Appendix B: Video Transcripts

Chapter Video Playlist

View all chapter videos in a Youtube playlist at the following link youtube.com/watch?v=Qa6Ni0HTWfk&list=PLBp9C2GmJqe_vOOEKYz_KvkDQ7ZFgzyU8&ab_channel=AcademicSuccess

Video Transcripts

In place of viewing our chapter videos, find the transcripts below.

Video: ARRIVING

Ishita Aggarwal: Can you see it? So my sister made this and she gave it to me at the airport before I was gonna travel to Toronto, so yeah, it’s kind of like, she hand embroidered it and hand painted it. So it says “You Go Girl”. It reminds me of my family. And that there are some people who are thinking about me, so it makes me happy, yeah.

[Opening credit: ARRIVING]

Tesni: I’d love to know about this idea of being a stranger.

Joe: I added that. So I felt a little bit like, a stranger or also just like a visitor, I did not feel like a resident – like I was moving in as a resident, but I definitely couldn’t come to terms with that term immediately, so I definitely felt like I am somebody in a different land. And at first, I knew that there was going to have to be a transitionary time when I would get used to be able to, or allow myself to be called someone who, who lives in Toronto now, I didn’t feel like saying that at first.

Ishita: I was fortunate enough to come at the right time, right moment. But it was a very worrisome period for me because I had my friends and relatives who were back in India, so I was always constantly worried about them, so the first, first few weeks of me in Canada, were, along with the adjustment, adjusting to the new climate, new changes, new, making new friends, I was also worried about my parents back home, and my sister, who was there, she also got COVID, so it was, it was it was kind of like, a new experience in itself.

Heejin: When I first came to Canada, I was staying in a homestay family for a year, I would say. So I still do visit them, especially since I don’t have any relatives or family here, I’m here all alone, so sometimes the holidays I just go there to visit and then they’re always like, welcome to have me.

Stephanie: When I introduced myself to someone I would say, “My name is Stephanie, I’m an International Student, I’m from China”. But then afterwards my identity became more complex and I feel like this layer of identity, it never, it never disappeared, but it started to fade away, like, I started to see the world through the lens of more complex identities, not just through the lens of an international student.

Video: ORIENTING

Ishita: So I think Orientation or some activities that you get, like, you meet people first time, who are just like you, from, even if, even if they are domestic students, so they are just starting off, right, so it’s a good place to start to meet people and make friends who would be there, along with the whole journey, so that I would be really interested to have an Orientation or something like that.

Stephanie: That presence of a community, the fact that, like acknowledging that I’m not going through this alone, that in itself is very powerful in, you know, reassuring me whatever I’m experiencing is normal, I’m not just you know, like, I’m not, I’m not the abnormal one going through some, like, traumatic experience that nobody else will understand.

Ishita: But, like, having someone you can rely on, like, you can take advice from and – because there are so many services given by university to help students, they have different programs but Orientation’s a good place where you can tell students about it, like “We have these many options, you can go and look into them if you want resources, you, this is the right place where you can find resources”. So that would be a nice way to start off I guess.

Stephanie: Like, even down to the smallest details of life are completely different and it’s really from these details of life that I realized that like “oh my God my life has completely changed.”

Video: RELATING

Joe: I also just wanted to jump on the idea of like international students as a unique sort of community. Because, if anything like, as you orient or adjust to this new, to a new system it’s, it’s, I don’t always feel comfortable with asking someone who lives here at the moment to say, to ask sort of like an admin question or like an immigration question – because I can only find so much information online. And if I asked them that’s not something that they would be concerned with or something that they might not even know about. And just by relating about that, I feel like it’s mutual in terms of challenges, or just doing what you have to do to get it done like it’s not as easy as just submitting homework and doing research and making connections, it’s a, it’s a, it’s, there’s another level, on top of that, in terms of maintaining the ability to be able to do that at this university and by relating – by having that community it feels like a support network in which we’re all just trying to do our best to stay where we are, and, while also managing multiple levels of, of education. So yeah I feel like it is a certain type of community.

