Summer — 2007

Jasmine Guven

ESL/Psychology

“We are people without a country. But the most important thing is to have your freedom. And I have that now.”

The ‘brand new baby’ was in only her sixth week at SMC and is—quite possibly—the only Kurdish-Swedish skiing expert in the world. “My family lived in the area between Turkey and Iraq, and because we are Kurdish, the Turkish government would not accept us. So we had to leave all the political problems, and I grew up in Sweden. And I don’t like to brag,” says Jasmine Guven with a laugh, “but I really am a good skier!”

From the slippery slopes of Middle Eastern conflicts and ethnic persecutions, Jasmine has now landed on the shores of a ‘New World’ once again. “A friend came to SMC, and then told my mother that this is such a good school and the best way to get to UCLA,” says Jasmine. “I have to study English a lot because the grammar is so different from Swedish. But what I soon want to do is to begin my studies in psychology. And I mean child psychology. Because I’m from the Middle East, I know a lot about culture clashes and what this can do to the children. It’s like, you move to a new country, and your parents want to keep their old culture,” she explains. “But the kids want to be part of the new culture, so there can be a lot of destructive things in this situation. I think I can be very helpful because I can relate to all of these problems. Not many people think about the children,” she adds. “But I do.”

And these days Jasmine is discovering ‘children’ from all over the world at SMC. “I’m so interested in other cultures, and here you can meet people from the whole world!” she says enthusiastically. “I meet the Koreans, the Japanese, the Serbs, the Africans... and I want to make friends of them all. I just don’t think there is any other school like SMC that the whole world comes to.”

Back