“We just have to keep trying”: Camosun international students feel pandemic’s impact

Recent Camosun grad Isadora Braga is from Brazil; she graduated from the post-degree diploma (PDD) in Business Administration – Marketing in April, shortly after COVID-19 changed everything. She says that when the transition took place it was a weird moment for everyone.

“It was a mix of feelings,” says Braga. “I realized that it wasn’t only me. I felt that it was me, my classmates, the instructors… Everyone was trying to adapt and do their best given the situation, so I felt that I wasn’t alone.”

As an international student trying to finish her courses and graduate, Braga recognizes that people at the college were trying to do their best while making decisions about the necessary changes.

“When the outbreak happened it was, of course, something really different… No one was expecting this to happen, not the students, not Camosun, not the instructors, anyone,” says Braga.

During the uncertainties involved with transitioning to online classes, Braga says she followed all the communication provided by Camosun, which reassured her that the college was trying to help the students.

“It was almost like a two-way relationship, like students were trying to understand and give their best and Camosun was trying to do the same,” says Braga. “So I can say that I felt supported by Camosun when the outbreak happened.”

Divyanshu Malik came from India to Canada in 2018, and was also taking the last courses of the PDD in Business Administration – Marketing program at Camosun in the winter term. Although he had taken online courses prior to the pandemic, he says that simply knowing the dynamics of online classes was not enough at first.

“The problem was that it was not only one course [online], it was all the courses at the same time and it was my final semester,” says Malik. “So I was confused about what we were going to do next, how to manage all of the studies. Plus, I worked from home and I had friends at my place at that time who could not go to their cities because of [COVID-19], but after some time I tried to maintain a proper timetable and managed to complete my studies.”

Malik put his time-management skills into practice, and also received support from Camosun instructors.

“The teachers were very nice, they helped me a lot whenever I had any questions,” says Malik. “They gave me their email addresses and contact numbers, and I did have a few questions; I contacted them and they helped me throughout the process.”

Originally from Turkey, Nayat Muratyan Ozcelik is a second-year Business Administration – Marketing student. Ozcelik says she is not an online person, which strongly contributes to her negative experience taking online classes.

“I like face-to-face communication and school was an opportunity for me to meet people, to make friends, to get information from instructors,” says Ozcelik. “Even if we had online classes it was not possible to ask too many questions, to get the same reaction; it was not easy for me just to listen, to read, to take notes; I didn’t like it at all.”

Ozcelik says that her main reason for taking a Project Management course at Camosun was the fact that students were supposed to organize a fundraising event, but unfortunately that assignment was cancelled due to the pandemic.

“When the event was cancelled, we had to do a kind of crisis management, which was challenging: we had to convert our event into an online auction,” says Ozcelik. “I couldn’t get what I was expecting from this course—I was so excited about organizing an event, seeing everyone in our event… So I was kind of sad about that.”

Another challenge faced by Ozcelik last term was writing exams online from home.

“Exams were not easy for me because I have a small kid and I don’t have my own space in my house,” says Ozcelik. “So because my daughter and my husband were at home when I was taking my final exams, I had trouble with noise and I couldn’t concentrate.”

Kenny Hongo is from Japan and completed his diploma in Arts and Science at Camosun last December then transferred to the Computer Science program at the University of Victoria. So when the classes moved online, he was in his first semester at UVic; taking exams online was also challenging for him, but for a different reason.

“The exams were a little bit difficult because they were expecting us to study harder than when the classes were in-person because they knew we could look at books, or notebooks or look up online, so the exams were made harder,” says Hongo. “I wasn’t used to that so I had a hard time doing them, but now I’m pretty much used to it.”

Hongo says that he actually liked the possibility of reviewing recorded lectures, but he regrets that the communication with instructors was not quite the same.

“As my program is Computer Science, I had a lot to do with programming,” says Hongo. “I wanted my instructor to look at my code and what’s wrong and what’s right in person, like right next to me… That was hard, so that was the downside, I guess.”

Second-year Electronics and Computer Engineering Technology – Renewable Energy student Miguel Hernandéz is originally from Mexico and has taken two co-op work terms since January. He saw first-hand how the pandemic changed the workplace.

“We had some changes in the workplace because of the pandemic, and one of the changes that happened is that we were divided into two completely separate shifts,” says Hernandéz. “In that way, we got less people at a time in the office.”

Besides the co-op employment, Hernandéz had a part-time job in the food industry. He got a call with a notice of layoff from that job only two days after the lockdown procedures were announced.

