In Bangladesh, there are a lot of stigmas prevailing among the mass people about the students of the National University, as it is often considered that they are not as talented as their counterparts from the public universities.
The notion is not true; we can especially say it louder when we see students from National University excelling in public and corporate sectors. Some of them are even making it to universities abroad.
Ishrat Jahan, a former English literature student at MuminunNesa Government College under the National University, has a story that inspires in many different ways. She is currently working as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Memphis in the United States, reported Bangla daily Prothom Alo.
Like many other Bangladeshi students, Ishrat appeared for the admission tests of some public universities. She was on the waiting list for a lot of those universities. She decided not to wait for it and got herself admitted to the department of English of MuminunNesa Government College, which is a constituent college of the National University.
The journey of Ishrat was not quite smooth at the beginning; the infamous session jams of the National University delayed the start of the classes.
Many people often taunted her for being an English literature student, and that too at the National University, reminding her that her potential job prospects were not up to the mark.
She started her classes in 2010, and it was not until 2016 that she was able to sit for her final examination for her bachelor's degree.
Many of her classmates were opting for government jobs; however, Ishrat had a different career plan. She stood first during the examinations for her bachelor's degree. Her practical knowledge was not up to the mark despite having good theoretical knowledge, she told Prothom Alo.
So she started preparing to apply abroad at the end of her Master's degree in 2018. She was not confident enough about her abilities, even though she kept preparing for the GRE and searched for universities that offered funding for the discipline of English literature.
She got full funding for admission to the department of sociology at the University of Memphis, and she didn't have to look behind her after that.
Despite initial struggles in adjusting to the hectic academic schedule of the USA, she obtained her Master's degree in 2022, where her research topic was the inequality in the health facilities for women in Bangladesh.
She got an offer letter to become an adjunct faculty member at the Department of Sociology at the University of Memphis earlier this year.
Ishrat Jahan's success is an example of dismantling the popular stereotype persisting in Bangladesh, and she is one of many in this regard.
