WHY COULDN’T I THINK CLEARLY ANYMORE
Hello dear reader.
Here is my very first story that I wrote. It is a real story about myself, and I hope you will enjoy it.
Emmanuel.
“There I was, Tuesday, 1.30 p.m., sitting in a chair in front of this woman questioning me.”
Yet, when I came in, I was ready, feeling great, well awake, and prepared. But, one hour later, my brain was empty; everything I’d known was suddenly not there anymore.
My ideas were scrambled.
Everything was foggy.
My head was overheating, and my face flushed with embarrassment.
I could feel a sense of guilt and shame running up my spine, ready to overflow me. I was feeling overwhelmed, vulnerable, and exposed.
It all started when she asked me her first questions. Questions I didn’t expect, especially these two that follow.
“What was your date of entry into the country the year you applied for Permanent Residence?” She asked.
“What’s that question? How could I remember this date?” I thought
“I have no idea, sorry. It was years ago, and I had traveled back and forth between Canada and France several times over the last few years. And besides, I had to re-apply in the meantime because my first request was refused, so which one do you want, the one from the first or second application?”
“I need the date from your first entry into the country when you applied for your residency.”
“Um, okay, but is it from the first or the second application?” I re-asked, even though I didn’t know either of them.
“I need the date that figures on the document you received with the confirmation of your Permanent Residence Card.”
I looked everywhere in my memory, then in my bag, phone, and wallet to find a document that could mention that entry date, but never found it.
“Maybe I can e-mail it to you later. I know I have this information in my documents at home,” I proposed.
“But I need this information now to start the process.”
“Uhh… I can call you soon as I am back home to give you the date.”
“Hmm… Okay, so. I will note an approximate date for now.” She replied.
Phew, I was already feeling palpitations due to frustration and stress.
Her second question was also challenging:
“What is the highest level of education you have completed?”
“Why does she ask me that?” I wondered.
“I have a BAC. Well… not the diploma, but only the level of BAC.” I answered.
“BAC? What is that? I don’t know what BAC is, and what do you mean by level only?”
“Hmm…I studied in France, and the French school system is totally different from the Canadian school system. So I don’t know the correspondence of levels between Canada and France.”
“I see, you’re unsure about the equivalency of academic degrees between Canada and France. Okay, is BAC an engineer?” She guessed.
“No, no. Not at all, it’s less than that.” I answered, a bit surprised by this guess.
At that moment, I heard a little voice in the back of my head telling me, “Engineering is years away from the BAC, you know that. You are completely incapable of being an engineer. You’re not smart enough for that. It’s a bit shameful, don’t you think, Manu?” What the heck!
Kindly, seeing the difficulty and thinking that it would help, she asked me to write down my educational background according to the years of study, but… I realized that I couldn’t remember; I had completely forgotten.
“What’s wrong with me? Why am I not able to recall my educational background?” And I thought about what that little voice told me.
Right then, a feeling of stupidity emerged, increasing my stress level.
It took me several long minutes of hesitation and scribbling to reframe everything before I could finally agree with her on the equivalent of the Canadian educational standards.
I learned two weeks later, while writing this story that an engineering level in Canada does not have the same meaning as in France. I'm still quite not sure of the right equivalence, but it's less worse than what this little voice let me believe. By the way, I don't have a BAC but a BAC PRO(which means professional), which is completely different. I really didn't have my wits about me this day.
It’s been about 20 minutes since I walked into this lady’s office to begin the process. Now, it was time for two written questionnaires that would give me 40 minutes of respite in the hallway, before going back into her office:
“Okay, well, now I’ll let you listen to an audio recording, and I will ask you some questions about it. Pay attention, because I’ll only let you listen to it once. Are you ready?” And she played a short 30-second audio. And then, she asked:
“Do you like working in a team?”
“I don’t know, um… I think I prefer working alone, but I can work in a team too.”
“Why do you prefer working alone?”
“I’m not sure… Perhaps… I can focus more on the job, and… hmm, I don’t need to interact with people I don’t like. But I’m okay to work in a team, but… maybe not every day,” I replied embarrassed. “Why does she ask me that? What does it matter to her if I prefer to work alone or not?” I thought.
She played a second part of the audio. Another 30 seconds later, she asked:
“What would you do if you had been in this woman’s situation?” And “What would you feel if she had acted like that with you?” She asked me.
“What do I feel… what? Why does she ask me that?” I thought. I didn’t want to answer that.
Another audio part and other questions followed. As the questions arose, my head was losing its contents. My answers were more and more short and curt. My thoughts were foggy, and my ideas were chaotic. I was feeling harassed, targeted, and assaulted. I was now on the defensive. I was sweating bullets.
I wondered, “Why does she ask me all these personal questions?”, “How can I answer that?” I wasn’t expecting these kinds of questions at all. “And why am I feeling so uncomfortable?”
Two more questions were asked, and the answers were even harder to find…
“Ok, you’re not in danger here,” I said to myself, trying to self-soothe. “Just tell her whatever you find in your empty brain; it will end soon.” I hoped.
Suddenly, the serious demeanor of this evil interrogator disappeared.
She smiled and said: “This part was more difficult, eh? You lack vocabulary and some work to do on your sentence structures.”
There I was, in a small office with a desk, two chairs, a computer, and a window. Sitting on my chair in front of this English assessment evaluator. We were at the YMCA, and I had finished the listening/speaking test. It was an audio story about a girl who works in a restaurant sharing her likes and dislikes about her job.
Out of the blue, something happened during this round of questions. Something that made me lose my abilities.
I don’t think that was the fault of that examiner; she was finally kind.
I don’t think that it was the stress of the assessment either.
It was something else. Something deeper.
The questions touched a nerve.
I was submerged by a wave of stress.
Innocent questions, about this audio test that I took personally. “I could have just answered anything; she didn’t care about my life. She’s not a shrink; she’s not a law enforcement officer; she’s an English examiner. I didn’t need to go deep down into my emotions. Why did I do this?”
While she did the math to get my score, I had time to lose myself in my thoughts: “Does she know how miserable I’m feeling right now? Didn’t she notice that I was stressed? Does she know what she did to me? Did she do it on purpose? Did she enjoy it, or perhaps she was embarrassed for me? Maybe she questioned me on purpose for a secret intelligence program… Okay, stop! I don’t care; it’s done. Forget it. Chill out buddy. I will probably never see her again anyway.”
Finally, I received my results: which were lower than I expected. I was rated at a level of 4-5. That means that my level is beginner-intermediate.
I was free to go.
So, I gave her a nice smile and left the office.
Still agitated, I planned to have a big bag of chips on my way home to help me feel better.
After calming down, I realized that life put me in that situation to show me what I needed to work on.
Expressing my feelings and thoughts is something that I have always struggled with.
This experience was a confirmation that made me understand that to gain confidence, I needed to work on my self-expression.
All of this hellish assessment was finally positive because I ended up writing this post, a first step toward my self-expression.
This was my very first story. A personal story about the day I had my Canadian English assessment to determine my level of English. As a newcomer to Canada, I seized the opportunity for free language courses. To assess my level, I needed to take this assessment. Here is the website of the Canadian Language Benchmarks and the English language ability scale, in case you are interested in determining your level:
https://www.clb-osa.ca/benchmarks/overview
