NorQuest graduate believes learning has no expiry date
“I know in my heart that we humans can do so much more than we know."
There was a time when NorQuest College alumna Rdina Chehayeb (‘98) didn’t feel she could follow her desire of lifelong learning. Raised for many years in Canada, but moving back to her birthplace of Lebanon and married at 18, her life path at the time didn’t include college or university.
“Because I left Canada to go back to Lebanon right after high school, I didn’t pursue post-secondary, but I always wanted to. That was always a passion of mine.”
Over time, that yearning only grew stronger. Years later, and now back in Edmonton with two young children - including a son with a disability - it was that time.
“I said to myself, ‘my son is my priority. If I can find a good home for him, and good help for him, then I am going to try one semester and see how it goes.’ So I did my research and I found that NorQuest is the best place to be. I registered for academic upgrading not knowing what I was getting into. But when I got there, my love for math and chemistry started to come back and I finished my first year with flying colours. And then I thought, ‘well, I am not stopping now.’”
Today Chehayeb is a graduate of not only NorQuest College (she was valedictorian that year, too), but of the University of Alberta, where she earned a chemical engineering degree with honours when she was 38 years old. To top that off, she decided that she wasn’t going to pursue a life as an engineer, and focused on finance banking on her undergrad studies to find a job.
Today she is a financial educator with the World Financial Group, a company that serves the needs of middle-income individuals and families across North America.
“My education opened my eyes to so much. I would walk around the campus and would see this faculty and that faculty and it made me realize that even after all I had accomplished, that there is still so much I didn’t know. It just opened this hunger inside of me to know more and a feeling that we should never stop learning.”
My education opened my eyes to so much. I would walk around the campus and it made me realize that even after all I had accomplished, that there is still so much I didn’t know. It just opened this hunger inside of me to know more.