The most significant obstacle in my path to recovery wasn’t just accessing treatment—it was breaking through cultural silence and raising my voice against generations of unwavering customs.

Conversations can become a lot more meaningful once we stop treating strangers like extras.

I will never get my Barbie dolls back.

Eight thousand kilometres away from everyone I know, I’m choosing to celebrate this Valentine’s Day by appreciating one of the deepest love stories I know—my relationship with myself and the world.

“How do you feel?” This is the question I get asked the most by my non-Black peers. “How do you feel being one of a few Black students at Queen’s?” Though they always ask, I’ve found no one ever really wants to know the answer. Nor are they interested in listening.

I’ve spent most of my life waiting for it to feel like a movie. High School Musical, Mean Girls, and Legally Blonde—these weren’t just movies to me, they were blueprints.

When I began my nursing journey at Queen’s, I anticipated a rigorous academic path filled with late-night study sessions, early morning clinicals, and countless cups of coffee.

I was never supposed to be at Queen’s. I didn’t even apply.

With “Sparks” by Coldplay droning through my AirPods, I take a deep breath and try to steady my nerves as the plane takes off. Reality has finally hit me: as the hazy map of Winnipeg grows smaller beneath the plane’s wings, I bid farewell to the place that has been my home for most of the last 13 years, for what’s perhaps the very last time.

September marked the beginning of the end for me—my last year at Queen’s and, in turn, my last year living in Kingston. The bittersweet emotions that come over me when I think about this fact are overwhelming.

Throughout my entire undergrad, Queen’s campus has felt seemingly endless. Each year, I discover a new study spot, a new secluded park bench to sit on between classes, and a new overpriced vending machine in one of my lecture halls.

The Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) world is one I thought I’d leave after taking my test this past September—but as November has now begun, I’m wondering if I’ll ever truly escape its grasp.

For the better part of the first 20 years of my life, I grew accustomed to being considered a “young” person. It came with its perks: the obligatory “You’re born in 2003?!” and well-meaning advice from older people who always seemed to be preaching the same message: enjoy your youth because it’ll be gone before you know it.

The first time I ever went to a funeral was to mourn a person I never met. I went because my friend, and roommate, asked me to. She’d lost someone close to her, and though I didn’t know the person who had passed, I’d heard stories of the person she was.

As Halloween fast approaches, I enter a strange period where I feel split into two selves, torn between the past, characterized by innocence, and the mysterious and seductive future.

Last year, I participated in my first medical brigade. Our large, stark white bus pulled into the compound, its bright blue sign reading “Medical Brigade.” As the gates opened and we stepped off, the space—reminiscent of a public school—had been transformed into a makeshift medical clinic for the day and the week ahead. I took my first steps off the bus, and as I looked up, my heart sank.

We often categorize ourselves as either dreamers or realists—a debate philosophy has wrestled with for ages, without resolution.

Every social event I’ve attended in the last few months has been plagued by one question in particular: “Ella, what are you doing after you graduate in the spring?”

We’re two weeks into September, a month which, for many, stands as the beginning marker of their time as a Queen’s student.