Hooray, finished school! What’s next?

I have just graduated high school in Yemen where education is a challenge. Sure, we have come a long way, but still primary school enrollment for girls is only 66%. As we get older, enrollment into secondary school slips to less than 40%. I am one of the lucky few! Some girls have their right to an education taken away from them; others choose to stop for their own personal reasons including marriage. My motivation for writing this blog is to encourage girls to stay in school and to demand their right to a fulfilling education. I am hopeful that many will be inspired to pursue science, because we need more girl scientist. To help, this blog will offer educational resources, including guest speakers to support girls in their final year of high school. With an education, we build our knowledge, and with knowledge, we can follow paths to multiple opportunities.

I am now at a stage in my life where I am at a crossroad. I want to go to university and I am busy searching for a university that suits me. I am passionate about sciences, and want to put my mind into studying genetics, I have many options available and in some way, having options is powerful. Sure, it can be confusing, but I would rather have the options than none. What I am trying to say is completing school led me to this juncture. I am at this place of opportunities and I am preparing to seize the ones that work for me. Like many of my friends, I am not as happy with my results as I’d hoped. However, I am over the moon with the openings that are laid out in front of me. So to all my sisters out there who are feeling blue about their results it’s just a minor setback to a major come back. Seize the opportunities and move on.

Within days of finishing my last exam, I grabbed my first opportunity. I contacted local NGOs and companies asking for a summer internship. The responses were great! The place I felt best suited me was an engineering company. Odd for a girl? I love science and the manager of this company is a woman, a scientist who graduated as a pharmacist. She is in charge of projects across the region, including a dairy factory in Lahaj, a wheat silo in Djbouti and processing high-grade coffee from Taiz. What a fantastic role model! Not just for me but for all the women out there.

I feel more empowered now that I have completed high school. Completing school isn’t the easiest thing you will do, it requires effort and hard work. Unfortunately, Yemen doesn’t have the best resources to make a fulfilling educational journey. To illustrate our teacher — student ration is just 24. My guess is that it is even worse for science subjects. Which is one of the many reasons for why I am writing this blog. I want to help final year high school students, so if you have any questions in the science subjects (Biology, Physics and Chemistry), go ahead ask. I will do the research and come back with resources to help.

I am signing-off for now, but will be back shortly with a new piece. A sneak preview; I will be writing on cell biology and about a woman who died of cancer many years ago, and how her cells are contributing to fighting COVID19 today!