Education/training
Answering the call of the wildWhen Larisa Chernysheva was a teenager in Apsheronsk, her hometown in southern Russia, she loved geography -- especially Canadian geography: Niagara Falls, the Great Lakes, the Rockies, the unending prairie. So she made a deal with herself that one day she'd live in Canada. David Chilton |
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 [ 2005-08-17 ] |
Well, Chernysheva made it. She arrived, alone, in Canada in 1997, a graduate of Omsk State Veterinary Institute, the oldest and most famous university in Siberia. Quickly Chernysheva went off to the University of Toronto to improve her English, and set about learning Canadian routines.
"I was eager to learn about so many things, like how to integrate into Canadian society," says Chernysheva, recalling with wry affection her first encounter with credit and debit cards.
Chernysheva spent five years in Omsk studying to become a vet, graduating in 1991. That choice of profession was the result of another significant event during her teen years: the death of her German shepherd. But she wasn't cut out to be a veterinarian. Chernysheva says she became too emotionally attached to the animals she had to treat.
And then came the collapse of the Soviet Union. That was the end of her life in Russia, but the start of a new life here. Chernysheva, ever the methodical scientist, picked out four countries she thought she might settle in. Canada, of course, was first; then came Sweden, Australia and the United States, in that order.
University of Guelph
By 2000 Chernysheva's English was good enough for her to head to the University of Guelph to take a master's degree in epidemiology -- the study of the spread and control of diseases.
"I just fell in love with epidemiology. This is what I wanted to do. My skills and experience (as a vet) were very useful (when) applied to epidemiology because lots of diseases come from animals to the human population."
Chernysheva graduated from Guelph in 2003 and promptly ran into an employment brick wall. She had a newly minted graduate degree from a respected Canadian university but no Canadian experience -- a requirement virtually all employers demand these days whether the job is brain surgery or flipping burgers. Her situation, Chernysheva says with some understatement, was "very challenging."
She eventually found a contract job in 2004 in Toronto conducting clinical research, only to have it fold when funding ran out. "It was really, really difficult to find another job," Chernysheva says, but at least she could put that all-important "Canadian experience" on her resume.
During her hunt for another job Chernysheva found A.C.C.E.S., an employment and training agency in Toronto that works with internationally trained professionals and others who need help to secure employment. Chernysheva says she received good training at A.C.C.E.S., where she was advised for free on such matters as job search and interview skills.
That advice was obviously useful, because this year Chernysheva found herself with three job offers. One came from the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, another from the New York State Department of Public Health and the third from the Government of Nunavut in Iqaluit.
It's not hard to guess which one she took -- Chernysheva was educated in Siberia, after all. "I wanted to know the real Canada," she says. "Toronto, Montreal, they're not the real Canada."
Chernysheva has only been installed in Canada's most northerly capital for six weeks, but already rhapsodizes about the Far North and her view overlooking Frobisher Bay. "I'm just embracing this beauty," she says. "I would encourage people to explore the north."
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