Assignment task: If you're a member of an equity-deserving group (refugees, recent immigrants, a racial minority, Indigenous peoples - First Nation, Inuit, Metis or international Indigenous, people living with a physical or mental disability or health issue, a sexual and/or gender minority - LGBTQ2+, living on a low income or living with another situation or condition leading to marginalization), explain how this experience has affected your day-to-day life and how it would help you make a positive contribution to student life or to society in general?
My experiences as a member of the LGBTQ2+ community and an immigrant have had a great impact in my day - to - day life. Some of the main challenges I faced are feeling unwelcomed and the lack of stability as well as language barriers issues. I often feared having to come out at school, the idea felt daunting to me as I had heard and seen the experiences of fellow students and feared being verbally and physically harassed, or even physically assaulted because of my sexual identity, thus that made me feel very unwelcomed in the school environment. Additionally, due to being a lower income immigrant student, I also lacked stability, my family and I moved to Canada in my teenage years, we not only moved countries but also moved cities within Canada due to my parents being able to find jobs as they did not have any Canadian working experience, this lack of stability and constant moving of schools majorly impacted my academic performance. Lastly another reason that had a major impact on academics was the language barrier, when I moved to Canada I had to learn and go to school in a whole other language in a different country and that made it difficult to get the most out of my education as I struggled to communicate in the classroom setting and had some difficulty comprehending the lessons, thus it caused me to shut down out of fear and embarrassment as I could not communicate and express myself well due to English not being my first language. However, despite all the challenges I faced, I kept working really hard towards my dream of being a nurse. Once I achieved much better English communication skills, I enrolled in the Adult Education Centre and started working towards the prerequisites for the nursing program.