Saturday, April 17, 2010

A little bit of Hope...


This week came with a pleasant surprise. A Hope College admissions representative was coming to Doha to recruit students. Adam Hopkins worked in admissions when I was a student worker there; so I was excited to meet up with him and hear how things were going at Hope. He would only be in Doha for a few hours, so I met him during one of the college fairs.


While listening to the college fair speaker I was able to overhear some comments and hear some questions. Here are my three favorite:


  1. 1) What is Liberal Arts? – this is actually a really good question, as that is not a concept that is common in the region, it was just a shock to hear it asked.
  2. 2) If my child changes majors, will you get our signature first? (This family stood up and left after the speaker explained that it was ok, and common for students to change majors, and in fact he had changed his major three times.)
  3. 3) If the colleges ranking drops can we get a refund? (Mind you, this question to an individual college representative came shortly after another representative explained to the whole group that college rankings are very arbitrary and rarely hold much significance.)


On top of the surprise of getting to see a representative of Hope, I learned through Adam that there was another 2006 alum in Doha, Ann Durham. I was able email Ann and we met up for lunch. It is amazing how small the world really is. I would never imagine that a college as small as Hope would have two young graduates in Doha, let alone two graduates from the same year.

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