Pathway Explorer Profile: Faran Saeidi
Posted on Thursday, April 21st, 2016
With the blessing of his family, Faran Saeidi came to Canada by himself at age 18 to pursue his dream of a higher education. As a non-Muslim religious minority, Faran was unable to access postsecondary learning back home in Iran.
“I came over here for the opportunity of a better life,” said Faran.
After arriving in Ottawa, he was able to apply 18 credits from his schooling in Tehran toward an Ontario Secondary School Diploma while completing the remaining 12 at Adult High School, one of which is the ‘Career and College Success Skills’ dual credit course at Algonquin.
Once his high school guidance counsellor presented the opportunity of a dual credit course, Faran jumped at the chance to get a head start on his college diploma. Faran will graduate from high school in June and will have an elective credit already completed as he enters full-time studies in Computing Science next Fall.
The ‘Career and College Success Skills’ dual credit course, in which he’s currently maintaining an ‘A’ grade, will count in place of the level one ‘Achieving Success in Changing Environments’ course required for his program.
“The course is really awesome; it’s helped me a lot,” said Faran. “I had a problem with teamwork because I prefer to do things solo. There’s a lot of teamwork in the class, so it’s helped me with that.”
A 90-plus student in mathematics, Faran believes he has a proclivity for picking up coding languages and solving logic problems.
“I’ve worked a lot with visual basic programming on my own. I just really like coding”
– Faran Saeidi, Dual Credit Student
He regularly stays in touch with his family members back in Iran, who are proudly cheering him on as he pursues his dream in Canada.
“I’d like to work in security or IT, but my dream would be to be a game development programmer for Ubisoft.”
About Academic Partnerships:
Pathway Building since 2006. Academic Partnerships works with a comprehensive network of Pathway Builders (community, educational and government stakeholders) to create and deliver on a variety of experiential opportunities to be a college student through hands-on, curriculum-driven experiences for Pathway Explorers (students in grade 7 – 12). With a commitment to the dream development and pathway finding for students prior to starting full-time studies the team has programming at Algonquin College’s three Ontario Campuses: Ottawa, Pembroke, and Perth. For more information visit: algonquincollege.com/ap
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