Back to School

At the time you are reading this, I will be sitting in a lecture hall waiting for my International Trade course to begin. Fun right? I expect the prof to be setting up, students to be walking in and me sitting there all alone. Because I’m the loner who no one speaks to and is terrified of speaking to others. Yay.

So today is the first day of the new school year for me and first day of the fall term. And it is also my last first day of university . I am not going to say this is my last first day of school ever because I know I will be back someday. Just not sure when.

Not going to lie, I am fucking terrified of being back and if I am being honest, I do not want to be back. At all.

This is the thing. I love school. I love learning. Always have, always will. That will never change. I have been going to school since I was 3, and yes I do count pre-school, so that’s a solid 19 years. I’m still at it. But this is the very first time, I am dreading going back and I do not want to.

Last term which was winter 2019, I went through hell. And I don’t think I ever came back from it. So I do not want to be back. I had really bad anxiety and depression, got sick 3 times and almost dropped all my courses. And even when I sucked it up and stuck through it, I got burnt out during finals and that kicked me in the ass.

That was the reasoning behind me looking for an internship for fall 2019. I thought I could take a break, get my shit together and come back strong. But the internship idea didn’t happen for a few reasons:

• There was a new team taking the internship program beginning in May. If I am to be honest, I did not have a good experience with them at all. The individuals I interacted with initially were good, those that took over, well I hope they got their shit together. Lets just say it was hard to get in touch and there were enough miscommunications. Also I should have taken the hint this program would have been a bad idea when they put me on the list of international students who needed a work permit. Fun fact, I am NOT an international student in Canada.
• My uncle past away in June, which ended up breaking me into a million little pieces that have not been recovered. I’m not sure if you have ever lost someone, but it takes its toll on you. And today coincidentally marks 3 months since he died, and ever since then I have been grieving and depressed. I did not give a thought about applications in that state. And you should know that as soon as I found out he past away, I booked a flight to leave Canada as soon as possible. Doing interviews out of the country is not always what the firm wants.
• After mistakenly being given a job offer with a firm, that was the last straw. I gave up. I did not see the point.

I am not the type of person to give up easily, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason. I had no more to give in me and I was emotionally drained. I am grateful that I got the experience of interviewing with different firms and different people. There were good interviews, not so good interviews and lots of unexpected things come up. It taught me how to become more confident and exposed to me different interview questions and situations. I think most importantly, it taught me what I should not accept from future employers.

I always knew that if I was not able to secure an internship that I had school to go back to. I thought that by that time I would have been ready. But I’m not ready. With everything that I have been through the past few months, I am anxious and terrified about going back. I do not want to go back, but I have to. There are so many people believing in me that I do not want to disappoint them.

I do not know where I will be in a year. If I am being honest, I am scared of what the future holds.

But this is what I know. For the next 3 hours, I am going to sit through this lecture. And this is something that I am going to continue doing for the next few weeks. And I am going to give it my all. Bigger and better than I have done before.

And if you are going through something similar, I want you to do the same.

Update: Ended up going all the way to school to NOT have class. So it was not really my first day. And we were not told this.