Video: ADJUSTING

Heejin: I have already used this phrase for my podcast but I’m going to say it again, because it’s really like, um, something that really changed my perspective on things: so I was calling Good2Talk, which is a mental health hotline, one day, and then I was talking to her about my international experience in Canada and I told her I moved here basically like when I was 16 and then she said, “You know, some people don’t even know how to do laundry or they don’t know how to cook eggs and then you moved to another country, you should take more credit for that.” And then – I feel like everyone should remember that, um, that we are allowed to take more credit and be proud of ourselves.

Joe: But there were definitely some, some small things that, yeah, I guess, I had to, had to adjust to. But for the most part of it, I fell into a routine after about a month or so, and now I consider myself very much in, in a certain way of things, and I feel like that was achieved by just engaging with the school, engaging with people and also getting, taking, taking my, my own time to get used to my surroundings and navigating like, administrative, administrative things like “What do I have to do to be settled in Canada, I can’t just work all the time, I also have to make sure I have a bank account, make sure I have a work permit.” Like all that stuff I consider to be above the stuff that I do for education, because it’s more, more important to my being in Canada.

Stephanie: For me having moved here, obviously it was, I think I really resonated with, like, the whole like idea of routine that Joe established before. Of you know, like now, I live in a completely new different place, I live in this new house and this new city and, like every day when I go out when I go to school, I see, like every single day I discover, like, things that I’ve never seen like the day before.

Video: SHIFTING

Heejin Kim: You can mess up your midterm, but, you know, guess what? Canadians miss their midterm, Canadians mess up their midterm all the time, they fail too, you know. So, I feel like we really have to think about, like, try not to think of Canadians as this, like, superior, or like, or not in this superior way, in a way that we are always going to be not as good as them, no matter what we try to do, you know?

Joe: And I think it definitely took a few, a few weeks for me to get used to this life. In terms of having all this independence in terms of, I have responsibilities to take care of myself, have free time, while also doing research, classes, and, teaching responsibilities. So there was a lot, I think, and I adjusted by reaching out to my flatmates, reaching out to them, engaging, stepping outside of my comfort zone again, to engage in some social stuff here.

Stephanie: Whereas for me, I have a certain amount of skills and a certain amount of knowledge and a certain amount of expectation for how the world around me used to work, used to look like – and now this huge transition this huge, like, you know shift in, you know, like my environment this shift has directly led to a shift in my perspective, and the shift in my – you know, like a lot of the way – I guess like, like the way I do things and the way I see things. So, like, the way I approached it was literally like establishing, like, I literally made a list of things that I had to do, like, I have to go to the grocery store. And, like, you know, like look up common words that you know, like, are needed, like, how do you say like cabbage in French, how do you say tomato in French, like, I thought it was very interesting because I was approaching, I was learning about a lot of things that a child would learn about when they’re first introduced to the world, yet I was adopting the methodology of an adult.

Video: BELONGING

Stephanie: I’ve moved past the phase of feeling like a stranger, I’ve moved past that phase of feeling like a newcomer, and now I feel like a member of the group. I feel like I belong here, I feel like maybe this is not where I call home, but I feel comfortable here, and I know that I’m a part of this, I’m not just an external, like, outside observer looking at every, everything going on, now I’m truly a part of this.

Video: CONNECTING

Stephanie: I also just wanted to say that, like I don’t – like my family actually lives here now with me, my mom and my sister are here, but like they’re all like international status so like, if ever you need a friend to talk to or hang out with I’m here, we should totally connect afterwards. Because I, I also, I think we share a lot of passions; I was also very interested in journalism as well, but I was, I didn’t have the audacity to take journalism, because I feel like I wouldn’t be like you know the best at it so.

Heejin: That was me honestly, I was like after I started writing an essay and I just realized it’s like, even though I have good content it’s really hard to deliver my thoughts in a different language which a lot of professors seem to forget about, you know, like you, are – if you would ask them to speak any other language as fluently as we are then they couldn’t you know so, so maybe they should consider our situation! Anyways [laughs].

