The girl you see in the photo is Eni Dervishi, which is making all the Albanians proud.
Eni’s journey started in the first years of the kindergarden.
“Teacher taught us how to say the words ‘chair’ and ‘table’ in English. I was astonished how one can be able to use two different words for the same object”- Eni recalls, adding that she often used to go to one of her neighbors which could speak English, so she could learn any new word from him.
While she was living in Pogradec city, she could learn Italian from one of her older friends, then travelled to Tirana where she could find books and learn many other languages, as French, Spanish, and Portuguese, a language that she learnt from the soap operas.
“I fell in love with the languages. Through them I could see another world.
They expanded my imagination towards an unknown reality” –
Eni says, adding that her hometown gave her an opportunity to practice the languages she had learnt thanks to Pogradec’s tourist attraction.
But Eni’s ideas to reach Harvard university were rised in another moment,when she hears from her teacher of the 4th grade that Harvard was the best university in the world. From that moment, Eni’s dream to study there started to become bigger and bigger.
Her greatest motivation was her mother, which could manage to follow her studies even though she had to maintain to jobs at the same time.
“Seeing how my mother managed to maintain two jobs and to study at the same time, in addition of taking care of her family, was something extremely motivating to me. My mother not only told me about the importance of the education, but she illustrated that with her work”.
The Albanian girl did not have an easy access to the universities, but thanks to her persistence, she got awarded with a full scholarship after being admitted to 14 of 15 universities where she applied.
However, the challenges continued. There were foreign words that Eni could not understand and often had difficulties in communicating. “My teachers in Pogradec had never written letters of recommendation before. I had to teach them to do that. When I had to send official documents, like, school certifications, I encountered another obstacle. I thought I could use fax to send them, but there was no fax in my town.
However, moving from high school to university, which was a challenge itself, joined also the move to a completely new place where everything was unknown to me, from vending machines to ID cards to access a library. There were words I did not know. I knew how to write and solve an equation, but I didn’t know to say “minus” or “plus”, so it was especially challenging for me to talk and ask questions in class. Every day i discovered something new”
She describes her experience in Harvard as something that totally changed her life:
“I’ve always dreamed of traveling around the world and Harvard provided this to me. I could be in touch with different views. I met people with very different backgrounds and I had lessons from the best professors in the world”.
The Albanian girl says that she will stay in the United States after graduating. She has been working as a consultant in Boston, a job that she hopes that it will help her further in developing her skills while she wants to continue her studies, possibly at a Business School, where she intends to pursue a master for international development.
“I have experienced the challenges of someone coming from a developing country, and here I came to understand that Albania is not the only country facing these challenges. I want to give my contribution on solving these issues”, says Eni, while also giving a message to all the young people:
“Never give up on your dreams. Never let the circumstances define who you are!”∕TiranaToday
