u/SomethingClever349

Hey yall,

Quick questions. I’m graduating soonish and searching for jobs, and I want to start right after I graduate. But as I understand it, you need the reception of the PGWP application to use your student permit as a temporary work visa. But to apply for the PGWP you need your degree if I am not wrong? Unfortunately, I am in a weird limbo where my official graduation is 4 months after I finish my degree, because that’s how my uni works and it doesn’t run graduations after the fall semester and only runs one at the end of winter. So my transcript won’t show me as « degree granted » till then.

I don’t want to wait 4 months to apply because I don’t have enough money to sustain myself like that for 4 months and I also just want to get started with my career.

Can I just apply for a PGWP just after I am recommended for graduation and get a letter from my uni saying that I’ve graduated and will officially get my diploma in the Spring, and then send my application as soon as I finish my final exams?

Do I need to have all of my grades showing that I passed by the time I applied or can I apply with a few grades still blank given that I have been recommended by my department for graduation and have an official letter showing that from my uni?

If I want to start a job about a month out from graduation (I am moving cross country for my partner), is that a realistic timeline for me to work out the visa stuff?

Do I need to leave Canada while applying for my PGWP once I wrap up my degree or can I just apply internally as long as I don’t leave the borders?

When do I need to take my English test? I am a native English speaker so I don’t think I will have too much trouble, but I have exams in December and then the university immediately goes on Winter Holiday, so can I take it super early in the semester and then use it later?

I currently live in Quebec and am moving to British Columbia. I don’t see anything that might affect me moving, but I am happy to hear experiences.

Thank you for your help!

So, quick introduction. I (F20) and my girlfriend (F23) have been together for about 1.5 years. Our relationship is great, my parents adore her, her parents like me, we even recently went on vacation together. Met at an event when we were both in college, and been inseparable ever since. The relationship is genuinely great. We have never so much as disagreed beyond a simple 2 minute conversation, and we work together quite well. We are culturally similar, have similar interests, and are supportive to each other. She was a year ahead of me in school, so she’s decided she’ll stay in the city and wait for me to finish school, and then we’re moving to a different city together. I see myself hopefully marrying her in the future. All in all, great.

Now, there is the other character. Let’s call them O. O and I have been friends and even roommates for about a year (before I got my own place). O has quite a bit of baggage. They’ve had tumultuous relationships, 4 month relationships that flame out over summer break, sometimes in massive explosions that wipe out entire friend groups. They are fun to talk to, and good to party with, so we’ve remained friends, albeit a bit more distant as we aren’t living together anymore and they said some things which personally insulted me. But, we remain friends.

O has recently took it upon themselves to comment on my relationship. They were initially supportive, encouraging me when I was personally anxious about dates, etc. However, as time went on, it went slowly downhill. When I met my girlfriend, they were in a relationship, which blew up when their partner cheated on them (their partner was not a good person in multiple ways). After that, it was comments left and right.

“Oh, what do you mean you are going on a hiking date? Is she not going to take you to a nice restaurant? I could never do that, X tried to take me on a hike and it felt so cheap” was one of the comments on our plans for a holiday weekend. They are well aware that my partner is not as wealthy as them, and sometimes is specifically quite classist.

There has also been an aggressive push to stereotype us. For context, I have longer hair, am a little bit shorter, and sometimes wear makeup to class (depending on how motivated I am). My girlfriend has short hair, like genuinely short, and is quite tall, and generally doesn’t try to be very feminine. However, we both really don’t “stick” to those positions. I wore a suit to a dance because she wanted to wear a dress, we’ve both worn dresses at the same time, and suits at the same time, you get the point. We aren’t really attached to our presentations. However, O has made it a point to cast me as “femme” and my girlfriend as “masc”, and express that in front of mutual friends, to the point when mutual friends genuinely are surprised when we aren’t the way we are casted by O.

I don’t hate O. They have their trauma. However, I cannot dissociate from them entirely because we share such a common friend group. The college doesn’t have a massive queer scene so it is a “everyone knows everyone else” situation. I would just like them to be considerate and not make jokes about my relationship, and respect our choices, be it presentation, what we do as a couple, etc.

So my question is, how do I tell them to back off, without causing drama?