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Coral Harbour management studies graduate dreams of opening a bakery

Shayleen Murphy has set herself up with the education that can help make her goal of opening a bakery in Coral Harbour possible.

Coral Harbour’s Shayleen Murphy aspires to establish a bakery in her community someday. She attained much of the knowledge needed to become an entrepreneur by graduating from Nunavut Arctic College’s management studies diploma program last month.
photo courtesy of Shayleen Murphy

Murphy graduated a month ago from the two-year management studies diploma program through Nunavut Arctic College.

“I had fun doing the course,” she said. “I’ve always dreamed of starting my own business and becoming a manager.”

What wasn’t so fun was navigating the obstacles that Covid-19 posed. She wound up leaving the Rankin Inlet campus to return to Coral Harbour after the coronavirus emerged as a threat. That meant having to learn from home.

“It was pretty hard for a bit to adjust to it, but it wasn’t that bad,” she said, adding that the instructor of the management studies program set her up with a laptop and an internet connection, which proved reliable. “That helped me a lot.”

The course work gave her greater insight into using computer programs like Microsoft Excel and other skills like accounting, although the latter was the component she found most challenging.

Returning to a formal learning environment came after a 10-year absence from school. Murphy was a stay-at-home mom to her children for a decade.

“I had to relearn most of the stuff,” she said of getting acquainted with classrooms and textbooks again.

She added that the student financial assistance and the residences and childcare offered in Rankin Inlet were very helpful, and she’s not ruling out going back to school again in the future to build further on her knowledge.

That might give Murphy a chance to be part of another graduation ceremony. She got to bask in the achievement of her management studies certificate after completing the first year of the program but her attainment of a diploma wasn’t celebrated publicly due to Covid-19.