Fall — 2008

Amir Emami

Nursing

“I watched every episode of ‘ER’ for the last six years in Sweden. And that’s what made me decide to come to America to study.”

As Mohandas Gandhi once famously observed, “The best way to help yourself is to lose yourself in helping others.” Those are the words that Amir Emami—an Iranian raised in Sweden—has taken to heart. “This may sound strange, but I sometimes feel like I was born to be a nurse and to help people. So when I decided to come to America to study, I had a couple of friends tell me about SMC. They told me it’s a great school with great teachers, and that the tuition is low. Plus!” he adds with a laugh. “It’s California! So my choice was quite simple, really.”

Amir has a lot of work to do before he formally enters SMC’s prestigious Nursing program. “Yeah, it’s gonna take about two years of doing my prereqs before I get in. And I have found great teachers here already,” he says in perfect English. “Like my anatomy teacher, Professor Stephanou. She is so funny, and she’s always joking. But she also speaks very clearly and explains a lot of complicated ideas very, very well. I think she inspires us all to learn as much as possible about medicine and how it works in the real world.”

Amir has seen a lot of the world already in his short life. “I was born in Iran, but that was during the Iran/Iraq War, and we emigrated to Sweden when I was two months old. Sometimes, I don’t feel Iranian at all because Swedish was my first language. And there are so many immigrants in Sweden that everybody gets along well and never has to feel ‘foreign.’ What I tell other international students when they come to SMC is, ‘Hey! Get involved in activities and clubs as soon as you can. Don’t just hang out with people from back home. Get out there and meet the Californians!’”

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