العربية 
English The memories I went through in the twelfth grade – as it is known now – are still fresh. Working just as hard in those early hours during cold winter nights, or those late hours during hot summer nights, all of which I’d spend in that room of mine under renovation. The paint smell, the ladder standing in the middle of the room, the pile of cement on the floor, my trustworthy companion who had put up with me all those years, the pink chair I sat on, and many more details that my memory still refuses to let go of. I can still clearly remember me sitting by the pool reciting a great deal of literary pieces, Quranic verses, geographical and geological facts like the types of mountains, rocks, soil, and forestry, and many, many more.
Back then, I became addicted to a set of ideas I cannot even describe the effect they had on me. How do I put into words the adrenaline that filled up my senses and frail being as soon as I start sailing into the depths of those ideas that made me soar like a bird in the sky of my dreams? They ignited me, gave me the energy to completely digest and store in that information, unconcerned about the hours I would spend with my books and notes, with nothing stopping me except my clock that would tell me it was dusk so I could get back home and prepare to make dinner for my family, or that it was dawn so I should go and make tea for my brothers, or coffee for my mother.
What can make you understand what ideas are? They hold inside them the secret of behaviour, effort, and achievement, and the essence of persistence. I used to see myself in them as I climbed up that big stage engulfed by the majestic, pitch black, and the blinding white – male and female students listening to me with great attention. I don’t remember the topic of the talk, and it doesn’t matter to me anyway now; I’m busy taking off behind that tremendous dream to find a way out of here and escape to where I can manifest my goals, dreams, and ambitions into reality.
I am certain and sure that many of you have been through a scenario along the same lines as my story, perhaps with different details, but the same dream. Today, after coming a long way paved by effort, hope, and big dreams, you’ve achieved your goals and dream. You joined the institution that has brushed against your dreams once, or maybe never, as it was the result of an admissions system which focuses on academic credit in specific subjects over others, and thereby you’ve been screened to end up being in this major or that, in this college or that. Nevertheless, it remains a fact that you will be living a different, rich experience marked by many challenges. It won’t be easy, and it it’s here where the real test of your personality, principles, belonging, and morals lies.
The college experience will make you an ever-growing person. The years you spend here will transform you into new people and help you rediscover yourselves through the relationships you start, from acquaintances or friendships with people who possess what you’re looking for, who have mutual interests, or who have gone on the same long road with you to arrive to something you seek. Maybe you’d be let down, causing you to take off those glasses that distorted the real magnitude of these matters, and because friends are the beautiful façade of life, you will grow and bloom with them, and want to meet new people to learn unconditional acceptance. If you come from a small village you’ll have to open up to the city life through a group of friends stamped with the hallmark of modernity in the ways they dress and talk. You will see yourself lagging behind but it doesn’t matter, you will catch up, just as the people before you did. However, keep the same principles and morals nourishing your and your friends’ souls. You don’t have to dissociate yourself from your identity under the delusion that it doesn’t comply with the modernity practiced by some of your colleagues.
Since you’re still in the process of social maturity, you will come across students indifferent to that dream and belief that made you leave your warm bed, your mother’s embrace, and sibling quarrels, and that took you away from your childhood and neighborhood friends. Some will try to mock your hard work and sense of responsibility, others will push you to immerse yourself into entertainment and distraction without a care. You must walk into this city with open arms and not hesitate, yet without diversions from the path you’ve laid down with hard work, eyes red from staying up late. Remember to fulfill your mothers’ hearts that keep praying for every step on the way toward your great dream to be blessed.
Miss Badriya Al Hosni
Senior Psychologist, Student Success Centre
Know more about our Student Success Centre through the following link: Click Here
