MyLife at BCIT

The Go Jill Go Challenge

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Amy MacDonald

This month I have been working on a project called Go Jill Go – a 30 day “dream month” where BCIT students are completing a 30-day challenge of their choice, while raising pledges in support of BC Children’s Hospital.

This project was created and inspired by Jill Vassallo, a student in the Marketing Communications Program, who graduated in May 2010. Jill was ambitious, courageous and a very hard worker, entering the program right out of high school. In September 2010, four months after graduating, Jill passed away from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, a disease she had been fighting since the age of four.

Cupcakes from our fundraising bakesale. We raised over $550 for BC Children's!

It was Jill’s dream to help kids to not feel sick while they were undergoing treatment. She was passionate about the Child Care Department at BC Children’s Hospital, which organizes fun activities for the children and brings in guests to the hospital.

I did not know Jill, but I remember being at SIFE’s first general meeting in September of my first year at BCIT and learning about Jill through a video that her friends had created about her. I was inspired by her story and decided to help with the challenge. Participating in this challenge and working with the Go Jill Go team has been amazing and very fulfilling. We still have about 20 days left and everyone is doing amazing with their challenges and collecting pledges!

Week 1: My first DIY project, an incense holder inspired from Pintrest!

Many students have chosen to do health and wellness challenges, like going vegan, or running three times a week. Others have decided to take a photo a day or to not buy any food on campus for 30 days! I have decided to kick my habit of drinking Coke and to make a DIY project once a week.

Last year $6000 was raised for BC Children’s Hospital and the Go Jill Go team made it onto the BC Children’s Telethon! This year our goal is $10,000.

I encourage everyone to learn more about Jill and the Go Jill Go Challenge. You can view who is participating and donate to our Superhero page through the Go Jill Go website.

Posted in Campus Life, Everything Else, Off Campus | Leave a comment

Reminder: The Residence Advisor Information Session is Tonight

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Robyn Ashton

If you’ve seen my previous post then you know that student housing is currently accpeting applications for residence advisors. I’m a big advocate for student housing and I think this is a great job opportunity.

Have a look here for the specifics and the application information.

The information session is tonight at 6:30 p.m. in the Housing Office Lounge (SW11). The application deadline is February 16 at 4:00pm.

Good luck to all that apply.

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My Bus Wasn’t On Time

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Devin Wall

How frustrating is it when the bus is late, especially when you are on a tight schedule. Who do we blame? Usually the bus driver. Are we correct in this assumption that it is the bus drivers fault? Probably not. But I intend to find out!

If you remember I recently posted a documentary that me and a few of my peers produced called ‘My Gay Life‘ Well, it’s time to do it again… a documentary that is. This one is going to be produced by me, and I am quite excited. The goal of this documentary is to get the other side of of the transit system; the bus drivers and the problems they face.

Posted in Everything Else | Leave a comment

My Motorcycle Project – 1975 Yamaha XS500 Cafe Racer

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Robyn Ashton

It should come as no surprise that the main and only reason I enrolled in the CNC Machinist program at BCIT was to improve my machinist and motorcycle fabrication skills. Being a machinist is certainly a rewarding and challenging career but I’m a motorcyclist and that’s my focus. It’s amazing that pretty much everyday I learn something that helps me in my journey to becoming a motorcycle builder.

About a year and a half ago, I embarked on my most ambitious project to date. I bought a 1975 Yamaha XS500 on craigslist with the intention of building a cafe racer.

This is the beast in all its neglected, dangerous glory:

What’s a cafe racer you ask? They’re a style of motorcycle popularized in Britain in the 1960′s. I consider them the ultimate in ‘fast and light’ purpose built motorcycle construction. The goal for many of these riders was to get their bikes to ‘Do the Ton’ aka 100 miles per hour. You can read more about this on Wikipedia or one of my favorite cafe racer forums Do The Ton.

Here’s an example of a cafe racer built on the TX/XS500 frame:

You can read more about the creation of this bike here.

Anyway, my bike is currently in a million pieces, stored in hundreds of ziplock bags and various tupperware containers and all carefully labeled and categorized. I’ve had the rims rebuilt and restored by Woody’s Wheel Works and I’m currently working on the frame and gas tank.

Unfortunately for me, the previous owner used some kind of indestructible super paint on the tank. The picture below is after close to an hour in the tank at Langley U-blast and more than one coating of chemical paint stripper.

So, I brought this little piece of shame to the machine shop and I broke out the air tools and abrasive wheels. Eat this super paint!

It took about two hours but I got almost every trace of that horrible yellow paint off the exterior of my tank.

Next I wanted to begin to polish the surface to remove the imperfections left by the abrasive wheel. I used a foam block with coarse grit sand paper.

As you can see, it did a great job of improving the surface finish and giving it a more consistent appearance.

At this point I still need to deal with the underside of the tank and that’s going to be a challenge due to the limited access for the abrasive wheel. I’m still planning my attack on this.

Once that’s completed I’m going to experiment with stripping and sealing the inside of the tank. I’m in no hurry and plan to complete this bike sometime in the next 2 years as my skill, time, and money allow.

Building motorcycles is incredibly fun and you meet the most interesting people along the way. If any of you are interested then I highly recommend that you give it a try.

Posted in Everything Else, My Program, Work | 1 Comment

An update on how school is going

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Tiffany Fong

Wow, I can’t believe it is already the middle of the semester! I have been uuuuuuuuuuuuuber swamped with assignments and now I have tons of midterms. I just had one this week. Unfortunately midterm time continues on for the next few weeks. This semester seems so much harder. I guess my Kines can’t help me with all the pathology we have been learning. Anatomy in the first semester was much easier but now…we learn about complications and diseases! Some of us have been feeling a big overwhelmed and burnt out. We only had a two week break during the holidays which were pretty busy since it was Christmas and New Years.

I guess I can’t complain because the previous class had more classes than us this term. One of the great things about this program is that your opinion matters. We recently completed a study on our experience with the previous semester and some changes have been implemented to make the program more effective.

One of the things that we have changed in our program is our lab assessments. They were sooooooo stressful. Imagine yourself sitting on one of the machines and being watched like a hawk by an instructor. They are testing you on your introduction, scanning techniques, images, and patient care. Boy was it ever nerve wracking. We kept making mistakes that we easily avoided during our normal scanning labs. By voicing our opinion we have replaced it with assignments done during our lab time. Yay!

Here are some pics on what has been happening in school: