By Yosef Nemanpour
You don’t hear so often Jewish parents telling their children not to go to college, not to pursue a higher degree. It’s almost thought of as a fundamental to Jewish value. My parents' values were slightly different. Iranian Jews are known for their business-minded methods and it proved helpful in the midst of the Iranian revolution. After my parents fled Tehran, Iran following the Iranian revolution of 1979 they came to Los Angeles and immediately opened a business—they worked long hours and luckily were extremely successful.
With this in mind, when they had their first child—that's me—my parents could not really assist me in figuring out my college plans. They had never been. I had support from my high school but never the intimate personal assistance that would come from home. It was something I had to figure out myself. This is what led to me attending three different colleges to date. Yeshiva University, Santa Monica College, and UCLA. I truly believe that I have done the best I could do with the resources I had available to me.
As a junior at UCLA, I have been thinking of what my options are for graduate school in the near future. Without a single family member who has been to graduate school, I was very worried that I would end up on the trajectory of making the not-the-best decisions in terms of where, when, and in what to pursue my graduate degree.
In a funny way, The Nachshon Project has become my family in terms of giving career advice and future planning. I feel that following this experience I have the resources I need to make an informed decision on my options for my graduate learning. Of the resources, one of the most assuring and helpful is Professor Joe Reimer who not only gave an in-depth overview of the difference between undergraduate programs and graduate programs, but also what we should be looking for in our graduate degrees. Without learning from Professor Reimer I may have ended up on another unfulfilling winding path to somewhere that is once again the not-the-best institution for my personal, academic, and career development. I am so thankful for all the resources I have been given this semester, especially the insights of Professor Reimer.
