Student Blogs

Hi everyone! My name is Michael, and I was born in and lived my whole life around the greater Toronto area. I’m in first-year science and want to major in physics; the dream is to do research in theoretical physics one day. I wanted to take this class mainly because the reading list seemed really […] read full post >>

Hi Everyone! My name is Harshi and I’m a second-year psychology major. I am originally Indian but I grew up... read full post >>

Hello everyone, I’m Brianna and I’m from Toronto. I’m a second-year student hoping to major in political science and hope to go to law school in the future. I have always favorited subjects that are literarily centered. I think that … Continue reading → read full post >>

Hi everyone! My name is Bianca and I’m a second year student trying to get into International Relations. I am from Italy but I have been living on campus for almost two years. Literature has always been a great passion … Continue reading → read full post >>

Hello all! My name is Tirzah, and I am a second-year student here at UBC. Originally I am from Calgary, but I’ve been lucky enough to live on campus here in Vancouver for the last two years. I study music and have been playing the flute for almost 12 years now. In addition to music, … Continue reading Introduction → read full post >>

Hello! 

My name is Lisa Fylypchuk and I am a first year student in the Faculty of Arts. I am in this faculty because I really enjoy classes like politics and philosophy, much more than subjects like science and business. If everything goes well (meaning if I can get the grades), in the future, I hope to major in political science. The plan after that has yet to be determined but I still have time to figure it out since I'm only in first year. 

I was born and raised in Calgary Alberta, just one province over from BC. I chose this university for the quality of education and I am really excited to be studying here. I've only been here one semester so far but I feel I've already learned a lot, not necessarily just in school but also about living independently away from home for the first time. 

I initially considered romance studies solely because I was looking for a class to fulfill my literature requirement, but after reading the course description (and even more so after that first class yesterday), I quickly realized how enjoyable this class was going to be. I love to read but I know how easy it is for leisure reading to go out the window when life gets busy, so I am excited to be enrolled in a class that will challenge me to read as much as I can. I hope that the variety of books that I will be reading in this class allows me to learn something new by introducing me to new ideas. As I was watching the lecture video, I was most intrigued by the discussion on how learning one romance language opens up the door to the other ones. Because I can already speak French, I have noticed that I am able to understand certain words in Italian and Spanish. I think that the link that exists between this family of languages is fascinating and I am very excited to learn more on this topic as the semester continues. 

I hope that this class ends up being as inspiring as I presently believe it's going to be, and I am very much looking forward to getting started with the assigned readings. To conclude, while I hope that this class will challenge my thinking, I also hope that I will be able to have fun in this course and come out on the other side with brighter ideas and a more open mind. 

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Hello! 

My name is Lisa Fylypchuk and I am a first year student in the Faculty of Arts. I am in this faculty because I really enjoy classes like politics and philosophy, much more than subjects like science and business. If everything goes well (meaning if I can get the grades), in the future, I hope to major in political science. The plan after that has yet to be determined but I still have time to figure it out since I'm only in first year. 

I was born and raised in Calgary Alberta, just one province over from BC. I chose this university for the quality of education and I am really excited to be studying here. I've only been here one semester so far but I feel I've already learned a lot, not necessarily just in school but also about living independently away from home for the first time. 

I initially considered romance studies solely because I was looking for a class to fulfill my literature requirement, but after reading the course description (and even more so after that first class yesterday), I quickly realized how enjoyable this class was going to be. I love to read but I know how easy it is for leisure reading to go out the window when life gets busy, so I am excited to be enrolled in a class that will challenge me to read as much as I can. I hope that the variety of books that I will be reading in this class allows me to learn something new by introducing me to new ideas. As I was watching the lecture video, I was most intrigued by the discussion on how learning one romance language opens up the door to the other ones. Because I can already speak French, I have noticed that I am able to understand certain words in Italian and Spanish. I think that the link that exists between this family of languages is fascinating and I am very excited to learn more on this topic as the semester continues. 

I hope that this class ends up being as inspiring as I presently believe it's going to be, and I am very much looking forward to getting started with the assigned readings. To conclude, while I hope that this class will challenge my thinking, I also hope that I will be able to have fun in this course and come out on the other side with brighter ideas and a more open mind. 

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                         Hello everyone!                       Welcome and thank you for visiting my blog! My name is Hasti Nozadi I am a  second-                          year […] read full post >>

My name is Mai (Pronounced May). I am a third year psychology student and I live downtown. I moved to Canada at the end of 2019 so right before the pandemic hit. The first year of the pandemic was definitely strange for me. I was in a new country completely on my own and not even allowed to go outside or socialize! Actually, getting to do school online may have saved me from losing my mind! Vancouver is such an incredible city. I am often in awe at the beauty and accessibility to nature. I love being close to mountains and water and here I get to be close to both! I am still definitely adjusting to the cold, does it ever get easier?

  Before I moved to Vancouver, I lived and worked in Vietnam for 3 years before I decided that my passion lay somewhere outside of the career I had chosen and decided that I needed a career shift so here I am! I grew up in Cairo and so my first language is Arabic but I have always been fascinated by the English language. I certainly prefer, and always have, reading novels in English. Yes, the Arabic language is incredibly rich so I can’t exactly explain this. I also really enjoy reading books from different parts of the world and comparing perspectives, lifestyles and being inside the minds of characters. Russian literature and specifically Dostoyevsky has had an impact on me figuring out what I want to do and what I am passionate about - the human mind or as he refers to it, the human experience. No matter how many times I read a Dostoyevsky book, I am always blown away by the complexity of his characters and how real their thoughts and experiences feel to me. So I have a deep love and appreciation for literature and I don’t read nearly as much as I would like so I’m excited for all the books I will be exploring in this course this semester. I am excited to compare and draw parallels not based on where geographically the books are from as they are not tied to a specific territory. I never knew that! I guess when I signed up for the course, I didn’t really know what to expect. I did register for it to meet the lit requirement but I’m glad I did. I am very interested in how the course is structured too.

