Farzana Kribia '15 is specializing in Neuroscience. She's originally from Bangladesh, but she lived in Japan for part of her high school education. She actually came to Smith College because her 8th grade social studies teacher in Japan was from Smith College !
Since Farzana has had the opportunity to live in a few different countries, she is acutely aware of constraints affecting women in her home country. Young women get married at a very young age and they have children as soon as they get married. Because they are busy with children, they don’t get any advanced education.
She really liked the idea that the College was going to make a leader out of her. She sees herself as a doctor in the future, and she's really interested in helping the uninsured. One reason that she's motivated to go into medicine is that her grandmother died because the hospital did not have enough doctors--or that was what they told them. Farzana suspects that the real reason was that the doctors were asking for a bribe to take care of her grandmother, but her grandfather couldn't pay it. She feels that this type of problem is quite common in under-served areas so that is why she is determined to become a doctor.
She'll be shadowing class of 78'er Annie De Groot at Annie's free clinic for the uninsured (Clinica Esperanza/Hope Clinic) in Providence Rhode Island, this summer, using her Praxis internship funds from Smith College. We'll be sure to post an update!
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Metasebia Aberra (right) is from Ethiopia. She heard about Smith College from her older sister as she was applying for colleges. Her sister, who went to University of Michigan, decided to be a doctor at a young age after a death in the family caused by HIV/AIDS . Metasebia followed her sister's footsteps and came to the US for education headed to the direction of medicine. Smith gave Metasebia a wide range of options and even more opportunities to explore her interests. During the Summer following her first year she did SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) when she worked with Professor David Bickar on Myoglobin. She really loves the topic she is working on and now, she’s actually more interested in doing research than going to Medical school.
Smith has given Metasebia a place make intercultural connections and take on several leadership positions as an E-board member in SACSA (Smith African Caribbean Students Association), a member of Reslife as well as a founding member for ESA (Ethiopian Students Association for the five colleges). She might want to get into biotech. Metsebia has a really interesting idea for her future career. She sees herself investigating the effects of traditional medicine from her home country - working to understand the mechanism of action of traditional medicine so that it can be used properly to improve human health. She intends on giving back to her country by generating income for the country through her research and through the translation of her finding on traditional medicine, making drugs more accessible to the remote areas of the country. Now that's a wonderful aspiration !
