#MYSTORY
#outbound faculty mobility
Written by Prof. Ronnel Victor Kilat
#CanadaASEANSEED
If you told me in January that I would be flying out to Canada in September, I would not believe you. I could still remember the day I was trekking on the weekend of February 25th, our university IAI director, Dr. Rhodora Magan, reached out to me, informing me about a scholarship opportunity. I could not process everything; having just climbed another mountain, I was livid. Receiving the news, I did not think of it as a soon-to-be-happening. I thought it was just another news that I need to attend. Nothing more.
I only had a week to complete a series of requirements, especially when other documents had to be acquired from other learning institutions. On top of that, I had to be mentored by a professor in Canada so that I could receive an acceptance letter to be their mentee, for which I did not know where to start. I did not know anyone on that side of the world. To me, this is the number one barrier.
Despite solid reservations in mind, everything still fell into place a day before the deadline on March 3rd. I secured all acceptance letters from the professors of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), the certificates of enrollment from my home learning institution, all letters of intent made and reviewed, my research proposal, and all other certificates regarding my employment, my identity, and my citizenship. I did not know how I did that for under a week, but I just did it so quickly. My hopes gradually grew.
A month after submission, I received another communication from the Global Affairs Office of UQAM, asking us to submit another certificate of enrollment from my home learning institution, CNU. That would mean I have to ask people again for that certificate to be made fast since we were only given a day to accomplish that. Supposedly, the timeframe for that kind of request was more than a week. But time was an illusion, especially when I was so desperate for it. I did not know how I did it again, but I pulled some strings, used my connections, and talked to people I did not know. The matter of days for the certificate became five hours. At the end of that day, I finally had the certificate.
In June 2022, I received a letter from the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada informing me of the finality of their decision to have me as one of their grantees of Canada ASEAN SEED. There are four of us from CTU. All efforts have finally come to fruition. The Canadian Embassy in Manila also contacted us to work on a work permit visa to be legally admitted to Canada.
I thought the application was the cherry on top of the cake, but that was only 40% of all mazes we needed to pass through. Applying for a work permit as a temporary resident in Canada is not easy. There was another bunch of requirements we needed to secure. It is like walking on the eggshell where we must be time conscious and calculate every next move carefully and with constraint. The work permit was issued on August 10th and was sent to us on August 23rd. We booked a flight considering the number of days within the work permit to be granted. The four of us from CTU managed to have bonded in difficulty, weighing in all factors like the price of the airfare and the flight details until we arrived to the final boarding date of September 22, 2022.
-Prof. Ronnel Victor Kilat, CTU Danao
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