Just a very quick update. A few months ago, I was interviewed for the Now or Never radio show at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I had pitched to write an article (about my having started a Bachelor’s degree at age 55) elsewhere on the CBC website, and was redirected to the radio show. The process of making the ten-minute segment was so much fun! I answered in an e-mail a bunch of questions they asked me. Then I had a chat with Ify Chiwetelu (one of the two show hosts), and from there, she arranged an official interview with her which she would record.
Before we did this recording, she had me make mini-voice recordings of my first day back on campus for classes in September. She wanted to hear my thoughts about being back, going to classes, meeting fellow students along the way, anything. And anything that included background noise that typified a day on a university campus. I almost felt like a spy doing this, haha, walking around pretending to be having a phone conversation so I could talk into my phone, and then carrying my audio-recording phone through the campus bookstore to pick up a book I had ordered (if you listen, you’ll hear a song playing loudly over the bookstore speaker system) while trying to avoid identifying people in the recordings. This whole part made the project feel collaborative, which I love.
Then, doing the interview recording with Ify was lots of fun. She had great, open-ended questions that made me think. She also had a way about her that made me feel calm about doing the interview, and she was so interested in my story and so encouraging about carrying on. Their show is super interesting, full of stories of people all over Canada, doing things that seem extraordinary.
If you’d like to listen to the segment, it starts at around minute 14:00. I think it’s around ten minutes long. You can also see a writeup about it at the show’s Facebook page. My hope is that it will encourage others to take creative risks to follow long-held dreams.