Brendan Shykora
Brendan Shykora is an alumnus from our Bachelor of Arts degree, with a major in English. He grew up in the North Okanagan and says that UBCO was a great place to start his post-secondary studies as it was close to home. “It turned out that the smaller campus was also a great place to learn. It was easier to get to know professors and get bonus insight from them, either by attending their office hours or by politely cornering them at the end of classes. I have no regrets about studying at UBCO — it was one of the happiest times of my life.”
Brendan completed his degree at UBCO in 2017, and went on to complete a Masters in journalism at Carleton University and is now a journalist working at the Vernon Morning Star.
We met with Brendan to discuss his experience at UBCO as an undergraduate student, as a master’s student and what he is doing now.
Why did you choose to come to UBCO and choose English as your major?
I decided to study English fairly early in the game, perhaps in Grade 9 or 10 of high school. English class was always my strong suit, and reading was always a pleasurable escape. Of course, when you commit to an English major, reading is no longer merely fun and games; it becomes a daily grind. But insofar as nothing of value comes without hard work, I think the extensive reading lists were well worth it.
I chose to study English at UBCO in part because I was not yet ready to commit to journalism. I also knew that there was so much within the novels I was reading that I couldn’t understand, and I thought, how nice would it be to learn how to extract more meaning out of whatever books I was reading, both during and after my studies?
I got around to journalism afterwards, but I wouldn’t do anything differently. Studying English helped me learn how to think critically and with creativity, which are skills that have helped me in my career.
Is there a professor that stands out to you while you were at UBCO?
My professors at UBCO were outstanding, and too many of them made an indelible impact on me to name only one. For my English studies, prof. Lisa Grekul helped me believe in myself as a writer and a thinker, while offering guidance on how to critically examine a wide range of texts. Prof. Margaret Reeves exposed me to the works of John Milton and I had a wonderful time studying Paradise Lost in her class. She also taught a phenomenal class on children’s literature that I still think about from time to time. For my minor in political science, Dr. James Rochlin helped me understand postmodernism and how it has permeated though everyday life. It’s been amazing to see how relevant the topics in his courses from a decade ago have become in Canadian and American politics.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
This actually escaped my memory, so I had to ask my mom. She told me as a kid I wanted to be a paleontologist, which tracks because like many young boys I had an obsession with dinosaurs. Beneath that, I like to imagine I was yearning for some process of discovery. It’s unclear when I abandoned that dream, but I can say with certainty that by the time I was in high school my paleontology plans had long been supplanted and I knew I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t know what kind of writer I wanted to be exactly, but I had fallen in love with the process of constructing sentences, of fitting words together with a purpose. In high school I heard my own voice come out in my writing for the first time, better articulated than anything I could ever say orally. Like a paleontologist discovering ancient fossils, I decided I wanted to discover modes of thought, meaning and beauty through the simple yet powerful process of putting words together.
You completed a masters in Journalism at Carleton University after your degree here, tell us about that – why did you choose that field, and what are you doing now?
I knew coming out of high school that I wanted to write for a living. What I needed then was a field in which my writing skills could be applied to something interesting and of real-world consequence. Journalism fit the bill. It combined the writing skills I’d learned in my English major with the understandings about how the world works that I’d picked up while completing my political science minor. I’ve always been interested in the inner workings of society, and a journalist’s job is essentially to investigate the mechanics of modern life, while being able to convey one’s findings in easily digestible language. For those reasons, journalism was an ideal fit for me.
And I’m happy to report that I’ve been working as a journalist for almost six years now. After finishing my studies I went back home to visit my parents in Enderby, and was preparing to look for jobs in far flung places. But as fortune would have it, a job opening popped up at The Vernon Morning Star in the summer of 2019, just a 30-minute drive from my hometown. I’ve been at the Morning Star ever since and have completely fallen in love with local news. Whereas other journalists have a beat they report on and specialize in, working for the local paper means writing about anything and everything, and I’ve been thrilled with the vast range of topics I’ve been able to report on in the first five-plus years of my career.
How do you think your undergraduate degree helped you with your graduate degree?
My experiences as an undergraduate at UBCO helped me tremendously during my graduate studies. My fourth undergraduate year in particular prepared me for the very heavy workload I encountered in the Master of Journalism program at Carleton University. The five courses I had in each semester that year were each pulling my attention in different directions, and I had to learn how prioritize tasks, a skill that’s come in handy as a working journalist.
I think the biggest thing came out of my undergraduate studies which helped me in my graduate pursuits was the simple realization that hard work pays off in the end. My grades steadily improved over the four years of my Bachelor of Arts degree. When I first entered my graduate program, I again found myself at the bottom of a ladder; my classmates were all so smart! They seemed to already know what it meant to be a journalist before ever having worked as one, whereas I felt as though I didn’t have what it takes to ever become a journalist. I felt inadequate, and in truth I was near the bottom of my cohort academically at the start of the program. But my undergraduate studies had taught me to persevere, and I again improved relative to my cohort over the course of those two years. By the end of the program, I felt as though I could succeed in the field I had committed to, which was a feeling beyond words.
In short, I am grateful for the challenges that were put in front of me during my UBCO days. Each of those challenges was a stepping stone on the way to where I am now. You can’t ask for more out of your education than for the chance to grow, and I was offered that in spades at UBCO.