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My name is Mai (Pronounced May). I am a third year psychology student and I live downtown. I moved to Canada at the end of 2019 so right before the pandemic hit. The first year of the pandemic was definitely strange for me. I was in a new country completely on my own and not even allowed to go outside or socialize! Actually, getting to do school online may have saved me from losing my mind! Vancouver is such an incredible city. I am often in awe at the beauty and accessibility to nature. I love being close to mountains and water and here I get to be close to both! I am still definitely adjusting to the cold, does it ever get easier?

  Before I moved to Vancouver, I lived and worked in Vietnam for 3 years before I decided that my passion lay somewhere outside of the career I had chosen and decided that I needed a career shift so here I am! I grew up in Cairo and so my first language is Arabic but I have always been fascinated by the English language. I certainly prefer, and always have, reading novels in English. Yes, the Arabic language is incredibly rich so I can’t exactly explain this. I also really enjoy reading books from different parts of the world and comparing perspectives, lifestyles and being inside the minds of characters. Russian literature and specifically Dostoyevsky has had an impact on me figuring out what I want to do and what I am passionate about - the human mind or as he refers to it, the human experience. No matter how many times I read a Dostoyevsky book, I am always blown away by the complexity of his characters and how real their thoughts and experiences feel to me. So I have a deep love and appreciation for literature and I don’t read nearly as much as I would like so I’m excited for all the books I will be exploring in this course this semester. I am excited to compare and draw parallels not based on where geographically the books are from as they are not tied to a specific territory. I never knew that! I guess when I signed up for the course, I didn’t really know what to expect. I did register for it to meet the lit requirement but I’m glad I did. I am very interested in how the course is structured too.

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Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging! read full post >>

Hi, I'm Jessica Keir but Jess is perfectly fine. I am from about an hour away from Toronto, Ontario. I am a second-year student in Arts studying Sociology.

I took this class not only because Arts students have a literature requirement but because it seemed like a very interesting course to take! I love reading good books and subconsciously analyzing their meanings so to be able to share my thoughts on the pieces of literature we are given in this class sounds like a decent time to me. 🙂

In the lecture, it was brought up how we are reading these pieces in translation which is a given since they are all in English but I did not think about how that impacts the way the readers would take in the words. So blatantly obvious but very interesting to think about!

I really like the structure of this course and think it is super helpful to accommodate our busy, personal lives so we can choose when to do the work and essentially pick our grade. 

Looking forward to the rest of this course!

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Hi, I'm Jessica Keir but Jess is perfectly fine. I am from about an hour away from Toronto, Ontario. I am a second-year student in Arts studying Sociology.

I took this class not only because Arts students have a literature requirement but because it seemed like a very interesting course to take! I love reading good books and subconsciously analyzing their meanings so to be able to share my thoughts on the pieces of literature we are given in this class sounds like a decent time to me. 🙂

In the lecture, it was brought up how we are reading these pieces in translation which is a given since they are all in English but I did not think about how that impacts the way the readers would take in the words. So blatantly obvious but very interesting to think about!

I really like the structure of this course and think it is super helpful to accommodate our busy, personal lives so we can choose when to do the work and essentially pick our grade. 

Looking forward to the rest of this course!

read full post >>

Hello, my name is David, and I am a first year student at UBC. I am currently planning my major in either Linguistics or Spanish. I was born in Canada and I live in Maple Ridge, a small town east one hour east from Vancouver, although I spent some time living in Puebla, Mexico, with […] read full post >>

 Hello! 

My name is Aquila. I'm a first year student here at UBC student and I'm hoping to double major in Political Science and FNIS. I decided to take this course orignally as I was looking for classes that would fufill my literature requirement, and this course stood out to me. I think the course structure is very interesting in terms of grading but also as it gives us as students a lot of freedom in our learning while also giving us the chance to interact and share with others our thoughts on the literature. Growing up I was always surrounded by books and literature of all kinds, so I'm very excited about this class. I think it a good way to get out of my comfort zone and challenge myself with new texts. Many of the texts are unlike those I have read before and I'm hoping they allow me to expand my views and the variety of what I read.

The fact that all of these texts are translated adds an interesting layer to this course. I have learnt Spanish for the past six or so years, and so I have an understanding of some romance languages at a very basic level. Along with this I can appreciate the complexities that come with translating a text, and reading a text that is not in its original language. I think this will be an interesting thing to keep in mind during the course. I hope to learn more about the connections between Romance languages and cultures; to explore why Romance languages and culture are connected outside of their shared heritage. In its own way, I think this can help us to understand why other groups/languages throughout the world have been condensed into a single category such as, "Romance/Romantic". 

Building off of this, I thought about the question: how can Romance Studies help us to explore and understand intercultural and intracultural relationships? As I understand, while similar, Romance cultures are still unique from each other. Their similarities are what cause them to be grouped together but they still all have their own seperate identities. They are not the only culture/language for which this has happened, so I wonder if exploring Romance Studies allow us to, in turn, understand other cultures/languages that are categorised similarly.

I look forward to being in this class with everyone!

Aquila

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