Where it all began then ...

I immigrated to Canada almost 4 years ago, in February 2009. In a month I was busy with accessing the support services for immigrants, learning how to write a Canadianized resume and create an effective elevator speech. I took all the available programs and attended every possible additional event with the agencies. I came across confident to many, but they were just fooled by my smile, height and good posture. Deep down I was insecure about my English and feeling lost with my plans.

I had done many things in my past; journalism, public relations and immigration research. All of these were about writing stuff, and writing it very well. But it had all been in Finnish. I knew that if I was a Canadian boss, I wouldn't hire myself to do any of that writing in English. So the question now wasn't what I want to do, but what I could do with my skills and experience.

With the help of my employment counsellors and mentors I narrowed down my short-term goal: get a job in event coordination. I had experience in it, I liked it, and even though writing is an important part of it too, it wasn't the main task. The problem was that I also wanted the content to be something relevant to me - I didn't want to coordinate events of a car company, but of a company that does something good.

My long term goal was to do something with immigration. I wasn't sure yet what exactly - did I want to continue in research? Or work in front line? Or something else? I didn't even know what else is out there.