Reflection for academic and personal achievement

One of my biggest personal achievements is when my family and I moved from Japan to Canada
in 2020.

In the summer of 2019, I crashed, and I couldn’t go to school or get out of bed. This was caused
by years and years of built-up stress, and high expectations. The feeling of “You will fail in life if you are
not perfect” has caught up with me finally and dragged me down to a deep hole. After a month, my
parents started to ask what I would like to do for high school. My answer to that was “I want to move to
Canada and get my education there. I don’t want to live in Japan anymore.” Although it was a hard
decision for my parents, my father convinced my mother that it was a good idea. Being a Canadian, he
wanted to have his children to be educated in English. By moving to Canada, he could kill two birds in
one stone. So, we moved in April of 2020. Right when the pandemic started. My parents both quit their
jobs that they had in Japan in hopes to start fresh here.

Moving to Canada, was one of the best things that has happened to me. Since schools were shut
down from April-September, I was able to step back from school stress and focus on myself. Once school
started, I was able to find groups of people who accepted me into their group. Although I have struggled
with finding the right type of people to have around me, I was able to learn from each relationship, and
was able to find an accepting loving family outside of my own. By attending Canadian high school, it has
made it much easier for me to go into a Canadian or American university. If I stayed in Japan, it would
have been much harder for me to do so.

Going to a Canadian public high school was an eye-opening experience and a big cultural shock. I
needed to learn the social queue, which was quite different from what I used to, and learn how to
interact with other people better. In Japan, people minded their own business and didn’t really get to
know each other in a deeper level, so it was a skill that I needed to learn once I moved here to be able to
open up but also uphold boundaries around me. Because of all the changes, I learned how to be
adaptable in new situations and also to be more open-minded when different perspectives on topics
started to flood me. Overwhelmed, I made some mistakes along the way, but I am happy of where I am
right now. And I am hoping to build on the skills that I have learnt.

Through this experience, I started to learn more things about myself as well. I noticed my
tendency to “people please”. I wanted to be liked, so I set myself to the side and acted the way that
people around me wanted me to act. I put other people’s needs before mine, which drained me quickly.
Although I still struggle with this, I am hoping that I can work on my boundaries and being true to myself
more.

Moving across the Pacific Ocean, to a different continent, was a big change. And with it came
some difficulties. But because I was able to go through this, I will be better prepared in the future for big
change. I am thinking of going to an American university, and that'll be a big change, but I am hoping I
can use this experience to help me get through it, and any other big change that might occur.