Calgary Journal Online

I first met Tricia Lawrence, 21, in late 2008. She came here from Trinidad and Tobago to study aviation at Mount Royal University.

A young black woman, with short dreadlocked hair and tomboyish in appearance, she was pretty shy and her Caribbean accent was hindered by a little bit of a stutter.

I eventually got to know her as she volunteered to be my subject for part of a photo documentary called  Starting Over: New Lives in Canada. The piece looked at certain social barriers that new Canadians face, including entry, language, educational, and isolation. Lawrence’s story represented isolation.

“I try to do my best,” she said. “It’s hard.”

A year and a half later, Lawrence packed up and went back to the familiar warmth of the Caribbean. She left Canada on Jan. 30, without finishing what she started.

It wasn’t an overnight decision for her. During her last weeks in Calgary, she did share with me some feelings of “not being able to take it anymore.” I was sharing a cigarette with her when she called home almost in tears about how much she wanted to go back home to Trinidad.

We actually first met at the same regular smoke pit. A disgusting addiction, yes, but random nicotine junkies get to know each other that way.

Lawrence hated it here and she had no problem sharing it with the world.

It probably didn’t help that she didn’t live close to her campus. She lived in northwest Calgary with her brother and had a pretty long commute by bus.

Tricia Lawrence asked to be photographed holding snow. She said she had friends back home in her country of Trinidad & Tobago who, in Lawrence's words, didn't believe there was such a thing as snow.

Photo: Shane Flug/Calgary Journal

I’ve never been “the foreign kid” before, so who was I to tell her to stick the course? All I could say to her was tell her to do what would make her happier.

We encourage international students to come to Canada in order to have the prestige of a quality education that their own homelands may or may not provide. On the other hand, more could be done to make the adjustment less difficult than it has to be.

The Canadian Bureau for International Education’s 2009 survey for international students in Canada suggested that three out of four students agree that the quality of Canadian education is a major motivating factor in their decision to come here.

But things can get intimidating as soon as their plane lands on our soil. One in five international students reported at least some level of difficulty dealing with immigration officials. The survey quotes one unnamed respondent saying: “I find the officers to be quite rude in most cases and condescending. They appear to have negative expectations of any immigrant, especially non-Caucasian ones.”

Loneliness can also be a major factor that decides whether a post-secondary student will drop out or not.

A 2008 Human Resources and Social Development Canada survey on reasons for post-secondary dropouts indicates isolation can affect the decision to pack up and leave.

Students who lacked people to talk about personal issues with were a little over one-and-a-half more times at risk of dropping out than those who did.

It also indicates that the more international students think about dropping out each month, the likelier they’ll do it (one and a quarter times more likely with each thought).

The Canadian Bureau for International Education compared survey results from 2009 and 2004.

When it looked at how successful international students adjust to campus life here, the two surveys appear to show that there are signs of improvement in making friends, but it also suggests that international students prefer to buddy up with other people from abroad.

Eighty-one per cent of the 414 foreign students surveyed across Canada in 2009 reported some or lots of success making friends with international students at the college level, compared to 78 per cent of the 677 respondents in 2004.

But when it comes to befriending Canadian students, those numbers dip down to 71 per cent and 59 per cent respectively.

In April, about two months after she left, Lawrence called me from back home in sunny Trinidad, with her family dog Champ barking in the background. Lawrence said she never did meet anyone else from Central America during her time at Mount Royal and admitted it could have been easier for her to adjust if she met someone within her same culture.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada reported a modest number of Trinidadians studying in Canada as of Dec. 2008: 831. This is a fraction of the top nation, China, with 42,154.

Culture shock was another factor Lawrence seemed to be coping with.

She complained to me on some occasions about how she felt that we were “distant,” if not “stuck-up.”

Trinidadian family culture, in her words, is one of close relationships, multi-generational households and a sense of collectivism.

Lawrence said that our Canadian strive for individualism seemed foreign to her. She couldn’t relate to how we as a people became obsessed with the almighty dollar when we reach “a certain age.”

A 2004 paper from the journal The Psychologist describes culture shock as feelings of shock, confusion and sometimes disgust when learning of differing norms.

Lawrence also said she was also silently suffering from depression.

She was prescribed anti-depressants and complained about insomnia that lasted her for six months. At worst, she was only getting three or four hours of sleep every two or three days, which made it pretty bad because here she had “not much to do.”

Also, Lawrence never got accustomed to the cold climate here so she never went out much.

During our phone call, she said, on a more optimistic note, that her depression was starting to get better after coming home being with familiar faces and “going to the beach every day.”

The last time I saw Lawrence was in January. Some friends and I got together to give her a proper Canadian college send-off by going to the bar to sing karaoke.

She sang Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley. For an introvert like her, it was a pretty brave thing.

Lawrence thanked me a couple of times for exposing her to the community in the photo documentary. She got to get acquainted with some of us from the Calgary Journal that way. But it didn’t cure her homesickness.

She said she intends on coming back in a year to finish her aviation diploma, as she admitted she’d regret not finishing what she started. Currently, Lawrence said she’s still not “mentally and physically ready to come back to Canada.”

I wonder though – will she change her mind over such a long time span?

She could be still here studying with us if she might have found that one network that most of us students have: buddies along the way.