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Merge 104.8 | 31 August 2020
Hasna Mohammed Al Dawoodi is about to graduate from university. Studying for her Bachelor of Business Management at the Arab Open University in Oman, Hasna hopes to be among the top batch of graduating students, scoring 3.9 GPA in her final semester of study in 2020.
It’s a sense of achievement that runs deep for Hasna, whose resilience and passion to pursue her goals of life-long learning will finally see her take home her university degree 27 years after obtaining her general high school diploma.
Speaking to Merge 104.8’s sister station Al Wisal, Hasna says she was always enthusiastic about education throughout her life — starting from when she was a young child at the age of eight. Living with her family in Kuwait at the time, her father would order boxes of books from Oman, which led her to fall in love with reading.
As a youth, she says, she had no option of choosing her education and career and, instead, got married at the age of 16 while she was still in school. “I got a grade of 87 per cent in my last year [of high school],” she says.
“Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) approached our school and offered me a choice of spots in their College of Medicine or College of Science and my family tried to convince my father to allow me to do my Bachelors,” she explains. “But the society back then didn’t see education as something that is important to me, and I had to follow their point of view.”
It wasn’t until several decades after marriage, with her children grown, that Hasna felt she could push forward with her dreams of study. “I was blessed with a good and supportive husband,” she says. “We had six boys and all are independent now, so I felt that now I can continue my education. I thought that my role as housewife won’t be affected if I started going out and contributing to society — so, in 2009, I began pursuing entrepreneurship to be financially independent and help my husband, as his income was limited.”
Take courses in many different fields to aid her in her entrepreneurial endeavours, Hasna was also helping her brothers with their college studies in order to improve her general knowledge and English language skills.
All the while she began to gain success in entrepreneurship, starting her own business of setting up food and drink vending machines in public and private companies and buildings in Oman.
“It was a good project that didn’t require 24/7 management,” she says. “It was successful in South Ash Sharqiyah for five years, before we ran into technical issues with the machines. In Oman it is not easy to find a technician who can fix such problems and, at that time, I couldn’t get a loan from the Al Raffd Fund to hire someone who could help me.”
In 2013, she stopped the venture and opened a new commercial registration for an events management company with operations in South Ash Sharqiyah and Muscat — which is still going strong seven years later.
With an array of courses in entrepreneurship under her belt, Hasna also offers her services in business consultancy to organizations. Yet, with all her hard work and achievements, the only mountain still left to climb was to obtain her degree.
Enrolling to study Business Management at the Arab Open University, Hasna says her fellow students and colleagues were extremely positive and supported her despite of her age gap. Now, with her Bachelors degree in-hand, she hopes to pursue her Masters in Business Management at Sultan Qaboos University next.
Looking back on her journey of persistence and passion to achieve her dreams, Hasna has an important message for other women who are striving to balance a family life while furthering their studies and careers.
“In Oman, some women might face challenges in multi-tasking — especially with giving priority to family and work, but time always give you opportunity and you need to be super-woman,” she says.
“You can work and raise a family — don’t wait or delay your dreams because of inner fear. Your only enemy against success is yourself. Though fear is natural, going on this adventure will help you feel a sense of victory that no one can take from you — even if you wait for 40 or 50 years for that adventure to come. If you told me 25 years ago that this would be my future…I wouldn’t even have imagined that.”
