The Beginning

This is the story of how I accidentally moved to Canada.

…

Well, not quite.

It’s more the story of how I flew here from the Netherlands on my way to New York and then got stuck. Quite literally. The US-Canadian border closed, flights were severely restricted, and most shops and businesses closed.

So how did we get here?

I’m a journalism student in my second year. After several months of endless classes and assignments, I was finally close to graduating and getting my MA. I handed in my thesis. Just one thing was missing: my internship.

I was ecstatic to have found a fantastic placement with the foreign correspondence desk of a German outlet in NYC. It was perfect. I’ve always been interested in foreign correspondence. I was excited to live in New York for two months – long enough to get to know the city better than a tourist but not so long that the busy-ness would start to annoy me. The internship was supposed to last from April and May…

… and then corona happened.

And that’s how my education got interrupted. My internship got canceled. And just like that, I don’t even know if I’ll be “Class of 2020” anymore.

Now, there’s a whole lot that happened until then. A lot of back and forth with the outlet I was going to intern with. A lot of unclear messages from governments. A lot of ignorance - also on my part - regarding the actual danger of the virus.

This blog is gonna recap how exactly I got here. And, because I’m very aware that it is not only my education that is put on hold – there’s stories from people all over the world whose school/uni/work-career is disrupted or paused – I’m also gonna talk about their experiences. I already have a few, which will be making their way onto this blog shortly.

But the more I have, the better. So: If you’ve got a story about how your education got interruptED (hehe), shoot me an email, slide into those DMs on Twitter, all that stuff.

Come along and become a part of a journey of confusion, panic, and frustration. And, you know, at least some positives. Because I’m probably just as tired of reading only negative corona news as you are.