the big day

april 16th was the big day. big not just because bethany and amy had a birthday--or christian too for that matter--it was a big day for brent. it was the day of his presentation. now brent has done lots of presentations before and he always does them well (so well that i wish he could do them instead of taking a test or writing a paper) but this one was different. this was his presentation of his practicum. his sponsor was there, the chair of the geography department was there, potential employers were there, and the vp of mal-u was there. in fact the vp came only to brent's presentation. i went to cheer him on and to see what everyone else's presentation was like.
one of the other people did a practicum for the centre for continuing studies (cccs) department of mal for marketing purposes. he showed a map that showed students living in the north end of nanaimo that have paid more than $3000 for tuition in ccs. as i watched i thought, 'i bet one of those students he has marked is brent.' then as he continued and talked about marketing it got me thinking about how brent found out about this program in the first place. i had first heard about it in an email from the college. the email came at a time when we were at a crossroads in our lives. it was in my junk mail which i hardly ever check, but just happened to...i told brent about it and that has been his focus ever since. reflecting back to that time i remembered how difficult life was. we were broke and needed to find a new direction for brent. he was looking at taking a trade, but i felt it was a waste of his degree for him to become a carpenter. anyways, this is my rambling way of saying that i feel like we were shown a way out. and on this day i recognized it and felt gratitude and joy.
i was so proud of brent. he had really done a good job. his sponsor was thrilled. i watched as others--his gis instructors, geography instructors, and fellow students told him how good his map was. of course he did a really good job on his presentation. afterwards he got an email from his sponsor and we found out that he was the one who invited the vp there. (his sponsor was a history instructor at the college. brent mapped out nanaimo in 1891. not just the streets and stuff, but who lived where and how much was the land valued at and anything else that was available on the census and tax records.) the college had granted some funding for this project (the college actually paid brent--a small dent in comparison to the amounts we have paid them) and so the vp came to see what the money was used for. apparently he said it was money well spent. his sponsor is so happy with the work brent did that he wants to contract him out to do more. he said there is only one other city in canada that has historical gis maps. you can see some of his online map here. http://tree.mala.bc.ca/Website/MyNanaimo_Brent/viewer.htm it was such a victorious day for us.