Greetings! My name is Victoria Piryuaq I’m from Baker Lake, Nunavut I did my Canadian Phase two years ago, I was placed in London, Ontario working at a daycare centre, which I sort of enjoyed, I was placed in the toddler room and shadow job one of the workers there.

This year I decided to do NYA Next Program because I recently graduated and wanted to see what programs they have at Algonquin College, what the program does is to help you get ready for college or university. Life on campus is active, busy, lively, full, bustling, and energetic the dorms at Algonquin College are neat, you share a living area but you have your own rooms, to get into the residence and your room you would need a room key ALWAYS keep the key with you at all times. You can talk to your roommate if you want to know them better, when you have assignments do finish them as soon as possible if you want free time without worrying about the deadline, ask for help when you are stuck, have perseverance and hope you can get through it.

For my experience here it’s like going back to school, but I’m the one who picks the courses I want to do and what I want to do with it and pass down some knowledge that I’ve learned. During the weekdays are busy which is a good thing in the morning we go to construction class, in the afternoon we go to presentations, classes, activities, in the evenings we do group meetings, catching up on assignments that we missed of skipped.

We do have free time between those busy days either to relax or shopping or other various activities that helps relax, in construction we made a double sided picture frame, we are putting together a miniature picnic table, we went to many different places of Ottawa such as to museums, downtown tour, beaches, Rideau Mall, Parliament Hill, Ottawa Mission, visited other college or university and many more to come.

Each one of us have our own personal learning projects (PLP), to explore what we like to do or following our passion(s) for me I did pottery and sewing, the pottery class was fun! But not as easy it looks in videos that I watched. There’s so much I want to do here in Ottawa with such little time, the highlight here in Ottawa would be going to the beach, going to the movie theatre, going to the festival, Rideau Mall, the college itself, going to museums, camping and many more.