A Girl Most Ordinary

Herein lie the adventures, thoughts and happenstances of an ordinary Canadian girl.

I’m a writer and journalist, currently working on a Master’s in Journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. This website is reserved for a somewhat hodge-podge smattering of adventures I’ve been on (Southeast Asia trip in 2015/2016, “Modern Day Odyssey” – I know, so poetic), blogging for journalism courses (“North of Ordinary” was a series of blogs for a course in the Yukon), the occasional opinion piece (“Finding Neverland” – a somewhat eloquent oh-god-everything-is-changing piece), and some actual journalism work I’ve done (“Journalism portfolio”).

As for the title of the blog, while it started somewhat serious, it’s become a little bit more tongue-in-cheek. On paper, and sometimes off paper, I am ordinary and vanilla. I grew up in the suburbs outside Toronto, I went to the local high school and sang in choirs, I did my undergraduate degree in English literature. I’m small and white and female. Being female is probably the one thing that makes me “diverse” in the sense that we normally think of.

But that’s what makes this blog name somewhat playful and joking. I actually am somehow diverse in a looser sense of the word. No one has lived the same life that I have, and no one has the same perspective as I do. While I may blend into the Canadian cultural landscape, I have an important voice. It probably took me too long to realize that.

The first post I wrote on this blog, way back in 2014, was titled “Voicing the concerns of the timid.” I originally started the blog anonymously, a sort of Girl in the Green Scarf type thing, but for those who are too shy to publish their own opinions (which I was). But I realized, in combining my newfound knowledge in journalism with blogging, that anonymity isn’t credible and it doesn’t really make people care. Plus there were some logistic issues – how on earth would my blog get viewers if I couldn’t promote it without outing myself as the girl most ordinary? So I pulled on my big girl pants, took a deep breath and published something.

From then on, after a published opinions piece on UBC’s student newspaper and a seven-month solo trip across Southeast Asia, it has become much easier to publish things on this blog. Mostly because it became easier for me to recognize that while I may be ordinary, what I have to stay may still have value.

Ordinary doesn’t necessarily mean boring and worthless, so I kept the name.