Naima Hasan

I used to be shy before I could barely speak, but having to move to another continent at the age of 18 on my own really forced me to talk. Then I realised that I love to talk, and so that’s something I’m also proud of too.

Hello, my name is Naima Hassan. I am ethnically from India, but I was born and raised in Nigeria, Abuja. I’m studying at Queen’s College in New York and I’m in my third year right now and I am majoring in neuroscience and I’m minoring in cities and social medicine.

My older brother, he was the one that actually found the Navitas program GSSP and I was hearing about it through him. So I would be searching my colleges and I would hear him in the other room talking about New York and a global student success program, and I was like, wait a second, I need to, I need to hear what that is too. And when he told me about it, I was really interested, I was hoping on getting into it.

My whole life I had been hearing about New York. New York is one of the most diverse multicultural cities, there’s so much you can learn there, and my parents really, really wanted me to go there.

I already grew up in kind of a multicultural society. The city that I come from, particularly Abuja, is very multicultural. We have people from different religions, ethnic backgrounds, nationalities; so I was already familiar with that kind of environment. I thought like, if I go to New York I would be exposed to something similar, but on a larger scale.

My dad had always told me that, of course, you know, education is more than just like the biology and chemistry that you have to do, but it’s also about the people that you meet. If you go and meet, you know, all these diverse people, it is going to change you in ways that, you know, just getting good grades is not going to change you – and I think that really led me to it.

One thing that really, like maintained that community of international students was the Global Student Success Program. They have an office located right on campus, and it’s very accessible, people walk in and it’s like a lounge. It really created this sense of community. People would just come, we would sit together, and there are games we can play.

This one time I was sitting down with this group of students from Myanmar and we started talking about how there’s a festival in India that somehow was going to happen during the same day as a festival for Myanmar, and we were able to plan an event to sort of incorporate both those things. It’s really interesting. A lot of people showed up and we were really able to celebrate that diversity there.

The advice that I would give new students coming into the Navitas program is, one, really put yourself out there because you’re going to learn so many things about yourself when you put yourself out there, and you know, allow yourself to experience things you never have before regarding academics and fields of studies you were not familiar with before. Especially because you’re in a program that is giving you like a soft landing. You have like a pathways already, you know, you have these courses already set up for you. So they are making your next year easier.

I’m going to ramble because I feel like I’ve achieved so much, and I think that’s the benefit of like university in general, international or not. But I think, when it’s international of course, the growth that you experience is more significant, it’s a bit more rapid. I learned a lot of things about myself personally. I learned that I love to talk more than necessary sometimes. I learned that I love giving presentations. I learned that I love to be in positions where I can lead people, like I can hold their hands and lead them. I’ve been a peer mentor for a while for the GSSP to help international students navigate. Even when they graduate, they know that they can come to me.

I am also now a research assistant for two neuroscience labs in my college, and I’ve been working for them for about a year now. They’re doing some really important work regarding autism and sleep, and I really enjoy my time in the lab. I feel like my brain becomes bigger after every session.

I’m also the vice president of the neuroscience club, so we also have a magazine of our own where students can publish journals regarding neuroscience and psychology.

And also, something really cool that I think I’ve accomplished, is that I got to start a club of my own called the Medical Humanities Club, and I was able to start a magazine called The Pulse, which is dedicated to that intersection between medicine and the humanities for students. We cover a lot of really important topics happening around the world regarding science, and it’s something I’m really proud of that I want to take with me after graduation.

It’s really interesting because I don’t think I would have necessarily been able to do these things back home, or at least it would have taken me a really long time to get there. Now that I’m in my third year, I can list all of them and I’m really, really proud of myself for that.