Jorunn Lindzén is a life-long learner.
The 72-year-old Thompson Rivers University Williams Lake student's passion for knowledge was shared as she gave the valedictorian address at the university’s commencement held Friday, May 30.
As she made her way to the podium, there was a thunderous applause.
After saying learning is a life-long journey, she suggested stories play a big part of the journey.
“We begin in childhood to question the stories that we're told while forming, grasping for meaning if not equally as understood,” she said.
Parts of childhood cross paths of both generosity and greed, she added.
One of the most outstanding adventurers who inspired her was Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer who she said is best known for his exploring but less known for the time he spent living in Bella Coola and learning from the people of the Nuxalk Nation.
“Heyerdahl theorized that there was early contact between the Nuxalk and the people of Polynesia,” she said, adding his research led to a deep conviction that people around the globe are genetically closely related.
Lindzén said she met him once while he was speaking at the Scandinavian Centre in Burnaby, B.C. and was left with an impression “there are no borders, no boundaries between people.”
She has long considered him a “quintessential humanitarian, driven to prove that our common stories are needed for community and development to connect us," she added.
There is a direct correlation between education, tolerance and acceptance, Lindzén said.
“The more we know about how construct evolved the better we can adjust in ways that benefit our world.”
Her own desire for learning has led her to many changes in her life’s course from music to journalism, from accounting to animal husbandry and from human resource management to linguistics.
“There has never been a subject I couldn’t throw myself fully into," she admitted.
It was in 2020 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic her next educational endeavour was presented to her.
The quest to uncover the secret of Messenger RNA , the molecules that carry the genetic information needed to make proteins, inspired her quest.
“I would not be silent,” she recalled. “TRU showed me a new pathway and my neurons sparkled with gleea, for all you biology people. Never one to walk a straight line, I wove a patchwork of knowledge between biology and English with anthropology, geology, human development and more.”
Through her studies she said she had many “wonderful” teachers and is grateful for the university’s inclusion and the relationships she has developed with students and staff.
“Being a slightly mature student it is tempting to feel I’ve reached my best-before-date and mixing with younger learners might become complicated, but instead we have together exposed our gifts and our egos through creative writing while we learned about our inner qualities and values. Together we have discovered how to view others through a lens which was not previously recognized. Together we have helped each other out in ways we will always remember.”
She said as the students leave this keystone of learning behind them and move forward in their lives, she encouraged herself and them “not to forget what brought them together.”
“We are seekers of knowledge. Every single day we look to learn and grow. The true power of learning is to discover that we are always at the beginning.”
Learning has no end, only new stories, adding “in the words of Thor Heyerdahl, ‘for every minute the future is becoming the past.’”
Outside of university she volunteers with the Cariboo Arts Festival Society and has previously volunteered at Horsefly Elementary School and with restorative justice.
“Her devotion to lifelong learning and community mindedness enhance campus and maker her a true role model and effective mentor for other students,” said Shannon Wagner, interim provost and vice-president academic, the commencement M.C. as she introduced Lindzén. “Jorunn’s passion for helping others inspired her to enrol in TRU’s Educational Assistant and Community Support program.”
Lindzén graduates from the Associate of Arts program and has excelled academically and contributes to the university and the community, reads a piece about her in commencement program.
Her goal is to become a mentor to gifted children and youth.
“I quit school in the beginning of Grade 11 so I left with a Grade 10 education,” she told the Tribune after the commencement. “This is my first degree now.”
