Employment

I am writing this text because, as a new immigrant to Canada, I had some bad and good experiences which might be useful for other newcomers.

I am an architect. I have studied and worked in Iran, and I have about 20 years’ experience in that field there. I emigrated at the end of 2013 to Canada, and settled in Toronto. I travelled to Iran back and forth for the first two years because I had to finish some projects, and personal works there. After two years of traveling, I  needed to change three important things for a new life in Canada. First I had to learn English and then, find a job and buy a house.

My first Canadian job was not in architecture field. I started working as an Uber driver in August 2016. The first weeks were very stressful. I have had several challenges. First one was my English skills, the other one was the lack of knowledge of GTA roads, and finally I was not familiar with the interaction by the riders as it was my first experience in that field, also with the people with different culture as I was, but I did not give up and kept trying to do the job.

Some riders gave me good advice, and some others just ignored my mistakes, also I was getting more familiar with the job and it helped me to improve my confidence. Although I had bad experience with some customers, these experiences helped me a lot to become familiar with the Canadian culture, city knowledge, and interaction with different people. And also it improved my listening skill.

I learned that change is a part of life. Although my job is very different as the job I used to do, and it helped me to being a part of my new society. It was obvious that immigration is not an easy process but when you immigrate you have to try step by step to reach your goal, this might be a hard and long way.