Help me pay for my GRE test for my graduate studies

Soumaya El Hasmani Start Date: May 18, 2020 - End Date: May 17, 2021
  • Washington D. C., District de Columbia, États-Unis

My Travel Story

by: Soumaya El Hasmani Start Date: May 18, 2020 - End Date: May 17, 2021
Prepare a short essay: (300 –500) that considers the following topic. 

What are your academic goals, and how will semester at sea help you to achieve them. Include at least two examples. 

Semester at Sea is the ideal program to further my academic and career goals. I believe that education in my country needs a number of reforms. I strongly believe in Nelson Mandela’s statement, “education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world,” and I hope to help my community, particularly those in the rural areas and the women in the future by reforming the Moroccan education system. 

During Semester at Sea, I will be able to mainly take business administration and English courses. English is the universal business language. My primary academic interest has been English, which I have been learning for more than eight years. That also led me to devote a period of almost three years working as an intern in the American Language Center in Tetouan. My love of the English language led to an interest in the field of education. I have loved the idea of sharing the knowledge and the passion I have about the English language with kids and primary school students through getting involved in teaching primary school students in my hometown in addition to running an English club about cultural activities of the English speaking world. My degree in linguistics has helped me immerse myself in English language and related fields including pragmatics, phonology and semantics. In order to reach my goal of establishing a foundation to improve access to education in rural areas of my country, I need to supplement my English studies and teaching experience with a degree in business administration. I am planning to pursue another bachelor degree in business administration at SIST, a British business school in Morocco. 

My participation in the Semester at Sea program will also teach me skills outside the classroom. Students with a study abroad experience possess leadership skills that help them to succeed. The Semester at Sea program will broaden my view of the world, help me explore it, and hopefully connect me with wonderful people who can challenge me in the fields of my interests. Women worldwide are not making it to the top of any profession in the world. Their abilities are underestimated by their societies and the cultural background they are supposed to follow. Even in the 21st century, women of my community still suffer from neglect and disregard. Gender equality still does not exist in my community. According to my community and its mentality and perspectives, leadership is something that is restricted only to men while women are always supposed and expected to be followers and under the control of men particularly and husbands. In my community, only sons who should be professionally motivated and not daughters. For a daughter, leaving home to attend university in a different city is an idea that is not well approved of in my community. Here in my community, men are present in professional life while women are almost absent and they are expected to be mainly housewives. As a result of that, women who lack leadership skills, suffer from a number of problems and live a tough life. I hope Semester at Sea can help me gain leadership skills and become a female leader eventually. I hope to be the leader of my community and inspire girls of my age and women to be leaders as well. 

Elementary school students who live in the countryside or the villages of Morocco often find themselves obliged to leave school at an early age. The schools are far away from the places where they live, and they have to walk a very long distance daily if their parents are not able to pay the 

transportation fee. The schools in these villages and countrysides are not provided with the necessary equipment. The majority of those schools do not provide the students with libraries where students can find books to borrow or resources to read and learn from. I derive my inspiration from Adam Braun who is a former participant in Semester at Sea and also the founder of Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit organization that builds schools and increases access to educational opportunities for children in the developing world. I also derive my inspiration from the book that he wrote, The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change. I imagine doing the same for my community by setting up my own organization that aims at building schools, training teachers and offering scholarships. In order to set up an organization one needs to have a good understanding of business. 





  • Washington D. C., District de Columbia, États-Unis