Mature grads make their mark in life
New graduates underline how it’s never too late to plot new course in life
Fourteen years after completing her bachelor’s degree in education and already in her 40s, Sherryl Sewepagaham knew she had to go back to university.
“I was 31 when I got my first degree, and I taught music for many years in Edmonton,” said Sewepagaham, a former Juno Award nominee. “I moved to a different district to work as an education consultant and I was getting all kinds of calls from schools and social workers to come and sing with troubled children.”
After working with a young girl at risk of being expelled from school, she found her calling.
“I talked to her and we sang together and she told me how special it had been to sing with me,” she said. “The smiles on the faces of the kids tell you that it’s a good experience, and I wanted to pursue that as a form of therapy.”
Sewepagaham enrolled at Capilano University, where she will receive a bachelor’s degree in music therapy.
“All my classmates were in their 20s and it was a bit of a shock,” she said. “I really had to rely on them to figure out the technological side of submitting assignments and how to research without microfiche. Now everything is online. I spent a lot of nights figuring it all out.”
As the daughter of a residential school survivor and a woman of Cree-Dene ancestry, Sewepagaham is interested in working with First Nations children.
“I understand trauma with these kids, because I’ve seen it myself,” she said. “There’s a real need to give children a way to express themselves. There’s an old quote: ‘When words fail, music speaks.’ Music really connects with a person’s spiritual side on a really deep level, and lyrics can express feelings when they don’t have the words themselves.”
Dave Goelst completed his first degree in education in 1964 while living in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and pursued careers in teaching, then as a training and operations manager in Johannesburg, South Africa.
But after coming to Canada with his wife Barbara eight years ago, the lifelong teacher got the learning bug again and will receive a diploma for academic excellence from Capilano University this week at the age of 73.
Goelst had expressed interest in taking “a course or two” to Shoshanna Sommerville, then an employability coach at Cap.
“She encouraged me to come and look around the campus, and it was love at first sight,” he recalled. “I enrolled for an associate degree in general arts and sciences.”
But in his second year, he took some courses from professor Kym Stewart, who teaches communications. Goelst dove into communications research and switched gears.
“She really inspired me,” he said. “As young as she is, I look at her with great respect and admiration. She really whet my appetite to do more than an associate degree.”
Goelst has now set his sights on a full degree in communications, which should be complete by next June.
“I’m taking it slow, doing three courses per semester,” he said.
Not one to rest on his laurels, Goelst and his wife, who trained at Le Cordon Bleu school of cooking, have opened a coffee shop, The Baker and Baron Cafe in North Vancouver.
“We hope this is going to be our retirement package and that we’ll keep working until we fall over,” he said.
Rae Kamstra knows what it’s like to be a patient and the mother of a patient, and now she’s going to get a taste of life on the other side of the stethoscope.
When her son became seriously ill, Kamstra became pointedly aware of the pitfalls in doctor-patient communication.
“Medicine is a language unto itself, but it’s not a language that any patient understands,” she said. “I’m very aware of the language I’m using and I make sure to translate into English. Even the smallest instructions have to be clear.”
When her son’s condition forced the Kamstras to seek care for him outside their home, she was suddenly faced with a huge hole in her life and an unfulfilled dream of becoming a doctor. With her 37th birthday looming, she was at an alltime low.
“I was in this weird limbo, and medicine was the only thing at that point that gave me any spark. So I thought about it a lot and when I talked to my husband, he said, ‘Go for it,’” she said.
Fast forward through a degree in biochemistry and four years of medicine, and today Kamstra is a graduate of UBC’s medical school.
“My husband Bruce was great,” she said. “He was running his own business, picking up the kids and cooking dinners, especially in the last few years. He’s a bit of a super-hero.”
She trained in Prince George through the Northern Medical Program, which is delivered in Partnership with UNBC. Students at UBC’s three satellite medical schools spend their first semester at the Vancouver campus, which includes an intense course in human anatomy through dissection.
Kamstra will now embark on a two-year family medicine residency, which includes a very welcome paycheque.
She remains committed to working with people and enjoys the variety of opportunities offered outside the big city, including a taste of emergency medicine.
“I have a few years before I nail down what my practice will look like, but I have an interest in rural medicine, so we will stay around Prince George,” she said.