The power of social media

Last week my Missing Manitoba Women Facebook page helped located a 14-year-old missing girl.

(Wow, the power of social media never ceases to amaze me.)

This girl's mom, Shannon Buck, posted her daughter, Lauren Chopek's picture on my page. The girl didn't return home from school the day before, and Buck was going out of her mind. I messaged Buck, and she sent me a missing poster and asked if I could post it on my page. Since the poster was in a Word document format, I quickly laid it out in InDesign and posted the JPG to my wall.

Lauren's poster went viral; people from all over the world started reposting it and sending well wishes to her family. People in places like Germany, India, Australia, the US, Europe...The entire world was looking for this girl. It was incredible to see.

I kept in touch with Lauren's mom through facebook on a day-to-day basis, thinking the girl would come home within a couple of days. However, each day I would get the same response from Buck: "She is not home." By this point, I think both of us started to freak out even more. Since I'm a CreComm student, I pulled some of my "CreComm Mafia super powers" and sent out a mass email and a plea on Twitter for my media friends to pick up Lauren's story. (Thank the Lord for Twitter!)

The first story about Lauren ran on CBC on October 13. (Click here to watch the clip)

Following CBC's story, Buck's plea was also answered by the Winnipeg Sun, The Metro Winnipeg.

Last Saturday morning I woke up to a text from Buck. "Lauren is home." It was surreal, I was really starting to get scared that something bad had happened. (I kept telling Buck that she'd be fine, because I really thought she would be, but when more days passed and Lauren wasn't found I started to get really scared.)

Later Saturday morning I got a message on Facebook from one of my Facebook friends, Jackie Traverse; she told me that she found Lauren the night before at a Winnipeg Hotel. Jackie, an Aboriginal artist and missing and murdered women advocate said that she was having a few drinks at the hotel when she spotted the girl. She said she recognized her from the pictures from the Missing Manitoba Women page. Jackie went to talk to Lauren, and made her call her mom, and then waited with Lauren until her mother picked her up. She is a true hero.

Thanks to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and all of the people who posted, and re-posted Lauren's picture, the girl was found and reunited with her family.

Click here to see Global's coverage of the story after Lauren was found.

There is a first time for everything.

School is quickly coming to an end. In a few short months most of us will graduate from this program and move onto bigger and better things (so to speak) in our lives.

I'm so excited.

It will be awesome to finally be able to make some money and not have to worry so much about amassing more debt than I'm bringing in, and all those nightly homework sessions will be a thing of the past.

It will also be nice to unwind from the gruelling two years that I've endured at the hands of the CreComm instructors, who, with all due respect, are the toughest people I've ever met. Most of all though, I am excited to just graduate– I'm excited to invite my family to a boring convocation ceremony, and have my 15 seconds of fame as I hear my name being called out when I walk across the stage to get my diploma. I'm so excited because that's something I've never really done before...Unless you count kindergarten and grade nine.

But really, I never graduated.

In all my 31-years, I've never been able to wear that cap and gown, nor have I had grad photos taken. I've never been called across a stage to pick up my diploma while my family snaps pictures of me, and I've never been to a grad party.

Nope. I missed that boat.

I dropped out of high school at the age of 16 because I thought I was dumb. Ever since I was a kid I'd always had a really hard time concentrating or learning anything in school. As I got older it only got worse; I failed grade eight, I ended up in summer school a bunch of times, and I barely passed my classes no matter how hard I tried.

Instead of seeking or getting help, I slipped through the cracks of the public school system until I finally quit.

I ended up getting my GED when I was in my early 20s; I wrote the test and they sent me my results with a copy of my diploma. It didn't have a gold sticker on it, and I think the signature might have been computer generated, but that piece of paper meant that I technically completed grade 12, and I was proud of it.

Still, I always sort of felt like I missed out on a grad.

Now, with the end of CreComm right around the corner, I can't even explain what it means to finally be able to say that I've graduated something. As stupid as it may seem, I can't wait to see what I look like in a cap and gown...

There is a first for everything...

The lovely life

So I just got back from a pretty intense pity party.

It’s no secret that I’ve been having a rough go of things lately; I live in a mountain of debt. Cable, phone and internet got cut off last month. I lost my BlackBerry yesterday. I banged up my car today by backing up into a pillar and taking out the passenger side mirror. (It’s literally hanging there, by a wire or something...) Not to mention I have to shift bid for work tomorrow...Another whole year of working weekends, 10.5 hour days at the grind, is enough to make anyone feel sorry for themselves.

To tell you the truth, my pity party was an all out gala. It was the grand ball of crybabies. It was the biggest pity party I’d ever been to, let alone hosted...

It was one for the record books.

