Ten Months, One Award

From volunteer to award winner: what a year of saying yes taught me about leadership.

What arriving in a new country with nothing but ambition taught me about community, leadership, and showing up.

I landed in Canada in April 2023 with a suitcase, a student visa, and a quiet, stubborn hope that things would work out. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know the campus. I barely knew which bus to take.

By February 2024 — ten months later — I was standing in front of a room full of people, receiving the Up and Coming Student Leader Award from Douglas College.

What happened in between is the part I want to talk about.

Starting From Zero

When you immigrate, everything feels like a test you didn’t study for. The social cues are different. The systems are unfamiliar. And there’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being surrounded by people but not yet belonging anywhere.

I decided early on that I wasn’t going to wait to feel settled before I started contributing. If I waited for the perfect moment — when I felt confident enough, connected enough, ready enough — I’d be waiting forever.

So I volunteered. Then I volunteered some more.

The Grind (And Why It Didn’t Feel Like One)

Over those ten months, I threw myself into campus life. I worked as a Student Assistant, got involved with multiple departments, and found my footing through New Student Orientation — a program that would end up defining a big part of my first year.

I helped welcome and orient over 900 new students across the Fall 2023 and Winter 2024 semesters. Nine hundred people, each one at their own version of day one.

Here’s the thing people don’t always say about volunteering: when you show up to help others feel less lost, you quietly start to feel less lost yourself. Every orientation session I led, every nervous first-year student I helped find their footing — it was also helping me find mine.

What Leadership Actually Looked Like

I’ll be honest — I didn’t think of myself as a leader back then. I just thought of myself as someone who showed up.

Leadership, I’ve come to believe, isn’t a title or a position. It’s a pattern of behavior. It’s what you do when no one’s watching and there’s no immediate reward. It’s choosing to stay an extra hour to help a confused student even when your shift technically ended. It’s learning people’s names. It’s making someone feel like they matter to the place they just arrived at.

That’s what I tried to do. Not because I was building a résumé, but because I knew exactly what it felt like to walk into a new place and wonder if you’d made a terrible mistake.

Why Recognition Matters More Than We Admit

When I found out I’d been nominated — let alone won — I felt something I hadn’t quite expected: relief.

Not because I needed external validation to know my work mattered. But because there’s something quietly powerful about being seen. About someone looking at your effort and saying: yes, that counted. You made a difference.

We live in a culture that often treats recognition as something frivolous — like it’s separate from “real” achievement. I disagree. Acknowledgment fuels people. It tells them the path they’re on is worth continuing. And for an immigrant still figuring out where they fit, that signal meant everything.

What I’d Tell Anyone Starting From Scratch

If you’re early in your journey — whether you’re new to a city, a campus, an industry, or a career — here’s what those ten months taught me:

Don’t wait until you feel ready. You build readiness by doing, not by preparing to do.

Volunteer for the experience, not the line on your résumé. People can tell the difference, and so can you.

Community is something you build, not something you find. Show up consistently, and belonging follows.

Recognition will come if you do good work for the right reasons. And when it does, let yourself feel it.

I came to Canada with a suitcase and a hope. I’m leaving my first year with something harder to pack but easier to carry: the knowledge that showing up — really showing up — is enough to change things.

For me, it changed everything.