McKayla - Edit 1-Up to 4K
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My name is McKayla.
I am in fourth year,
and I'm from Barbados.
I came to Canada as
an international student.
It was my first time here.
My first time
being without my family.
It was definitely hard.
Making an adjustment
from coming from a
predominantly black society
to one where
I'm now a minority;
it was hard.
Issues arose around me
adapting to the culture,
finding ways to
pay for my tuition
as an international student,
me relating to people in a
way that I felt was authentic
and that I could be myself.
As a student, I handled
a lot of disappointment.
And this led to me
constantly feeling anxious
and it became such an integral
part of my day-to-day experience
that I didn't even think
that wasn't the normal way
to be living.
Since then I've realized
that it's okay to ask for help.
It's okay to be vulnerable,
as hard as it is.
The turning point happened
when I booked an
appointment for counseling.
And after going there
for a few sessions,
it took almost a year later
for me to realize that, yeah,
these constant feelings
of being anxious
at the level
at which it was,
it was such an ongoing state,
that was a problem.
A big thing with using
resources and services
available to students
is thinking that you
are not at a place
where it's absolutely
necessary to do it,
there's a lot of pride in it,
there's a lot of
thinking of other people.
So you want to save those
resources for those people.
But I've learned
that the resources
are there for a reason.
It's not helpful to wait until
it's absolutely necessary
and you completely
have no choice.
It's better to be preventative
and take advantage of the
things that are offered to you,
because you never know, in the
future what's going to happen,
and you would regret
not taking advantage
of these things earlier.