How one valedictorian took the leap of a lifetime

Posted on Friday, June 10th, 2022

In 2016, Kasia Gocal came to Canada for the first time, with plans of spending a short visit with a love interest she had met back home in Poland. What started out as an ordinary visit turned out to be the leap of a lifetime.

“I wasn’t planning to emigrate. I had met someone at a social event in Poland and we kept in touch, at some point I decided to visit Canada and since then I just never went back,” she jokes.

Said someone is now Gocal’s husband, whom she’s been happily married to for five years. But not every step in Gocal’s journey has been as smooth as finding ‘the one’.

“The first two years of being in Canada weren’t easy. The language barrier was challenging and the culture in Canada is quite different than that of Poland,” Gocal explains. “For example, there is no ‘small talk’ in Poland so learning how to chit chat about the weather, while it sounds easy, was actually quite difficult.”

For Gocal, moving to Canada wasn’t just a cultural adjustment but an entire life adjustment.

“Every little thing was different,” she says. “When you live in the country you were born in, you have the luxury of doing so many things automatically. When you move countries, everything becomes like you are experiencing it for the first time — it’s like time travelling, you have to redo, relearn and start over.”

But it’s Gocal’s approach to these challenges that truly sets her apart.

“You must perceive the challenges as experiences and have patience with yourself and trust the process. I had to get used to the fact that there were constantly things I didn’t know that required me to open up to others and ask questions. I started using the support systems around me, and that’s when I saw how wonderful Canadians are and saw Canada as my home,” she says.

As soon as Gocal received her permanent residency in 2019, she applied to Algonquin College’s Information and Communications Technology program — where her ability to leverage her network for support and embrace challenges as opportunities, made her a standout student.

“I had a Java class in my first year that had a 50 per cent pass rate and when I did my first test I got a C-. I was devastated. I had never received a C- before,” she says. “So, I went to the professor and asked if they thought I should drop the class or what I could do to improve, and he told me not to give up just yet. Thanks to some additional studying and perseverance, I was able to finish the class with an A.”

Gocal’s tenacity influenced her participation in the College community as well.

“I felt like women were a bit underrepresented in computer technology, and in STEM in general,” says Gocal. “So, Lia Brophy, my colleague and I, created a plan for a Women in Computer Science (WICS) club with the help of Sandra Brancatelli, the Academic Chair for my program, and proposed it to Algonquin Clubs.”

WICS was created to support gender diversity in computer science and is committed to helping women and those who are underrepresented in the tech industry gain confidence in their skills and abilities. In February 2022, Kasia was awarded a Board of Governors Student Changemaker Award for her establishment of the Club.

With Kasia graduating, the club has big shoes to fill but she hopes that a new leader will step up to take her place.

“When I studied IT Technician in Poland, 99 per cent of the class was men. I was one of three women taking the program and only one of us graduated,” shares Gocal. “I feel very proud to have developed the club and to be graduating as a valedictorian from a STEM program — it is a huge honour.”


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