Video: LEARNING

Joe: Yeah I think um I, I didn’t know as much about, or one aspect was, was, uh, Canadians’ history with Indigenous people, and how that’s a history that I didn’t know about as much in the States, but, there’s a sense here that I learned over time that everybody is a guest on ancestral land that belongs to some, somebody else. So at that time when I felt like I was visiting Toronto, I was a guest on “country” land which has colonial roots, but then beyond that I was also a guest on land that belongs to locals and people who, who’ve inhabited this land for generations. So at that time I definitely felt like there was a lot to take into account, as I moved into the city – multiple layers.

Heejin: Yeah that’s what I’ve been really like trying to learn about and I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts regarding that matter so I can more understand about Indigenous community.

Video: STORYTELLING

Heejin: That just really made me think like, wow, I was taking everything so for granted, when I was living back home and then now I’m in Canada I’m kind of forced to grow up on my own. So I’m trying to take care of myself. And what I do now is – I’m focusing on my audio skills, so I am mixing audio for my student film, my thesis film soon, but I am also doing podcasts. And I have adapted my international experiences to my podcast – so I was working as a research assistant last summer and I ended up making a podcast about international experiences in Canada and their writing assignments – like how writing assignments affect international students. And then – I think it was like a great achievement for me and, and then it gave me a lot more connections and I got introduced to this workshop because I made that podcast and I’m really proud of it, so everyone should give it a listen!

Video: AWAKENING

Stephanie: This notion, this idea of home and being you know, like, like – my international, I think, experience has really given me the feeling of being a global citizen, of being responsible, you know, for everything I do, of being responsible for caring for one another, people that live around us, the society that we live in, and I think that, that really has – like, my international experience has really contributed a lot of my enlightenment and my like awakening in this whole idea.

Heejin: I feel like it’s really important for us to remember that, like COVID was a big thing and everyone got really hit by it and if you are different people from before and now, then it’s okay. But it just kind of made me think about what’s going to happen when I graduate from university I’m not gonna have any insurance, I’m not gonna have any, like, health benefits or anything so I guess that’s like my biggest, like, anxiety after graduating because I’m gonna be losing all of my benefits – and I know a lot of international students continue to go to their grad school to, like, keep on having their benefits and, like, status-ship but I’m not really considering that so I’m not really sure what my future holds.

Sherrie: I don’t know if you have the same feeling as I do, because I came here like seven or eight years ago and when I look back it’s kind of one third of my life. That’s hard to imagine, sometimes, because when I went through the journey I’m still thinking about “I’m Chinese, I came from Guangzhou, and then I am here as a foreigner.” But when I look back, I spent here for one third of my life – that was, yeah.

Video: REFLECTING

Joe: I feel like it was so fundamental to me describing my world as not just the place where I grew up in, not just the neighborhood, and surrounding towns, it’s more of, like, I am just a small dot on the airplanes that I travel in to get to these places. And it really made me think about, before, before I even went to college, I had this idea about “Okay, the world is so much bigger than, than I’m probably going to be exposed to, while I just stay here in New Jersey.”

Stephanie: So I’m still deciding on, like, which program to enter into. Currently I’m thinking about political science, international relations, and public policy, because I feel like my international experience and this perspective – I feel like that really made me who I am today as, as a person, and also defined my passions and interests, interest in my, you know, the potential careers that I might be pursuing in the future.

Sherrie: So as an international student, one of the main concern of mine is I’m thinking about if I should go back home or if I want to stay in Canada and then that will actually have a very strong impact on my, maybe, academic path, choosing, or that kind of thing. And even, I haven’t finished, like thinking on that, I have already graduated, like I graduated with physiology and statistics but I’m still thinking about, “Am I that kind of person?” So I’m still on my way, like, making decisions based on, I don’t know, my future plans, yeah. I think that’s one of the main difficulties that international students might face. But my coping strategy is just give it a try, you will know what you like, or what you won’t like in your journey.