“In my co-op in the first weeks, everything was normal, but after that we were told that some changes could happen, and one of the possibilities was that people could be laid off if necessary,” says Hernandéz. “Some of my coworkers were temporarily laid off, so I was afraid I would be in that situation, but, fortunately, it didn’t happen and I just continued working.”

Braga says her professional goals were not impacted by the pandemic and her work routine at Island Health got pretty busy.

“I never stopped working—I actually worked more and I was starting a new job,” says Braga. “So I was kind of lucky. I got a new job, and in my previous job I didn’t stop working for a minute—the opposite, I had more things to do.”

Due to the pandemic, Malik did not find the job market as favourable as he had hoped it would be as he graduated.

“My goal was that after graduation I would be applying for big companies, and because of the pandemic, many companies did not have interviews scheduled and even instead of hiring they laid off lots of their employees,” says Malik. “So it did impact us in that perspective—we didn’t have any companies visit Camosun at that time to get interviewed or to get hired, and so we have to wait.”

Malik is working at the same place he worked before the pandemic, and hopes to continue there until the situation settles down and he can apply for corporate positions. Even so, he regrets the bad timing.

“You know, once you graduate and the companies look forward to hiring you, that’s one of the best ways to get into a big company,” says Malik. “But that opportunity was lost because of COVID.”

From a similar perspective, Ozcelik says that all her work plans for the summer were disrupted. So were her husband’s: because of the pandemic, he was laid off from his job in the tourism industry after only working at the job for a month.

“I couldn’t find a job at the beginning of the pandemic and I was also scared of being in crowded places, so it affected us both financially and psychologically,” says Ozcelik. “It was hard.”

Ozcelik says that their goal was to work full time during the summer break to somehow balance their finances and get prepared for the new school year’s tuition, but they couldn’t do so until just recently, about three months later than they had planned.

“We looked for jobs for a long time, and right now I’m working at a store, and, of course, this is not my dream job—I’m not earning as much as I was planning,” says Ozcelik. “My husband finally found a job in his field but, again, it’s not as good as his former job.”

Another reason why Ozcelik’s plans changed was the fact that her mother could not come to Canada anymore because of flight cancellations. The same happened to Hernandéz’s parents-in-law, who had tickets to visit Victoria in July. And also to Malik, who had his own tickets to visit India cancelled.

“To date I haven’t received any refund and I don’t know whether I’ll get my money back or what will happen with that money,” says Malik. “What my family believes is that whatever happens happens for good, so if my ticket got cancelled and we were not able to meet that’s good, because there’s less movement and during these times there should be less movement—it’s better to stay at our own places [and not] travel in these hard times.”

Hongo also had his travel plans impacted. Instead of going to his home country to enjoy the summer break, he ended up staying in Victoria and enrolling in summer courses online. In early August, however, he went back to Japan to be with his family.

“I was actually going to go back to Canada in September and take classes but, because the classes are still online, I decided to stay in Japan and take those classes,” says Hongo. “Probably if they were not online, if they were in person, I would be in Canada by September. I haven’t decided when to go back to Canada, probably when the courses go back to in person, probably next year.”

In the upcoming fall term, Hernandéz will have theoretical courses online and practical classes in the labs on campus; he hopes to adapt quickly.

“I prefer in-person classes, I prefer being at the college to get the classes; so now we will have to adapt and I’m trying to look forward to the advantages that it will present,” says Hernandéz. “For sure there will be challenges, and we need to overcome them.”

Ozcelik admits to being unsure of how she will deal with all the classes being online right from the beginning of the term—she is particularly worried about the courses that won’t have online meetings with the class and the instructor.

“When you are not supposed to be somewhere at a certain time you can always postpone, you can think, ‘Okay, I will do it tomorrow—today I can do this and tomorrow I will read this article,’ and you always postpone, which is also a danger,” she says. “But some of my courses, as I read, instructors will have an online meeting like an hour every week and they will talk about the courses.”

Still, Ozcelik regrets the fact that online meetings are not exactly like face-to-face interactions, which is not so good to her as an international student in a new country.

“I couldn’t find too many friends until now,” says Ozcelik. “So this year I was hoping that I might meet some new people, and with online education it’s not possible, so it’s kind of disappointing, too.”

Apart from the professional and study scenarios that were changed, Braga says that the worst part was dealing with the news of the pandemic in Brazil in face of the border closures in Canada.

“I was afraid because I didn’t know if I would be able to go back in case one of my parents got sick,” says Braga. “And if I went back if I would be able to come back to Canada anytime soon.”

