Sharing the university experience

Pamela and Sofia Walker always joked about ending up at the same school, but they never thought it would happen.

Pamela, a mother of four including 18-year-old Sofia, is in her fourth year of a Bachelor of Arts degree, English major, at Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo.

Before she came to Malaspina, Pamela ran a coffee shop in her home community of Port Alberni for eight years, where she’d hoped to surround herself with literature-loving people like herself.

“In the coffee shop I thought people would come in and talk politics and read poetry but instead they talked about the latest hockey score. It wasn’t the intellectual stimulation I was looking for.”

So Pamela started taking a creative writing course at North Island College’s Port Alberni campus where her instructor told her if she was serious about writing, then she needed to get to know the “famous dead writers”.

“I decided he was right and I sold my coffee shop to start my degree. It was the best thing I ever did. I love it. I pinch myself every day to see if it’s real - I’m just so happy,” said Pamela.

Her daughter Sofia is following in her footsteps. Sofia always had a passion for the arts and is specifically interested in photography, so she started her first year of the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Malaspina this fall.

“I’ve always loved being creative and thought why not fine arts,” said Sofia.

Now the mother and daughter team can be seen driving to campus nearly every day together.

“It’s cute,” said Sofia. “We have our lunches together and know what our schedules are. We meet each other’s friends and share the driving from Port Alberni. On the way home we talk about what we’ve covered in class, which helps us remember what we learned.”

Sofia, who is Pamela’s third child, also loves having her mom all to herself. And because Malaspina has students in every age range, she doesn’t feel it’s odd to be sharing a school or even a classroom with her mom or someone else her mom’s age.

“Malaspina is different from high school,” said Sofia. “It’s different having such a range of ages in one classroom and it’s nice the teachers are so connected to you.”

After graduating from Malaspina, Pamela will apply to take her master’s degree at the University of Victoria. She’d eventually like to return to Port Alberni to teach English and creative writing at North Island College.