‘I was a refugee and now I’m studying a masters’
Laith Rastanawi, 27, is from Syria. He fled to Turkey before winning a scholarship to study a master’s in maths at Freie Universitat Berlin
Every day, to get to university in Aleppo, I had to go through five checkpoints. I would shake at every one, because you never know if they’ll take you to the military and make you fight. But I kept going, because I knew that if I stopped studying, I wouldn’t have anything.
My home village was destroyed so when I graduated I made the dangerous journey to Turkey with my brother to continue my studies. We had to make a story up for when we were stopped, so we said we were going to work on a farm and we wore workers’ clothes and brought farm tools.
But when we got to Turkey, my dreams were shattered. I ended up working in a mobile shop all the time just to pay rent. My fiancée joined me and we had a small wedding and applied for scholarships. After many failed applications, I received funding to study in Germany. It was a dream come true.
Now I’m here, the course is difficult, but my grades are good and I work hard. I study pure mathematics and it’s beautiful because I’m always motivated. I’m still discovering new things in Berlin and my wife, who also studies here, has a checklist of places she wants us to visit. Studying this master’s has changed my future in so many ways.
‘Being in a gang led to prison, now I’m about to start a PhD’
Junior Smart, 40, was in a gang in his teens and was sent to prison for 12 years. He has since achieved a master’s in applied criminology and youth justice and is about to start a PhD
I was 14 when I dropped out of school. I wasn’t a hellish student, but I was struggling and when a teacher told me I’d fail, I left. I fell into a bad crowd and the negative aspects of my personality, like my temper, impressed them and I played up to it.
Once you’ve reached a point of no return, it’s like pushing a boulder down a hill – it gathers momentum and won’t stop. My mother died and a few years after that I ended up behind bars for possession of crack cocaine.
The one thing the Shawshank Redemption gets absolutely right is that the first night in prison is the hardest and the walls really do wail. Prison is terrifying, it’s a place of paranoia and fear and you can’t show emotion, but everyone breaks down at some point.
I wanted to end my life a few times, but education gave me a second chance. I hadn’t read a book before, but I did my GCSEs in prison. I’d help other prisoners by reading letters for them, or with sums in the canteen. I was on a voyage of self discovery. I saw I had potential and just hadn’t realised it.
After I was released, I achieved a first-class degree in youth work from Middlesex University, followed by a master’s in youth crime and criminology, while working at St Giles Trust. I came across a new theory on gang displacement and I’ll be starting a PhD this year to research it.
‘I was homeless in my youth, but I did a master’s at 69’
Sister Avril Landay, 73, was homeless in her twenties. At 69 years old she was given a new lease of life when she started a master’s in music
When I left home to join a nunnery, my family disowned me. It just wasn’t the sort of thing a Brummie, working-class girl was meant to do. After some years I realised the nunnery wasn’t right for me, but with no family to go back to I became homeless when I left.
I spent the next few years living in fields. I got a cushion cover and a piece of curtain out of a dustbin for clothes. I lived off food from litter bins. The worst thing was trying to keep clean, which you can’t really do. I hitchhiked and spent time living in a squat in London with heroin addicts, where I tried my best to help people. Once I was woken up by someone holding a knife to my throat.
Eventually I got a room in an attic and worked as a carer for an older lady, before finally becoming a piano teacher. In my late sixties, I thought it was now or never. I had talents I hadn’t used, so I studied a music degree and a master’s to improve my piano lessons.
It’s difficult to study a master’s at 69, because I often get exhausted. But music has always had great importance in my life. Studying it has enriched my experience of it.
‘I was 10 when I started school, now I’m studying at Oxford’
Ndakuna Fonso Amidou is from a village in Cameroon. He is studying an MSc in social science of the internet and an MBA, both at the University of Oxford
Where I grew up, people said that you were ready to go to school when you could reach your hand around your head and touch your ear. So I started when I was 10 years old.
I enjoyed it but there was no electricity and no computers, so I’d study alone using a lamp. I later worked as a nurse because I wanted to help people. My grandmother had died of a wound that could have been treated and I saw people suffering because they couldn’t pay for a doctor, so I set up a small clinicwith around £3,000 of my savings.
Then I went to the UK, where I worked 40 hours a week in the NHS and did a degree in electrical engineering at Brunel University at the same time.
I later returned home and was shocked that healthcare hadn’t improved. If anything, it seemed worse. I wanted to expand my clinic, so I applied to study an MBA at the University of Oxford. I never imagined I would go but you’ve got to dream big and, little by little, it became more of a realistic possibility in my head.
After getting a scholarship to do the course, I’m now learning about fundraising and how to do accounting for a large organisation, so it will give me the skills to expand my clinic. When things are tough I look at where I’ve come from and it spurs me on. Education is such a transformative tool. I may have started late, but since I discovered it, I haven’t stopped.
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