My last semester with Canaway!

This year has been full of challenges and new experiences. I really can’t believe that I am finishing my school year with Canaway and on my way to pursuing my university studies in Canada. I feel really happy because it has been a good year in which I have learned a lot and met wonderful people.

I am about to finish my last semester with Canaway and enter the final week of exams (so you can imagine that I am studying hard and with a thousand things in mind). In my last semester with Canaway I have been taking two courses, English Grade 12 (ENG4U) and Calculus and Vectors (MCV4U).

In my English course, I have been reading various books, analyzing texts and writing quite a few essays (I think I have written more essays this year than in my entire life). I read Hamlet by Shakespeare and “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” by Mark Haddon. Both books were very interesting and helped me better understand the importance of mental health and inclusion for all people, despite their differences. It was really interesting to share ideas in class and learn about the different perspectives of my classmates from around the world.

On the other hand, in my calculus class I have been looking at functions, vectors, rates of change, derivatives, intersections of lines and planes, and more. It sounds complicated and the truth is that it is. This course has been a challenge because I have learned totally new topics for me, but I have always felt the support of my classmates and my teacher. Teacher Colleen is always willing to answer my questions and she has helped me to lose the fear of admitting that sometimes I need to have the subject explained to me twice to understand it well. In these months I have worked on thousands of assignments and I have learned to organize myself better to finish them on time.

You may think that taking two courses is nothing, but the truth is that Canaway planned for this so that I could have more time to work on university and scholarship applications.  And they were right! I have had so much work on my applications for universities in Canada. I have written so many essays and short answers for colleges about my extracurricular activities, future goals, community service, work as a leader, and life experiences that have marked me as a person. I have had to reflect a lot on what I have lived and done, but above all, I have had to be honest with myself about who I am and who I want to become.

Even though it has been somewhat tedious having so much to do, I have felt a lot of support from the Canaway team, who assigned Marian Siha, Canaway’s career counsellor to help all Canaway students in their applications. Marian also taught me Economics in the summer semester. She is guiding me through the college application process and she has met with me multiple times to review my essays and short answers. I am very grateful to her for all her support and happy that she is guiding me on the right path to enter the universities of my dreams and get incredible scholarships.

I have already submitted some applications for colleges, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will all work out. No matter what happens, I know that I have done my best and I am proud to have committed so much to meet this goal.

Disclaimer:
This blog post was actually written in April 2021, but I put the date of the day it happened to be more realistic.