On March 24th, 2012, I went through airport security. I am a frequent traveller, I use the airlines usually two to four times a year. However, I had always had my parents there to tell me what to do, how to do it, when to do it. Today I took off my shoes to be bombarded by x-ray radiation alone, and knew no one in sight. My heart rate was probably through the roof. In about a week’s time it would be back to normal. I was about to get on a flight to Ottawa for a program called Encounters With Canada or “Rencontres Avec Canada.” I got my last choice on my list of possibilities, politics in Canada. I didn’t think I would have a good time.
I generally acknowledge that I have a reputation that follows me without legitimate reason, a very negative reputation. I was worried, as usual, that I would be bullied, harassed and made fun of for a week. That wouldn’t be the case; that week changed me into a completely new person.
On the first day of Encounters, I sat down in the dining hall with a girl named April and a boy named Trevor. Trevor was from Richmond and April was from Edenwold, Saskatchewan. These people didn’t know me or even know people who knew me. Over that week they turned into the best friends I had made since grade 8, perhaps ever, and I continue to exchange emails, Skype and cards with them. I was now engulfed in an environment of people with whom I could relate and were ready to be accepting of new people. We spent our week in Ottawa touring around, attending sessions of parliament and taking part in political workshops.
In hindsight, it was the best week I have ever spent. The food was dreadful. The beds weren’t comfortable. I was bullied in the end by a kid from British Columbia. How did I change?
The biggest was my social change. Prior to that, I had no confidence making friends. I had been suspended once, in grade four, and people used it as an excuse to be mean to me and used it up until grade nine. Now there were 109 students my age or very close, all of whom knew no one in the building and wanted to make new friends and acquaintances. I developed a very social personality, hanging out in the recreation room playing ping pong or even hanging in the lounge playing piano for friends who would actually take the time to listen, complement and sing along. My self-confidence skyrocketed; I realized that I only had felt unable to make friends in the past due to the nature of those with whom I was isolated. I was freed from the social prison of having been bullied for ten years.
I learned that I could be myself and the majority of the intelligent world would not object to it. I learned that I enjoyed travelling on my own and being self-guiding.
In regards to my career, at this point my goal is to become an aircraft structure maintenance technician, or the guy who prevents the wings from falling off. The political aspect of Encounters did not truly interest me as much as the social aspect of the trip, although I developed extreme skill or at least had it come out when in the debating workshop. I was voted in every time for my team as the presenter, the one who got to yell at the opposition. This won’t help me fix aircraft.
An aircraft technician travels with the aircraft, especially with a commercial services company like a fire-fighting organization like Conair, my likely future employer. If I wasn’t comfortable travelling, meeting new people, being away from current friends and family, this would be far from ideal.
A smaller component of the trip was that I got to exercise my 8 years of pure French education by interacting with the Canadiens Français at Encounters.
The greatest aspect of the trip was my social change. I discovered that people did in fact want to meet me, that people were as interested in talking to me as I was to them. I changed from a child who was sheltered in fear of the bullying that was in no way imaginary to a boy who was perhaps the most outgoing in his group of friends. Prior to that trip, I had no interest of meeting people in places I wasn’t familiar with. Now, I actually look forward to later life and meeting people outside of school.
As I got on the plane leaving Ottawa, I had been up for thirty-nine hours straight. I woke up thirty minutes before landing in Ottawa. The man beside me introduced himself to me and asked me about why I had been in Ottawa. I answered as if I had known him the entire time, and I told him something very similar to what I wrote above. I would not have been able to say that six days earlier.
I would like to close by saying that the trip gave me personal responsibility. Each night the boys of our dormitory played rude pranks on the security guard, always laughing at him. He was in fact quite a nice person, so on the last night I went out and met him and apologized to him on behalf of everyone else. I returned to my bunk to find it covered in shaving cream and a very rude note.
