A week ago last Friday, Nour Alsammarai and I met in the Captain’s House to

videotape the second installment of “5 Minutes Student Interviews.” For those of you

who would like to see the interview in it’s entirety, please look for it on the Beacon

WordPress and Facebook web sites.

Nour Alsammarai who is the second oldest of 6 children, she has 3 brothers 2

sisters, is from Irag. Her family first lived in Basrah then moved to Bagdad, and in 2005

they moved to Kuwait for reasons of safety where they lived for 4 years.

In 2009 Nour and her family made it to the United States. Nour went to Portland

High School for 9th through 12th grades. While ”it was difficult to communicate with

others students and made friends,” earning her high school diploma, and enrolled at

SMCC where she took the Accuplacer test to evaluate her skills in English. Before

getting into her major, Nour had take ESL classes in order to improve her ability to

understand and speak the English language.

Her first concentration was Medical Assistant but as “she wasn’t finding herself in

that field,” she decided to change concentrations and choose Business Accounting where

she feels comfortable. Once she gets her degree, Nour wants to work for her father who

runs a car dealership business and would also like to run her own saloon business.

Nour also sees a family in her future hopefully with 3 children, two boys and 1

girl, living here in Maine.

As education remains important to her, Nour would like to see her siblings and

her future kids completing their education at SMCC, “because it’s a good place to start

and they will receive all support they need.”

Thank you Nour for taking the time to sit and share with me, and the SMCC

community a part of your life’s journey as we are so glad to have you here.