I am a student from Saudi Arabia, and my beliefs, opinions, and conviction about education spring from my experience as such a student. One such experience occurred two years ago, and this particular experience helped me realize my personal dreams and urged me to chase them. In my country, when a student reaches the ninth grade, the school offers her a choice between two educational paths: literary and scientific.
The literary option consists of further studies on geography and history, while the scientific option consists of higher levels of math and science courses.Two years ago, the time for me to make a decision between the two different educational paths arrived. I was then sitting with a group of girls, talking about which section each of us should choose. Personally, I believed that the scientific option is more important, primarily because this would open the doors to good colleges, and good schools translate into better education. On the other hand, one of my friends decided she would take the literary course, because as shown by this option’s popularity with most girls, this option offers more fun than its more serious counterpart.
That episode in my life made me think deeply and reflect about the culture of my country. I realized that society sucks ambitions and shatters dreams. Just like girls in all other parts of the world, girls in my country also have dreams about living a successful and comfortable life. However, the social environment and culture of my country do nothing to help support those dreams. Quite the contrary, such factors actually hinder the success of girls because of the limitation imposed on the education of young girls.
Education for girls in Saudi Arabia is quite restricted.For example, the engineering course does not exist in girls’ colleges. Given the lack of support and encouragement from Saudi Arabian society and government, girls my age no longer believe that they could achieve their goals. Thus, most girls had given up on their dreams. On the brighter side, my country’s ministry of education fully understands the problem and encourages girls to pursue their education abroad by offering student scholarships.
It is also working hard on improving its education by opening new universities and offering diversity in the choices of majors.These progressive changes are illustrated by the fact that three new universities have opened in the past five years. On my part, I seek to start a progressive change in my society by building the determination among girls to pursue their dreams, even if it would require them to get out of our country for a while. I dream of becoming a lady engineer one day. However, only 3% of the women population of Saudi Arabia has studied engineering.
I believe that I could achieve my dream of joining this small number of lady engineers by going to the United States to seek high quality education.I intend to exert all my efforts in attaining good education so that I could come back to my country and serve as a good role model to our female population. I do not only seek personal success, but I want to encourage girls in Saudi Arabia to pursue their dreams. I believe that having an engineering degree from the United States would lend me great authority and credibility, and I could use them to raise my voice in my society.
It is my hope that I be given the opportunity to realize my dreams and initiate change in my society, through my admission in a great university in the United States.
