Successful No Matter the Circumstances Faced: Omar M. Yaghi

by Scarlet Salas

“Success is the sum of all ef orts, repeated day-in and day-out.”

—Robert Collier

Education is considered a top priority by many immigration refugees. Being in an environment where you don’t know what to rely on, you rely on education to know more about it and to expand. Having education in pursuit can be viewed as a stable and trustworthy path in order to land yourself employment. This path requires hard, relentless work, and it’s not easy for most. Enrolling in school and pursuing a higher knowledge can lead to “safety” in a sense that you’re going on a road to find something more stable to live off of. But, since so little refugees have experience with proper education, having the right materials to start out and plan ahead is usually quite inaccessible for most, leading to a high need for pure excellence and distinction. Most refugees do have access to education, but it’s very limited compared to most average civilians. Only about 7% of refugees have access to higher education compared to a 42% civilian average.

That’s why it’s important to take advantage of what you have and what you are given, education-wise or not. It’s a privilege to have access to knowledge and Omar M. Yaghi knows that well. Born into poverty as part of a Palestinian refugee family in Amman, Jordan... Omar and his 10 other siblings had to learn to prioritize their education since their parents were already funding all of them full-time. They had little to nothing. They had very limited water sources, limited electricity, no formal education, and had to take care of refining chores with his siblings for their parents. For school, his parents sacrificed everything they had to keep him and his other siblings in schools that had top educational standards. It was here and his home life where he learned to value hard, polished work that was exceptional. Omar was an intellectual lifelong learner from an early age. He had gotten inspired by books that sparked a passion in his love of chemistry and decided that was what he wanted to pursue. Once he entered his older teenage years, his parents sacrificed almost everything they had to put him into an even better school. Omar then moved to the U.S, earned his PH.D in organic chemistry at University of Illinois and completed a fellowship at Harvard. But, he didn’t stop there. Omar then innovated reticular chemistry and developed MOFs which awarded him a Nobel Prize and other science awards. And from there he stated, “Ultimately, if you really want to be creative, you should answer questions that everybody says couldn’t be done.” reflecting deep vigilance and simply going down the path you want to go on, despite what anyone thinks or what the circumstances are.

Sources : forbes.com, news.berkeley.edu, & nobelprize.org