Hear once more from Baraa Omar
Good evening everyone,
I’m Baraa Omar. I come from Syria. I have been here in Australia for 10 years with my family. I came when I was 12 years old; I came from Syria due to war in 2013. I started learning English at the Intensive English Centre at Holroyd and then moved to high school directly to year 8, continuing my learning progress in Holroyd High. I then graduated from high school in 2018. And currently I’m in my 5th and final year at UTS studying a Bachelor of Civil Engineering through the humanitarian scholarship from UTS.
What’s funny is that when I was standing here 6 years ago it was as the recipient of a Friends of Zainab Scholarship. At that time, I said I wanted to study architecture, but then realised I was leaning more to engineering. To be honest, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do during year 12. But at some point, I had to make a decision particularly given there was a limited time to apply through the Universities Admissions Centre (UAC). I knew I was good at math and science and I also knew I’d have to open a door and try and see if engineering was right for me, keeping in mind that I might change to something else. But I realised I actually liked it and enjoyed it.
Then in my second year, I applied to the CareerSeekers program which help people like me to get a full-time internship. Luckily, I was accepted and in 2nd year during the summer holiday I worked at Lendlease in the delivery team, working on the Victoria Cross railway station project in North Sydney. At that time we were in the design/procurement phase, so we were in an office close by here. Two months later, we moved to North Sydney to be closer to the site, so I saw the project from the initial stages.
I took a year off because my mum was diagnosed with cancer which was really challenging and difficult. A year later, I joined Lendlease again for a second summer holiday and since then I’ve been with them either working with them full-time during the semester to fulfill UTS requirements or part-time. Now we are at the end stage of construction. The good news is that about a week ago, I got a graduate offer from them which is really exciting as, to be honest, I didn’t apply to a lot of grad programs as the time I had designated to do that unfortunately saw my grandma passing away and a week later a very special classmate. So to hear the news that I already got an offer was very relieving and exciting, and I actually started jumping up and down!
Speaking about struggles, I actually thought last year, last semester, that I was going to fail because I was mentally and physically preoccupied. I couldn’t do university work properly, I went through some really hard times, I was going to the emergency because of mum, having a back issue, laying in bed for days, losing a precious parrot for two weeks (fortunately I kept praying until he returned home which was 2 weeks later), then I was like okay we are out of depression we need to do uni work. But then my cousin passed away and that really really affected me and then mum got into a car accident. And all those things take time, time you go through, and time to process things.
So that’s where we are now, life is still going. Why I wanted to mention the few struggles I went through was because I wanted you to know that life will keep going and you’re really tested, but having the right people around you and having awesome people like you wanting to help will push you through life and you do it for the loved ones and you do it for everyone that came to your life and helped you in anyway, either financially or just being there.
I would like to thank the Public Education Foundation for giving me a great opportunity and to be standing here. For me to be standing here means a lot, it’s a big honour. I would also like to thank all the people who are responsible for offering the scholarships that are supporting students including me, and easing the challenges and the obstacles facing us. I am very pleased for the support and the impact these scholarships are doing to our community and building a beautiful future.
