Gratitude journal of Leninka Lazo

Post 1

For this journal, I want to write about all the things I’m grateful. Sometimes, when we are so busy with our daily things, we don’t take time to have a reflective moment. I think what gets me out of bed, mainly, is the stress for all the things that I have to do. Indeed, I’m not giving a moment to think about me. The things I’m grateful is to have a great family even when they are in Peru. They really support me with all my decisions. When I had the crazy decision of selling my car, quitting my job and be a resident of Canada, they were there. I think without their support, I would not be studying at the Laval University.

 When I came here, things were different. You need real people who can be there in the same country. Indeed, it’s important to develop your social life and form a community. When you don’t speak the language and the culture are totally different, you start to have negative thoughts. I was kind of sad for months because the integration was difficult. I’m from a country with sun all the year, so the winter was new to me. But now, I’m grateful for all the extraordinary people I’ve met. People, who inspired me to continue and also, they gave me the exactly words to encourage in many situations. Even the university is better. When I started, I had a lot of fear, but now I think I can continue.  I have the support of other foreign students who are in the same situation as me. Therefore, even if I have a lot of pressure right now because of the school, I have this positive attitude, and I’m sure I can really get through all the obstacles.

Post 2

For this entry, I want to write about the gratitude, but not in general like before. I want to write about how I changed my attitude about studying here. Just several months ago, I was dealing with the fear to do my master here. When I began to study in the fall, I thought I couldn’t do it. I just registered in two courses of the master degree and two others in French. In my head, I had negative thoughts about how I was going to deal with that situation. Then, I was trying to convince myself that French was too hard and maybe it wasn’t a good idea to study here. In the end of that fall session, I was okay, but I was not still convinced. However, this session, I changed my attitude so I registered in five courses. I started to think that I could do it. Now, I’m very good now in school and I’m taking courses even in Spanish about my career. Also having friends, who are in the same situation, helped me a lot. We are all in the same context but we have the strength to get through. Something that helped me a lot was to remember that I made the decision to be in Quebec, nobody forced me. So, I take the nice part of being here and now I’m enjoying the process. When we have a better attitude, everything starts to change even how we deal with the problems.