We are Back!

It is Nice to be Back! 

Welcome back, dear readers! First of all, we would like to apologize for the long time without updating our blog. As everybody probably knows, we had a five week strike here at VIU, and during this time we decided not to write. When the strike ended, oh… When the strike ended, we did not have time for anything!

The semester was over last Friday (and we are alive, thank God!) and the new one will start tomorrow, May 2nd. But since we received some messages from international students with concerns about VIU and the strike, we would like to restart with the blog, sharing our experience related to this. 

First of all, when you grow up in a third world country, you use to deal with strikes at high school, university, public transportation, health services, security services, etc. But when you decide to study in a first world country, like Canada, and pay for your education, you probably do not expect a strike. But things like this can happen everywhere. We figured out that other well-known universities in Canada, like Dalhousie University and York University, already dealt with it recently.

In comparison to other strikes we had in Brazil, we can say that VIU was better prepared to keep students informed; updates were posted on a regular basis at the university website. In Brazil, on the other hand, the two sides involved in the strike use to have some open meetings, which is good for us to understand better what is going on. Here, it seemed that both parties were disconnected and that nobody was trying their best to find a solution considering us: the students.

When the strike ended on April 10th, one thing was really interesting. It was a Sunday night and almost all the professors e-mailed us explaining what would happen with the course schedules. Also, it was nice to see that the professors were really happy to be back.

Another difference that we noted here: in Brazil, it does not matter how long the strike takes, the semester is extended anyway, according to the length of the strike. Here it was different: the strike lasted 5 weeks and we finished the semester in 3 weeks. It was hard! But, again, our professors were really helpful; they considered the whole situation and made adjustments in the original course outlines. We were really sorry for missing some classes, like Michael O´Shea’s, who was the best one this semester in our opinion. We should have 4 classes more with him, he will cover really important materials, but, because of the situation, we had only 1 class more.

However, there are some situations in which there is nothing else you can do, just try to do your best! That was what we did in the last 3 weeks. Oh, besides, we have worked 20 hours per week too... Those were crazy days and we are still so tired. Renato has just turned 30 working on a hard finance project. But tomorrow will be another day, with a new semester and a lot of things to be learned. We are excited for being back to class and for being back to the blog writing in a weekly basis again! Happy new semester everyone! Let´s keep in touch again!