Nothing fosters an 18-year-old’s sense of independence and self awareness like being thrown into a strange place for four years alone and yet nothing confuses the life out of an 18-year-old more than being thrown into a strange place for four years alone. And nowhere was the former more obvious than at the first alumni meeting of the UAE Distinguished Students’ Scholarship last week. Almost 80 Emirati graduates of prestigious American universities attended the meeting, the first since the programme began in 1999.
@body arnhem:The Scholarship was established eight years ago after a decree by Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, founder of the nation. It pays for distinguished Emirati students to continue their education at top-tier universities in the United States, and is a fulfillment of Sheikh Zayed’s declaration that “the most profitable investment lies in building generations of educatiedand knowledgeable youth”.
Sheikh Zayed would have been proud of these future Emirati leaders. That young men and women will forsake a life of luxury at home and dedicate four years to acquiring a prestigious education abroad (along with cleaning dorm rooms and doing laundry), is a true indicator that some investments are actually worth it.
There is no doubt that education is a worthwhile investment, nor that completing it overseas is a risk. Sending an unsupervised 18-year-old to a different continent is not an easy decision for parents: and in a relatively conservative country such as the UAE the risks are even greater, especially when women are involved. Although the status of women in the UAE is higher than in many Arab countries, the option of studying abroad is often not an option at all: more Emirati women than men graduate, but only from local educational institutions.
Fathers who allow their daughters to study abroad know they are taking a gamble, and parents brave enough to do so risk being confronted by family members and friends with claims that a prestigious degree does not compensate for the temptations that could “corrupt” a woman abroad. I do not find the reasoning justified, especially in the UAE of 2008. Temptations such as alcohol and premarital sexual relations exist here too. The cosmopolitan contradictions of our culture offer a spectrum of choices for the young adult – everything from a strict pious lifestyle to an extremely westernised version that is akin to life abroad.
Parents who have themselves studied abroad and are considering the same for their children no doubt recall arriving in the United States with great apprehension, but also great excitement. Then the UAE was still in its infancy, the globalised country that it is today almost nonexistent (my own father landed in a Southern state in the US for the first time in the 1970s, but to this day he remembers with profound clarity devouring his first Big Mac). It is hard to believe that only 15 years ago McDonald’s wasn’t a dining option in this country.
Then again, flying solo at 18 is not for everyone. A mature, self-driven 18-year-old will fare differently than will a spoilt teenager with overprotective parents. Smart parents, like smart investors, must gauge their risks carefully: watch out for signs that could lead you to a different decision, and for the sake of your accomplished, driven daughter, do not filter gender into the process. I know the Scholarship Coordination Office didn’t. There were conditions that we all had to satisfy: a consistent distinguished academic record, clear examples ofleadership qualities, an extensive interview by the directors of the scholarship.
And the process of proving ourselves did not end when we enrolled: we had to sustain a minimum Grade Point Average (GPA) every semester, as well as send our transcripts to the Abu Dhabi office when they were issued by our universities. We had to inform our assigned scholarship adviser of our academic and extracurricular plans, and even our whereabouts during holidays such as Spring Break, or risk having our scholarship revoked. To some students, such requirements may seem overbearing, but to concerned parents they were reassuring. It’s also possible that such strict requirements are one of the reasons that this foreign study scholarship has such a successful legacy.
It takes enormous trust to hurl a new high-school graduate into the unknown, but when it is combined with guidance (and occasional supervision), the outcome is not only compelling, but also inspirational.
Those young men and women were there last Wednesday to prove that the “temptations” of a Western lifestyle are not strong enough if you keep the end goal in mind. And to assuage the fears of any still-doubtful parents, all but one of the female alumni present not only wore the shaila and abaya, but also the hijab (in its religious sense).
Tala al Ramahi