Drugs and pets and microfiche and sleep. It’s a weird combination of articles in this week’s Voice, yet I find it works quite well to make this one of the better issues we’ve had over the past few months.
We start off, of course, our feature student interview. Bonnie Mitchell has been a dispatcher for first responders and her experience has pushed her to seek a psychology degree to be able to help our first responders with the mental health issues that she notes our governments have not been taking care of.
Her passion about the issue comes through the page making this interview definitely worth the read, and I’d go so far as to say it may make you proud to be in a school that allows her goal to take shape.
Following that, writer Corey Wren, more familiar to Voice readers as Chef Corey, lets us have a glimpse of his emotion in his article simply titled “Grief.” The death of a beloved pet is the catalyst, but the subject, and the style, is very much a powerful insight into his own feelings and attempts to cope with loss. This article resonates particularly strongly with me at the moment as we’re dealing with our own pet’s congenital heart issues and we’re at the stage now where we know the end is likely sooner than later. Having something like Corey’s article to relate to at least gives me the support in knowing this isn’t unknown, isn’t unusual, and may even be something that can be recovered from.
That’s the hope anyway, isn’t it?
We also have a couple of articles sparked by British Columbia’s recent decision to decriminalize small amounts of harder drugs in an effort for harm reduction. It’s great when we get two separate viewpoints on an issue that come forward at the same time. Even more interesting is that while both articles concentrate on what is happening to the drug user, they still manage to provide very different takes on the subject that are not mutually exclusive. Worth the read individually, but even better in tandem, are Alek Golijanin’s article on treating substance use disorder and Jessica Young’s article on why decriminalization will not solve the addiction problem.
Switching gears, we also have a recent music reviews, a basic primer to fighting insomnia from one who suffers from it, as well as articles on how to reduce stress while maintaining high performance, advice on dealing with anxiety and those who don’t understand, how living the dream may not be what you think it is, scholarships, events and a look back at what students thought about convocation in the past, back before the pandemic drove convocations into the virtual space.
I do also want to give a quick nod to the Fly on the Wall this week. If you’re hitting the grind in your courses right now, it might be what you need to give you a quick, readable boost, and send you on your way with some renewed purpose. So all in all, this is a very solid issue, to my mind.
So enjoy the read, I know I did!
