Reviewer: Theresa Ranft Let me start my talk by asking
everyone in this hall a question: 'Have you ever lost hope in life? Have you ever experienced
the hopelessness feeling? A painful feeling that might cause you
severe mental health problems, a painful feeling that might lead you
to drugs or alcohol addiction?' Hopefully, the answer is 'No' and hopefully you will
never experience such feeling. In this exact moment
that I am speaking to you millions are losing hope
and millions have already lost it, especially those who live in war zones. When people lose hope,
they lose their motivation, they lose their persistence, they give up their goals and dreams and they lose their energy. And the main reason why they do so is because they believe
they are unable to change their reality and influence the factors
surrounding them. Well, I'll try today
to change this misconception. By the way, I am from this place - Syria, a place that almost everyone
on this earth has heard about because of the on-going war. But today I'm not going
to tell you stories about how Syrian kids
are freezing in camps, how half of my country has been destroyed, and how half of my people
have been displaced. Today I'm going to tell you
a different kind of story; a story that has something similar
to Yusra Mardini and Rami Anis, the two Syrians who made it
to the Olympics last year; a story that has something similar
to Abdul Rahman Alashraf, the Syrian guy who won
the European Youth Award for inventing an application that allows smartphones
to communicate offline. And my story is very humble
compared to those stories, and to several other stories
of people who challenged the war to achieve their goals and dreams. And it's not a unique story as well. In fact, it's the story of thousands whom I'm trying to be
their voice here today, to hopefully regenerate the hope
inside those who have lost it. My story started in 2012. After seeing my country being destroyed
and the economy collapsing, after seeing my people killing each other, after seeing the hate, vandalism and crime spreading massively in my country, I lost hope. I lost my motivation and persistence, I gave up my goals and dreams
and I lost all of my energy. And as an ambitious person, I was dying not from the war
that was surrounding me, I was dying from the hopelessness feeling, a feeling like there is a knife stabbed
in my heart and I cannot take it out; a feeling, if I were
to describe it in two words, I would say 'dying slowly'. This situation continued for six months
until I reached rock bottom where I was ready to do anything
to alleviate my suffering. And on one specific day in 2012, the day that I will
never forget in my life, I decided to take
the most important decision ever - I decided to move out
of the hopelessness zone. On that day, the situation in Syria
changed dramatically and a brutal battle started in my city. And I still remember
every single moment of that day. I still remember looking
at my neighbourhood from my flat, seeing people panicking, stores closing, and soldiers spreading
all over the place putting checkpoints. I still remember seeing the fear
inside people's eyes from not knowing what tomorrow will bring. I still remember myself sitting
on my couch, hopelessly, no electricity, only the candle and my cigarette light
I used to smoke at that time; and everything I was hearing was the non-stop
intensive bullets and missiles five kilometres away from me. I was sitting with
all this pain inside me, reviewing my life, my dreams, my goals,
how all of them are fading away. And I said to myself, 'This should be the end. Today I might die as a collateral damage if this battle five kilometres away
reaches my neighbourhood. But if for any reason I survive that day, tomorrow is going to be a new day
in my life; a new start'. Eventually, I survived that day
and the battle didn't reach my area. No hopelessness anymore,
no negativity anymore, no sit and do nothing anymore. This is what I decided on that day. Here I would like to share
the first message with people who have lost hope
or who might lose hope in the future: please know what triggers
your inner power. Hopelessness is something inside you. It's caused by external factors
but it comes from inside, and the solution
comes from inside as well. Don’t count on anyone
to get you out of there, just get rid of all negativity and understand what triggers
your inner power. For me, it was seeing my dreams and goals
fading away in front of my eyes that triggered me to do something
to change my reality. For you, it might be your wife, your kids,
your husband, goals or dreams, any of these things. And if you don’t have any of these things,
then do it for yourself, do it for the sake
of not living with this painful feeling. My goal was very simple: to study a master's degree
in one the best universities in the UK. For some, studying a master's degree is like climbing ten metres
over the mountain. But for me, it was like climbing Everest, climbing Everest
