- Name: Julia Mastroianni
- Program: Journalism
- Age: 18
- Year: First year
Photo Credits Julia Mastroianni
What’s the best thing about living in Toronto?
The fact that I can get anywhere in the city via (albeit very slow) transit or walking on a nice day is incredible and something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to. I used to try to walk wherever I could back home in Thornhill, but it takes a good 30 minutes at least to get anywhere that isn’t the park down the street. And even though I sometimes end up spending the whole weekend sitting in the exact same spot in my bed in my pajamas, the fact that I could go anywhere, if I wanted to, is an incredible feeling. Once my roommate and I were tired of doing work one night so we just walked all the way to the Distillery District to see the light festival, and then walked all the way back. I know that doesn’t sound super adventurous, but it was pretty cool for me!! Maybe the adventures will get better and better in the coming years. I also love, and I hesitate to say the “diversity” because I understand that’s sort of a myth and we’ve got a lot of work to do on that front, but that a lot of the kinds of people who end up in Toronto are brilliant and want to change things and do amazing work. Being here for less than a year, I’ve already been able to speak to and witness so many incredible activists and artists create change in such tangible, amazing ways. I definitely look up to everyone who is using the resources of this city to do the hard work of pushing back against oppression or creating challenging art.
What hobbies and/or collections do you have?
My first collecting habit started when I was one, with rocks, which sounds so strange now! My parents even got me a “rock garden” for my first birthday!! And I kept collecting rocks until I was about 14, though I expanded the collection to shells too. I also started collecting led, like the pieces of led that break off from pencils, when I was nine. I honestly have NO idea how that happened but everyone in my class helped out; whenever their pencils broke they’d always pass it down to me.
Now I guess I collect journals, though not just because they look pretty. I’ve written in a journal since I was nine so I have quite a stack of notebooks now! And I always, always need more even when I have seven or eight fresh ones lined up—you can never have enough!
All of that journal-writing is probably part of why I love writing so much too, but I think that started the first time I picked up a book. Reading is, I like to say (jokingly so people don’t get weirded out, but I actually do mean it), my first love. I used to get in trouble for saying I was going to bed, but then turning my desk lamp on and reading under the covers. I also used to read a bunch of books at once, and my mom would literally test me on the plots of the books because she thought I was lying about reading them! She’s a teacher though, so I think that was her natural reflex anyway.
Photo Credits Julia Mastroianni
If reading is my first love, soccer and piano are tied for second. I started with both around age four, soccer because of my dad and piano because of my mom. I’ve been doing both all the way up until I came to Ryerson, and it’s been really weird not having them in my life as consistently as I used to. If soccer has taught me anything, it’s that teamwork really does make the dream work—we cycled through four or five different groups of team members until we finally built up one that worked. Piano has taught me that sometimes, practice will never make perfect—or even close to perfect, or even semi-good.
Are you more of an introvert, extrovert, or in between?
I would say with absolute conviction that I am an introvert, but people who get to know me often say they think I’m an extrovert. I guess that’s the nature of the game. I take personality quizzes obsessively because it’s nice having other people tell me who I am sometimes even when they’re wrong, and whenever the questions obviously aimed at introverts roll around, I am in my element. If I could, I’d write “feeds off energy from being alone” as a strength on my resume. Interestingly, when I came to the journalism program here, a lot of the students were under the impression that all journalism students would automatically be extroverts. I get the assumption there, because journalists are supposed to talk to lots of people and make connections and just be generally in-your-face, but I think you need a balance of those kinds of people and the more introspective and personal types in every profession. Besides, to typecast all introverts as quiet and shy is a little narrow-minded anyway. If you ask my sisters, my relentless efforts to embarrass them in public is anything but quiet and shy.
What is your favourite restaurant, and your favourite meal there?
This is a huge cop-out answer, but no restaurant meal could ever compare to my grandmother’s lasagna. I genuinely mourn for everyone who has never had the chance to try it.
What book are you currently reading?
Despite the piles of books waiting to be read on my bookshelf right now, I’m rereading a bunch of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books because I am clearly still nine-year-old me, reading Anne of Green Gables for the first time and wishing every night to wake up miraculously with red hair. The Anne fan club starts with me and ends with that one 50-year-old woman in P.E.I but I’m ok with that.
But I’m still going to recommend a book because why not: Poems That Make Grown Women Cry. The title spoke out to me as the world’s biggest crier, and I unsurprisingly did cry through half the poems in this book. But what’s really special about this book are the little introductions by all the wonderful women who shared their favourite poems in it; it made each poem so much more personal.
Describe your dream vacation.
I’d like to go to too many places at the moment, but the one must-have for my dream vacation is a non-tourist perspective. I was lucky enough to go to England with my friend whose grandmother lives in England a couple summers ago, and we stayed in her house in a small town an hour outside of London. As much as I was already enraptured with the fact that I was in England, the place where dreams come true (that’s the Disneyland slogan but any Harry Potter fan would understand why it applies better here), seeing more of the country than just the tourist spots is what made the trip so incredibly special. So any dream vacation may not have a location just yet (how does anyone pick just one place?) but it does have that.