My name is Dr. Sharifa Nu’man Al Emadi. I received my doctorate in Family Counseling from Manchester Metropolitan Universityin the United Kingdom. I also obtained a master’s degree in marital counseling from the same university and received a diploma in psychological counseling at Qatar University. On top of that, I completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and Social Work. I started by mentioning my full name in order to stress my father’s name, as he played a huge role in my life and in helping me reach this stage. He used to tell me, “I love to hear my name in your interviews, it makes me very proud”. He always believed in my siblings and I; he used to tell us that we were his greatest blessing, and when asked about his wealth he would mention us as he believed that our success was also his. My mother also had a great influence on my life. She was one of the Qatari mothers who had not received an education herself; she did not read or write but had always urged us to study. So, I appreciate my family’s role in my success.  The society’s culture is not based on education, but it is rather based on personal experience which shapes decisions. That is why I appreciate my parents’ generation who raised us on the importance of education, as they did not necessarily have an educational experience themselves but still advocated for it. Since I was young, I was passionate about reading psychology books. What truly encouraged me to read more was my family’s habit of buying books whenever we traveled. I remember my father always making sure that we visited the museums and libraries of the country we were in, and our luggage would be filled with books.  My father had a big impact on my studies. He observed what kind of books that my siblings and I chose to read and tried to direct us, indirectly, to specialize and major in the fields that we were reading. Therefore, I was interested to major in psychology, but this major was not available at Qatar University at the time. I wanted to go study in Egypt because my father frequently visited it by virtue of his work, but my mother rejected the idea. I was saddened to learn that I was unable to study the specialization that I loved, and so I refused to go to university altogether. It was quite a shock for my family, because of how highly we value education. After a while though, I decided to major in something that is roughly similar to psychology, which was social services. Due to my GPA in my first year of University, I was forced to change majors to study sociology instead of social services. At the time, however, I was shocked to learn that there were students who were able to specialize in social services who had a lower GPA than I did. This was the second disappointment that I experienced in my academic endeavor, as I was very saddened by my inability to register in the major I wanted. However, I excelled a lot in sociology, and was especially interested in forensics. Something that allowed me to accept all these changes in my academic life was religion, as even though we are born Muslim, through life and experience we get to learn that it is the true religion . I say this because when I went to the United Kingdom to get a masters degree, I was intent on learning English in my first year and then complete my masters within two years. Fortunately, British universities changed their curriculum, and instead of doing a master’s in sociology in two years it was changed to one year. Here I realized that no matter what changes might occur, there will always be a positive side to it and that Allah knows what is best for his servants. After graduating with a sociology degree, my family was not very keen on the idea of me working as a social worker in a ministry. Therefore, I pursued a career at the Ministry of Education, and became a mathematics teacher for the fourth grade. I found myself analyzing the characters of the students from a psychological and social perspective. I stayed there for only one academic year, during which I was fortunate to sit with Mrs. Sheikha Al-Mahmoud, who was the undersecretary of the Ministry of Education at the time. I explained my situation to her, from what I studied and to what I was interested in.  Surprisingly, following our conversation the ministry’ announced its need for sociology teachers to develop a sociology curriculum for the secondary level. Around six hundred people applied to answer the call, but only three of them were chosen, including myself. I immediately started teaching at a high school, and I obtained a Diploma in Psychological Counseling during this period. When I got my diploma, I applied for a master’s and doctoral studies. The Scholarship Committee repeatedly rejected my application, but I continued to apply. Thankfully, I was selected after a while and went to study in the UK.