Braga says that she has been trying to live one day at a time and to keep herself busy to deal with the situation with less anxiety.

“Luckily, I didn’t have to go to Brazil, my whole family there is safe, they’re healthy, nothing really happened,” says Braga. “But, still, I’m still afraid because we just reached 100,000 deaths there, and that’s kind of scary.”

Hernandéz says it was challenging to deal with anxiety coming from uncertainties around his family and the situation in his home country, especially when the pandemic had not yet hit Mexico when it did in Canada.

“When the effect happened in Mexico and the number of cases began to increase, they were announcing lockdowns and everything, and we were worried about how the situation could be there, how bad could it get knowing of the limitations and the circumstances in the country with the medical services,” says Hernandéz. “But, fortunately, I think it’s not as bad as I imagined in the beginning, although I have some people that I know got the virus.”

Ozcelik says that although she is grateful to be here safely with her husband and daughter, she admits that dealing with the news of the pandemic in Turkey was, and still is, very stressful for her.

“Every day I was checking my friends, my family, whether they were okay or not,” she says. “I was not sure whether they were telling me the truth, if they were hiding something from me or if they were honest to me. You know, sometimes they don’t want to make me sad, so they don’t tell me everything, and that idea was stressing me. Still, right now, I don’t know if I will see my family or my friends in the near future.”

Malik says that thinking about the pandemic situation in India was a reason to be apprehensive about his family being there, far from him.

“With a 1.3-billion population you can’t manage to have proper social distancing everywhere, so I was worried for my family as well,” says Malik. “So a lot of pressure from working, family, studies, all of these things and staying just in this one place, it was kind of depressing; but it’s life, we have to move on, we can’t just feel depressed all the time, we have to be motivated and positive in order to overcome all of these problems.”

Thinking of international students who are in college or those soon to arrive in Canada, Braga acknowledges that it’s still a scary moment, but she offers encouragement.

“We will probably sometimes feel that we are not doing what we were expecting to be doing, like things are not going the way that we were expecting, but if you keep fighting, if you keep going further and trying your best, at some point you’ll have everything you really want and desire,” says Braga. “Of course it’s really overwhelming being an international student living away from home, living in a pandemic, but we just have to keep trying.”

Braga doesn’t overlook the challenges international students are faced with, but she believes that living abroad presents great opportunities to make connections.

“Missing our parents and the ones we love is really really difficult, but I guess that when we come to a place and you meet so many other people in the same situation, far from home, far from the loved ones, we get to do that exchange,” says Braga. “Sometimes we meet so many good people then at some point we don’t feel alone anymore, and we get to enjoy more.”

Malik remembers pairing with other international students at Camosun to study together, help each other to get good grades, and to discuss any frustrations, all of which he says he would offer as advice to those arriving in Canada this fall. But he also recommends international students to be financially strong to get through difficult circumstances.

“Because you never know what’s going to happen next, you can’t just rely on MSP, you can’t just rely on a few things,” says Malik. “You do have to have money in your pockets to help you go through such conditions.”

Ozcelik says that being well connected with other students and instructors is very helpful, and she strongly recommends having a schedule and doing everything on time.

“I would say to study their courses when they have class time, to have a routine scheduled,” says Ozcelik. “When they start to postpone everything and try to do everything at the last moment, they won’t be able to do it.”

Based on his three-year experience as an international student in Canada, Hongo shares some advice to international students arriving this year.

“First, they should try to make connections with people,” says Hongo. “Even though in this situation it might be hard, they should go to the orientation—even online—and meet new students and teachers or international advisors, and make connections and get to know them.”

Hernandéz says it’s important to adapt, be calm, and be safe so that everyone can be healthy to study and work as we would like.

“I think that as times progress, things in many aspects of our lives—learning, working—require us to be more adaptable, because change is the only constant we have and change now happens so quickly,” says Hernandéz. “So developing that ability to adapt is very important.”

The many changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have forced everyone to reinvent themselves. The stories of how international students were impacted by and dealt with the adjustments that had to take place in educational institutions and in so many other aspects of their lives are examples of resilience and adaptability.

There is a strong personal-growth aspect of being an international student that has much to do with learning to deal with the distance, as well as discovering the value of a sense of belonging somewhere away from home.

As the consequences of the pandemic prove to be devastating all over the world, may that serve as a reminder for people to value all of what brings us together instead of what sets us apart. International education presents a huge opportunity in terms of opening minds through important community values, and maybe the COVID-19 pandemic will make us do that stronger than ever.