Maple Ridge resident wins scholarship for leadership, community involvement

November 28, 2003

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Johanna Beemster wanted to study psychology when she was 20, but didn't think she could go to university. "I didn't know how I could afford to go," she says. "I couldn't pay. I didn't know about student loans. And then you get involved in life and plans like going to school get further and further away."

But she says she was "always wishing." Sometime she would drive by a college or university and think, "I could have done that."And then one day, at age 45, she did.

Now the single mother has completed two years of Psychology in the university transfer program at Douglas College, and transferred to third year at Simon Fraser University, where she's doing a double major in Sociology and Psychology. She's also won two scholarships, the latest being the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation's $4,000 in-course award, given to students across Canada with a strong academic record who demonstrate community involvement.

"I go through withdrawal when I'm not volunteering," says Beemster. "When you're in school you live in this little world. Volunteering gives you connections and it's good for you as a person."

Last summer, Beemster volunteered at Riverview Hospital with psychiatric patients. "You learn this stuff at school and you want to apply it somewhere. It's like a new car - you can't wait to try it out."

She also has volunteered for the Family Education and Support Centre as an assistant facilitator in anger management sessions, at a local daycare and as a scout and cub leader. A dedicated triathlete, she regularly participates in the B.C. Lung Association's Bicycle Trek for Life and Breath.

This year, Beemster has curtailed her volunteering to focus on school. Her other scholarship, from Fairfax Financial Holdings, worth $15,000 over three years, is tied to her grade point average.

But she tries not to get so focused on school she forgets about making time for her son Anthony, 16, and her daughter, Jessica, 12. "I'm trying to balance life a little bit, making sure I have time for school and time for my children."

And even though she's not volunteering at the moment, she goes out of her way to help people. She often gets calls from other single parents struggling in the job market, saying, "Why can't I get a job? It must be me."

She tells them, "You're unemployed -- it's not because of who you are. I try to help them see the bigger picture."

No stranger to unemployment, Beemster used to work in drafting, but she says "it got to the point where they didn't hire draftsmen anymore because the unemployed architects would do the job." When her last contract ran out, she started a daycare business, and decided to try one course at Douglas College and see if her lifelong dream of being a psychologist was feasible.

She took Sociology 125 with Nick Mansfield and she was hooked. "It was an eye opener about life," she says. "You get to a certain age and you think you know things and then you read about what you think you know in a book and it's been studied and documented and you think, I need to know more. It's validation."

Mansfield reeled Beemster into higher education. "He was really animated and very truthful. He'll lay it out for you. He went beyond the textbook. Now I'm taking a 300-level course on the classical theorists at SFU and I understand it really well because of what Nick taught me."

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