) year:
1. Sitting in the back corner during lecture with Jeff McEnery, Mike Reimer, et al, making fun of, well, everybody.
2. Kat Montagu telling us what's what in the movie biz, complete with powerful personal affirmations and four-letter words.
3. Fighting over fourth-floor laptops.
4. Paul Jensen and John Meadows exchanging gleeful, Parkinsonian cackles over their favourite films.
5. "Uncle" Rodger Cove, suave and sagacious, sitting cross-legged and explaining how story works.
6. Listening to Michael Baser celebrate the golden age of television while reminding us that L.A. is full of sweethearts and douchebags.
7. Steve, Bobby, and Dionne (our trusty TAs) popping into lecture like whack-a-moles with the latest school announcement.
8. Erik Jovanovic's multitudinous last words.
9. Having my work disemboweled, dissected, reconstituted, and revived with fresh, new hope in workshop. (Whether or not it felt like it at the time!)
10. Homework over VFS Cafe quesadillas. (They weren't great but somehow they taste good in my head today.)
11. The total lack of leg room in the theatre. (Like the quesadillas, it somehow warms my heart in hindsight.)
12. We got to watch movies nearly every day for a whole damn year! (My body still aches from all the pinches I gave myself. Keep your comments to yourself, Mr. McEnery.)
13. Walking home at the end of each school day feeling like a million bucks, like my life had real purpose, and that I was becoming a real writer!
For the rest of my days, I'll look back at that year as one of the most satisfying, most profound, most personally enriching and kick-assest of my life. The last year hasn't panned out exactly as I'd hoped, but it has been full of great surprises and opportunities I could never have anticipated. And if I ever wonder if it was worth it, I only have to think back to those days when I was making a fortune in the Alberta oil fields but feeling utterly soulless, and realize I'd still be sitting on my dreams had I never taken the plunge and made that phone call to VFS. That's one move I will never regret.
Congratulations, my brothers and sisters in arms. We made it and still very much on our way to bigger and better things!
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