with no climbing equipment and in the middle of a storm. For me to study
a master's degree in the UK, I needed to learn
a new language from scratch, I needed to save every pound
of my salary for ten years, or to have a scholarship. I needed to learn how to write essays,
motivation letters, personal statements, filling applications, all of these things
which I didn’t know at that time. And here I would like to share with you
my second message for today: know which mountain you want to climb and understand the needed
equipment to climb it. In other words, know your goals. It might sound as a cliché,
'know your goals', doesn't it? Then why don’t a lot of people
know what their goal in life is? Not having a very clear goal in life
is like sailing without a destination. Do you want to sail without a destination? I don’t think so. And most importantly,
know how to achieve it, know its requirements. So after I understood my goal
and its requirements I started pursuing them day and night. I started waking up
at 5 o’clock in the morning when nobody interrupts me,
to study English. And I struggled to learn the language. I struggled because, in my country,
we don’t exercise English neither in our daily life, nor in the professional field,
nor in the academic field. And it was so difficult to study
a language without exercising it. It was like learning how to drive
theoretically and not practically. But that was fine. Three years of hard working
I managed to achieve my target in IELTS. In fact, the difficult part
was in the second requirement: the funding. It's impossible to save every pound
of my salary for ten years, and a scholarship was not an option
for me at that time because almost all scholarships
require a high GPA in the undergrad -- which I didn't have. And I cannot go back in time
and change my undergraduate grades, and I needed to figure out something
to solve this big obstacle, to move this big rock out of my way. And I said to myself, 'If I can’t go back in time
and change my undergraduate grades, then I will go forward'. And I decided to enrol in a part-time
master degree in Syria just to improve my academic history. And I struggled again. I struggled to balance my life. I had a wife, a kid, a full-time job,
learning English and doing master's. But I managed to achieve
my target again - a GPA of 3.2. I managed to do so by exploiting
every single moment of my day, especially the daily time that I used
to spend while stopping at checkpoints. I managed to exploit this time
through reading academic articles and learning English vocabularies. So it took me three consecutive years
of hard working, not to achieve my goal but just to be eligible to submit
an application and enter the competition along with thousands of candidates, to a scholarship
with an acceptance rate of less than 4%. Here I would like to share
two important messages. The first one: if you don’t have
the equipment to climb your mountain, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. They are out there somewhere and you just need
to work hard to get them. And the second message:
know what keeps you climbing. Achieving your goal might be
a daunting task that might take you years. It depends on what your goal is
and what you already have to achieve it. And you need to have
a very strong motivation to put this continuous effort
over a long period of time. For me, it was my unlimited will
to secure a better future for my wife, for my kid and for myself. Everyone should have something
that motivates them. Please discover it,
you will really need it. So, as I said previously, I was trying
to climb in the middle of a storm. And what I meant is the conditions
that were surrounding me while trying to achieve my goal. I used to live in a place where you only
see electricity nine hours per day, a place where sometimes I needed
to wear four or five layers of clothes to survive the cold winter, not because I couldn't afford fuel
but because it was unavailable in my city. So imagine 40 degrees
in the summer, no air conditioning, and zero degrees in the winter
with no heating. I used to live in a place where the sound of mortars,
bullets, jet fighters and missiles don’t stop. You hear them on a daily basis. And personally, I survived death
more than ten times from mortars. And all of these deadly events
have happened to me in a 50-metre radius. The economy was collapsing;
I lost 80% of my salary. So imagine losing 80% of your salary
while having the same level of expenses. My university was located
in an unstable area, so the journey to my university was one of those journeys
that might have a bad ending. And it was located near a military base. So imagine sitting in a lecture theatre
or meeting your supervisor and every now and then
you hear missiles launching or you feel the building shaking. And lastly, unfortunately,
the closest people to me, the closest, didn’t support me during this journey. So imagine climbing
your mountain in such a storm, imagine achieving your goal