It all started when I was leaving XS Cargo this afternoon. I had been all over the city, trying to buy a refurbished and unlocked BlackBerry replacement – to no avail, since Rogers told me that the warranty I foolishly paid $100 for doesn’t cover lost or stolen phones. (Ugh, I wouldn’t have shelled out the cash had I known that...) If I wanted a new BlackBerry, it was going to cost me $599.

Bull shit.

Needless to say I was already upset about my life, when it happened, the straw that broke the camel’s back. The icing on the cake. The last hurrah. The big one...

I banged up my car.

Yep. As I was backing out of my parking spot, feeling super pissed off that I couldn’t get my hands of a refurbished BlackBerry, I banged my car up against and into a pillar.

Bang! Scrape. Brake. Fuck.

I got out to survey the damage. My boiling point was already reached and I just started to cry, really, really loud. In my little accident, I managed to take out the passenger side rear view mirror and scrape the door. Today just wasn’t my day.

I picked up broken pieces of the mirror from the ground, stomped back into my car, slammed the door and I kept on crying to my heart’s content. I even tried calling a friend, so that he could listen to me cry and share in my misery. He didn’t answer and it made me cry even more.

I felt defeated. And that, my friends, was the icing on the metaphorical shit cake that was my very bad week.

I’m not going lie; when I say that I cried, I mean I cried like a friggin maniac. I was hysterical as I drove all the way home with my mascara running down my cheeks. I was sobbing some kind of “I give up” chant or something and every so often looking at my swollen eyes in the rear view mirror. I was sitting in the epitome of self pity and my damn side mirror hung in limbo, as though any second it was going to give way to the slushy, messy, bumpy, Winnipeg streets.

Friends, I was frightful.

When I got home, I took my defeated ass up to my apartment and cried a little more until it just got too exhausting. It was then that a hot shower (to wash away my Alice Cooper eyes) was in order, followed by a scoop of mint chocolate ice cream in my bed while watching season four of Sex and the City on my laptop.

Ah, the lovely life of a 31-year-old single student.

As my pity party started to wind down, I started to realize something; if this was as bad as it was going to get, I’m not doing too bad. I mean yes, I literally have no form of communication since my TV, internet and home phone got cut off last month and now my BlackBerry is missing. And sure, I now have another expense that I can’t afford with my car. Oh, and another year of weekends; this sucks, but at least I have a decent job that pays well. That’s more than a lot of other people have, I need to remember not to forget that.

Life isn’t too bad afterall...

I knew that this path wouldn’t be an easy one going into it, but as I near the end of this CreComm chapter, the stress sometimes overwhelms me. It’s not so much the little individual setbacks, like losing my BlackBerry and having no money. It’s all of them combined that sometimes make it a little hard to believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

But when I take a second to consider that I am letting all these small things affect me in such a big way, I need to just stop and count my many blessings. Life is short and small things will always happen.

I will get a new BlackBerry and my car will get fixed, and eventually (when I can work more, thus make more money, I can also restore my TV, internet and home phone.) I’ve hit rock bottom in a material way...So what.

I have a lovely life.

P.S. I am writing this from Starbucks. Thank goodness for laptops and WiFi.

Work placement, CreComm, and thoughts.

I've been racking my brain all Christmas, trying to come up with a clever blog post. (hmmph, turns out I am not witty on the drop of a dime after all...)

Life has been hectic, but pretty great.

Right now me and the rest of the second year CreComm students are living the dream at our first work placements. I'm at the Winnipeg Sun; it's neat, although I haven't shaken that overly awkward 'new girl vibe' yet. (True story: The first day I was there, I couldn't even leave my work area because I was paralyzed with shyness and insecurity. I sat at Jillian Austin's desk (my temporary abode) and took way longer than I needed to on a small story about traffic. Awkward, yet hilarious.)

I wonder how everyone else is doing in their placements. I wonder how the first year's are handling their new semester in their new classes with the dreaded magazine project looming in the air. I wonder how the instructors are doing, now that our group is getting ready to fly the coop, and the first year's have grown into full-fledged CreComm students...

I can't imagine that anything is different for the instructors, as this is the same ol' routine that happens every year. However, I wonder if at any point, certain years, classes, and students stand out. Or, do they all just start to blend together!?

Don't forget about me guys, I want to be one of the one's that stands out...

Hello, is this thing on!?

It's hard to believe that school is almost over. This is both a relief and tragically sad. (I love my CreComm classmates with every fibre of my being. I love the instructors, and Red River College itself...Although I am tired, I don't want the ride to be over yet!)

OK, now I am just getting too deep for my own good. (Reflective really; I am just starting to realize that this two years of CreComm has passed rather quickly. I'm both relieved and sad.)

I should probably crawl back into bed before more time passes by; I just woke up for a glass of water and somehow managed to write a blog post about my CreComm apprehensions...

After this, I'll probably need therapy. HA!