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Personal Narrative: Moving To Canada

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As I was staring down at my newly printed business cards, “Founder and CEO of GreenLink Financial Services Institute”, I thought to myself, “Let’s hope I am more prepared than the last time.” The last time? I was 13 when I became the CEO of my family when we moved to Toronto, Canada from Wuhan, China.

I was born into a working class, middle-income family in China. At a very young age, I enjoyed drawing, painting and sketching– but it wasn’t until I was 6 years old and became the pupil of a local artist in Wuhan that my art journey began. Art taught me discipline as I spent countless hours drawing whilst the neighborhood kids were outside running and playing endless games. The whole art process of developing …show more content…
However, pursuing art was an expensive hobby and was seen as unpractical. My parents, however, understood that the richness of human experience is made up of more than attaining merely academic achievements. They also knew that in the then-closed environment of the 1990s, China wasn’t the ideal playground to nurture my artistic talents.

This is the defining moment that changed our lives forever: my parents, both graduates from elite colleges in China, decided to give up everything they had -- their families, friends and careers -- to move to Canada, a place where they knew no one and barely spoke the language, to provide a brighter future for …show more content…
This understanding was a catalyst in my desire to provide the best standard of living for my parents within the best of my ability. I studied day and night to improve my English. I successfully completed my ESL course in one year, something that normally took three years to complete. As an English as a Second Language student, under the encouragement of my teachers who took notice of my rapid improvements, I entered a short-story writing competition. The moment when I won first place, I tasted the fruition of hard work and resilience. Not letting linguistic discrimination put me at a disadvantage in accessing resources and opportunities, I applied for the best high school in Toronto for artistically talented students, despite a one in hundreds chance and a 2 hour daily commute to the city center. In 2003, I was admitted to the Claude Watson Arts Program as a fine arts major in Earl Haig Secondary School. Bringing my vision to fruition, art gave me strength and I started working hard on my technique to fulfill my dreams and ambitions: with every contour, color, line, and letter, through art I was able to endure the hardships life threw at

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