Hello, my name is Louis Tran, and today I’ll be relaying an interview I had with my classmate Samira Abdi. Samira and I both decided to have our interview at the Georgia state Clarkson liberty around 5:00 pm on Friday. There we talked about a variety of things relating to our personal and academic life. 

Samira is a 16-year-old high school student who is in our college class for dual enrollment at Georgia state perimeter college. She was born here in Georgia, but her parents and heritage come from Somalia. I first started by asking her about her majors and goals in college. Samira is a biology major, and her college goal is to finish college at Georgia state university with good grades and transfer to medical school. Her profession goal is to become a physical therapy doctor. I then asked her why she wanted to go to college. Samira talked about she is one of the first people in her family to go to college. 

We then went on talking about what it was like in college. Both Samira and I have the same college experience. Both of us enjoyed and said our favorite class was psychology and both of us agreed that any math classes are usually the hardest class in any term. We also agree that both of us don’t have a fruitful social life while in college. Both of us would take classes on campus then would go straight home to study or work a part time job. 

I later asked Samira how she views herself as a student. She describes her academic self as a hardworking, dedicated, and organized student. She works hard in college to get the best grade and to create a secure future for herself. She set high expectations on herself to get good grades and pass her classes. She is very confident in herself about her grades and academic self but said she could always do better. 

Samira and I are very different people in how we view ourselves academically and how we conduct ourselves as students. However, something we can both relate to is that we are both first generation American and have immigrant parent. This similarity in our life helps us feel connected as we both have very high expectations placed on ourselves. Samira is the first in her family to go off and enroll in college and I was the first born and the first of my parents’ children to go to college.  

Samira was a nice person to talk to. From our interview I gather that she is an intelligent and driven person. She has a lot of expectations placed on her by her family and herself, but she doesn’t let that hold her down or crush her. Besides our conversation about academic subjects, we also had some time to share some stories of our personal life and crack a few jokes. I’m glad to have had the time to meet and get to know Samira Abdi and hope her future is as bright as she is.