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INUVIK
For the past 15 years, Nona German has acted as a mother for countless students heading south to study.

Nona German, right, and Freda Cardinal, centre, chat with student Bobbi Rose Koe during career week at Aurora College in Inuvik earlier this month. - Nathalie Heiberg-Harrison/NNSL photo

As a Northern student services adviser based out of Edmonton, she helps students find housing, secure funding and adapt to the changes that come with moving to the big city.

The hardest part of her job is moving students away from their family, their friends and their world up North, she said, but the best part is the payoff so many achieve in the end.

"Anybody from the North who wants an education can get it," she said, "but they have to be prepared to work for it. It's not going to be handed to them."

In Edmonton German works out of the Ben Calf Robe Society, a community-based agency, but through her work for the GNWT, the Government of Nunavut and various sponsors she travels the territories often.

As part of career week at Aurora College in Inuvik earlier this month, she held an information session for students interested in moving south to study. In addition, she gave a presentation to grades 10 to 12 students at Samuel Hearne Secondary School and at the group home.

The advice she emphasizes most: never give up, even when the going gets rough.

"So many of our students think they can treat school in the south like they do in the North, and that's just not the case," German said.

"The exceptions to the rule are great in the North, but in the south there are so many students, the schools can't afford to make an exception. The system would run amok and shut down completely."

Student success relies greatly on willpower and the desire to succeed, German said, but also solid attendance, good budgeting and the ability to cope with change.

Sometimes she helps students directly by giving advice on banking, shopping and getting around in the city, or by buying them birthday cake, giving out free tickets to events, organizing trips on the land and accompanying them to the hospital.

Often though, her work keeps her in the background, like when she has coffee with students' landlords to touch base.

"They don't know I'm around. I'm not in their face and I don't want to be. It's important that they feel that they're doing this on their own," she said.

German draws from her background as a social worker, but also her own experience moving from her hometown of Yellowknife to New York to study.

"I'll tell you, the sights and the sounds were overstimulating," she said.

Feeling stressed and overwhelmed is a common feeling for students, according to German, but if students push through then the results could be greater than they expected.

She gave an example of one student who moved to Edmonton from a small NWT community for upgrading courses. He struggled through classes and decided to change schools and take a smaller course load. After his two semesters of funding ran out, he worked at a mine all summer and saved every penny so he could return for two more.

"At the end of next semester, if all goes well, he can apply for the program of his choice," German said.

"He went home knowing he failed (his first set of courses), but he didn't feel like a failure because there's enough people here saying, 'No, no, you can do it. Keep trying.' And he did. I just think of him and I get goosebumps."

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