My class at SFU has been the most exciting thing about my life. I am only taking one class, one communication class, and my world has changed a lot in only two weeks. I have a crush on academia! The idea that I can create, feed and motivate my thoughts in different directions just turns me on (and yes… I would write it even if I was writing in Portuguese!). And because I am taking a communication course, my world has turned around!

The class is Communication and Intervention, my professor is a rocket scientist and the theory fluctuates around power struggles and intervention techniques. I am still disagreeing with everything, I am still thinking that people get into situations of conflict because human beings are driven by power. It’s part of our nature! However, what made me happy today was a semantic clarification.

I discovered that I misunderstood the English concept behind the word “accent”. Usually, when we use the equivalent word to accent in Portuguese – sotaque – to define one’s way of speaking the language, we are commonly drawing attention to the lack of familiarity the person has with the language. However, I learned today that “accent” is related to the way that you emphasize your ideas and thoughts, but not to your proficiency in English.

From now on, I’ll assume that my accent makes me unique, a better professional, and it really shows off my personality. With this new concept, I became  proud of my accent. I always loved the French attitude of learning a language, I always thought that by trying to be fluent in Canadian English I would be killing a past that is strongly related to my identity.

(To be continued…)