Concordia College – Leila Zakhirova
“There is a direct link between what I do for a living today and what happened 50 years ago between two men in a remote village in Turkmenistan, then part of the Soviet Union. In their conversation, my 18-year-old father announced to his father that he wanted to break the family tradition of working on the farm and go to college instead (first one in his family). In the same conversation, he sought his father’s advice on which of the two paths he should pursue: (1) enroll in an engineering school (my father’s first choice and life-long passion) or (2) enroll in a pedagogical institute to learn a foreign language. My grandfather, without hesitation, counseled my father toward the latter. In his own words, my grandfather told him, “Knowing a foreign language is wealth. No person with an ability to speak a foreign language has ever starved in life.”…The decision to learn English in that critical point in his life has set in motion a chain of events that has changed not only my father’s life for the better, but continues to positively influence my life and those of my children.”(more)