When I first arrived in Canada in January 2020 with my family after living in Venezuela and Colombia, the last thing we expected was a pandemic to hit the globe.
My sister Erika and I didn’t know any English – Spanish is our first language -- and after a month in high school, everything shut down. It was the time for online classes.
Going through this without contact with people outside my family was a big challenge for both of us. Our physical and mental health were severely affected during COVID-19, and my English didn’t improve much.
Google translator was our biggest and best help, especially for me and while we knew it wasn’t a complete solution, there was nothing else we could do.
I developed regrets about being in Canada, but there wasn’t much I could do to change it at the time.
My English wasn’t the only thing affected during this period. My mental health was at its lowest level, something that I’d never experienced before.
According to a Queen’s University research group, the language barrier was the second most common challenge among newcomers during the pandemic.
While this was mostly focused on how newcomers got their information about COVID-19, in my case, it was mostly focused on my English learning.
It was a year and a half of struggling to make any progress at all, but there was my sister and parents to support me.
We were a year apart in classroom grades our entire lives but after being put in the same grade since we came to Canada, our relationship greatly grew. This new chapter felt like a blessing for me.
In September 2021, schools fully reopened again, this time with most students choosing to go to school without being divided into cohorts as they were during the entire pandemic.
This is when everything started to change, meeting new students from all over the world and finally starting to practice English.
It was at this time when I really felt that I started learning, almost two years after coming to Canada.
My high school friends and teachers helped me to improve and supported me in many situations when I was afraid to talk. I started to think about my future, on what I wanted to study after school, and while I always had a plan since I was little, it had to change at the end.
That change meant leaving my first choice, meteorology, behind to start focusing on my second one, journalism, specifically, sports journalism.
It was a huge challenge to choose a career so dependent on English after all the struggles I faced while learning the language, but I was ready and determined to do great.
During the first year of the program, I used to think that the English I knew wasn't enough to be successful and that I wasn’t going to have a chance at all in this career.
Ghosts from the pandemic reappeared, but I didn't allow them to overcome me this time.
Now, in my second year, while still learning and improving, the confidence is there, along with everyone’s support.
Sometimes when looking back to when I first got here, instead of regretting it, I feel grateful for how my progress has been and how this experience shaped me for the best.
