Moving My Website from UBC Blogs to GitHub

Today I officially moved my personal website from UBC Blogs (old website) to GitHub Pages.

My old personal website was created when I had just started my master’s degree at UBC Okanagan. In ENVI 550 (at that time called Research Seminar in Environmental Science), Prof. Ed Hornibrook encouraged us to build our own academic websites, so I used a template from the UBC Blogs platform to create one. As a new graduate student, I did not really have much to showcase as a scholar yet, so I simply put everything I had onto the website: book reflections, random thoughts, fieldwork diaries, volunteer activities, and many small pieces of student life, just to make the website feel a little less empty.

I’m not sure whether having a personal website really helps someone gain exposure in academia, but one thing I remember clearly is that after I graduated, my friend Grace from my old department told me that Prof. Hornibrook had shown several former students’ websites in class, including mine. I was honestly very surprised to hear that. I never expected something I made as a nervous first-year graduate student would still be seen by new students years later. In a way, that also became a small motivation for me to keep updating my website over the years.

Over time, the website gradually turned into a mixture of academic pages and personal blogs. It contains many pieces of old writing: reflections on books, fieldwork diaries, notes on data processing and coding, and many scattered thoughts from different stages of my student life. Looking back now, the website feels almost like a time capsule of my years as a student. Some posts feel immature, some feel nostalgic, and some still reflect thoughts I continue to carry with me today. Moving to a new platform feels symbolic in a way. It is not only a technical migration, but also a small personal transition. Perhaps it is finally time to formally say goodbye to my old school days and move into a new stage of life.

Last but no least, many thanks to the creators and contributors of the academicpages GitHub template for sharing such a neat and beautiful template with the academic community.