and studying in such conditions. All of the previous were like
heavy rocks, raindrops, winds, hitting my persistence and determination
while trying to achieve my goal. And bear in mind
that this is the situation of millions, and it was considered a heaven
compared to other people. During this journey, I failed eight times and received those 'unfortunately'
emails eight times. And I was so close to giving up. Here I would like to share with you
my last message for today. No matter what circumstances
you are living, it's up to you to overcome
your difficulties, it's up to you to stand
on your feet after each failure. Failure is a normal part of the journey and don't blame the world when you fail, because when you're doing so you’re just giving yourself
a very good reason to quit. Failure should be like a break
in the journey, a short break, where you take a breath and analyse
how things could be done better. I still remember
when I failed the eighth time. And I said to myself, 'That's it. I'm not going to waste my time
any more on these things'. Then I asked myself a question. 'Do you want to go back
to the hopelessness swamp? Do you want to lose everything
you've done so far? Do you don’t want to live
as a loser in this life?' And I decided to take
this one step further, and I decided to apply for the ninth time, and I discovered that I was
about to surrender one step of achieving my goal. One step. If I hadn’t taken that one step, I wouldn’t have stood today
here in front of you On the ninth try, I've done it. I received this 'congratulations' email. One of the best moments of my life was seeing the four-year efforts
translated into an outcome, a moment that washed away
all the suffering immediately. And here is me along with my colleagues receiving one of the most competitive
scholarships in the world - Chevening Scholarship. A scholarship provided
by the UK government to highly-qualified
international students. Last year, more than 41,000 candidates
applied to this scholarship. So I won my scholarship
and I arrived in Scotland, super excited to achieve
my goal, super happy. And I thought, 'That's it,
no storms anymore. Now I can focus on achieving my goal'. But I was wrong. Living away from my family
who live in a war zone caused me several waves
of severe depression. In a certain period, my kid was refusing
to speak to me over Skype, refusing to speak to me over the phone, simply because he could not understand
why his dad is not here anymore, why his dad is not playing
with him anymore, not hugging him anymore. So imagine how that impacted me. But I know he will understand
when he grows up. With the support that I received
from the University of Glasgow, my professors, my friends
and the wonderful Glaswegian people; with my determination
to make my family proud of me and to show that we can achieve
no matter what, I managed to overcome
this difficult period, and I achieved a distinction as well. Because as I said previously it's up to you to overcome
your difficulties. If you want, you can. So, my talk has almost reached its end and I would like to end it by sharing
with you my own vision. Developing people. In this world, not everyone
is privileged like you and me to build strong capabilities
and to have a strong education. Inspired by Syrian societies, societies that promote
transferring the knowledge, societies like I Give, Institute of Human
Resource Management, and My Doctor, inspired by those non-profit societies, I want to become a social entrepreneur
who facilitates transferring the knowledge between those who have it and those who need it
and cannot afford it. I want to help people
continue their education, and I have already started working
on achieving this vision through participating in establishing
the Syrian Network in Glasgow. A network of qualified people
that one of its main aims is to help Syrians
continue their education. So five years ago I was sinking
in the hopelessness swamp, and today I am standing here
in front of you, a person with two master's degrees
with distinctions, preparing for my third one. I'm standing here as a part
of a global network of 46,000 Chevening alumni who work together to solve
the world's problems. And in the future,
I will stand here again, but then as a social entrepreneur who helps others achieve
their goals and dreams. And all of that not because I was lucky, but because I refused to surrender. And I urge you, and I urge everyone who has lost hope or who might lose it in the future: don't surrender. I know that you've gone through
a very difficult time, believe me, I can feel you. But please understand something - we need you. We need the doctor, the entrepreneur,
the psychologist, the lawyer, journalist, that you have dreamt of being. We need you to stand on your feet
and help others to do so. We need the smile
that was stolen from your face. We need you here on this stage,
not in the hopelessness swamp. Please keep climbing and don't surrender. Please. Thank you. (Applause)
