Mohamud Esmail

It was Mohamud's first day at Highline.  He took his COMPASS test and his math placement exam and anxiously awaited the results.  Within a few minutes the woman let him know that he'd passed without a problem and signed him into math, physics and writing classes that she said were the appropriate level.  It was all taken care of.  "What kind of college is this?" Mohamud asked himself, "do they accept anyone who comes through the door with dollars?"

But after his first quarter Mohamud was placed on academic probation and called in to meet with an advisor.  He had fallen below the number of credits he needed to take.  Although he'd finished the quarter with a 4.0 in Physics --- he'd also dropped his 7 AM Writing 101 class.  The early hour coupled with a teacher who expected him never to confuse an "a" with a "the" made it an untenable situation.  Then there was the math class, it turned out that he'd been put into the wrong class for a student pursuing a business major.  Mohamud's dream was to pursue a degree in accounting eventually leading to a law degree in the future.  But two W's on Mohamud's transcript were enough to bring him to Highline's attention as being an "at risk" student.  However, this was not his first "at risk" situation.

Because of my experiences of civil war I had almost lost faith in being able to follow my dreams.  Before the war I was a student in Somalia and I had goals that would directly contribute to my society.  When the war started in my country I moved with my family out of Somalia and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for five years.  Each morning as I waited in line for bread and tea, or in the evening, as I waited for my small bowl of borsht I wondered what the next day would bring and pondered how fortunes change so swiftly.  Hope was the savior that kept me alive!

Mohamud left the camp when he was twenty years old, with no diploma to prove that he had graduated from high school.  That was left behind in Mogadishu.  And there were other obstacles that Mohamud faced.  In Samalia, the government tests determine if you become a doctor or a lawyer.  Somali students face no decisions about which classes to take. " A student is just put in a class."  Period.  And in that class, there is a dictatorship.  The teacher is always right, they are treated like a second parent --- and in fact, even the parents often have more faith in the teacher's judgment than their own.  The teacher is always right.

It was towards the end of his second quarter at Highline that something clicked for Mohamud.  "Maybe I can do it." He thought.  He had learned how to handle the academic environment.  He was re-taking Writing 101 with spectacular results and was also enrolled in classes appropriate to his major.  But that was just the beginning.  "Many people would say attending college is a major first step in any student's development.  But for me attending college is also looking for normalcy after my dreams were almost shattered by civil war...Now that I have been in America for three years, I realize my dream was not shattered, but only deferred.  I also have realized I cannot reach my dream without a good education."

Mohamud is studying in the Business School at the University of Washington.  He is hoping to attend law school in the fall of 2003.