Nadine

“One thing I have learned over the years is that success isn’t linear, and that failure is inevitable, but not fatal. “

Nadine is 22, a first year dental student at the University of Saskatchewan, and volunteers at the Saskatoon Cancer Centre. What’s most important to Nadine is her relationships with friends and family. She told me, “I spend a big chunk of my time just talking to people in my life and keeping in touch with them. Giving my relationships my 100% has always been a top priority for me. I find that my happiest memories are when I am surrounded by all my loved ones.” Living in a small city like Saskatoon helps with being able to stay in touch. Nadine told me, “whether it’s seeing each other as the mosque or university, it is relatively easy to stay in touch with everyone because we all tend to frequent those places.” Although she loves her community, her favourite place to find herself is in Egypt with her family. She told me, “Every time I visit them back at the old place where I grew up I feel like I’m reconnecting with an old part of myself that I left back home.” When I asked Nadine what her biggest challenge has been she told me, “moving to Canada when I was younger has probably been the most challenging experience of my life thus far. In Egypt, I grew up surrounded by a big close-knit family and a big group of friends, and had no desire for that to ever change, so when my family decided to move here it was actually my first time leaving Egypt and it was a big change for me that continues to have a huge impact on my personality and values. I felt like a plant that was stripped away from its roots, because my life in Egypt was all I knew. And for a long time I struggled to view Canada as my home, and that struggle definitely had an impact on the way I viewed lots of my relationships, I saw them as temporary and short term, I always felt like being here is just a temporary part of my life. But somehow as the years went by that perception changed and I have unintentionally found myself falling in love with this place and its people and cultural diversity and acceptance.” When I asked Nadine what her own favourite quality is she told me, “I like to carry myself as genuinely as possible without putting up a front, and I also don’t concern myself too much with what people think of me.”

Q&A Feature:

How do you want to be perceived?

“I would hope that people perceive me as a genuine person who would go the extra mile for them, and a person they could trust and open up to.”