Emin Hodzic

      Although my road has been rocky and filled with detours beyond my control, the dream of medicine has been pivotal to my life, pulling me forward and directing me like a shining beacon through dark times. As a child growing up in Bosnia, I worked hard, excelled academically and was supported by loving parents. At age 14 I entered a military academy and later went on to marry. That year war came to our neighboring Romania. In Yugoslavia we watched in horror, hoping that the devastation would not visit us. In 1990, when my son was born our nightmares came true and I found myself steeped in death. My father, my sister, my brother and his wife were all killed. Everywhere I turned there was so much death, so much pain. One day a Croatian soldier was burned alive before my eyes. As a military officer I felt somehow responsible, and could not live with the reality of such atrocities. I protested the atrocity to my command. My reward was prison and beatings.
      I responded to death, destruction, pain and imprisonment with a desire to live, vowing to make a new life for my family and myself. In 1992 I escaped, leaving my war-torn homeland for the promise of America. When my family and I arrived in Utica, New York, I did not speak English. Only able to find minimum wage jobs, we lived below the poverty level in unsafe housing, often going without meals and necessary medical help. As an immigrant in Utica, I came to understand very well the desperation, frustration and hopelessness of the poor.
      My life changed three years ago when I entered Hamilton College through a program for capable low-income student parents, called The ACCESS Project. I studied math and science, but I also studied sociology, literature, and communication, allowing me to grow as a thinker, scholar, and as an educated and well-rounded member of the community. With a new set of Hamilton College “family” that supports and encourages me, I have been able to learn and grow. The ACCESS Project helped me to survive the many financial and personal crises that could have stopped me, but did not. They have enabled me to go to school, work, volunteer and care for my family and pursue my dream. They also are there to root for me, to encourage me, to inspire me to keep on going.
      Today, I am a pre-med student. I work, study, care for my family and conduct research. One of my most exciting projects allowed me to research the creation of glass capable of increased amplification. I have also been trained and work as a medical emergency technician and shadow a doctor in a public health clinic two days each week. As I move forward I embrace the challenge of learning everything I can about medicine so that I can be a central, contributing part of the medical community. Out of my experiences of horrible pain and suffering, I will serve others, and in doing so fulfill the dream and vision that has pulled me through dark times. Having once mistaken death for a profession, I will now make healing my life.
 

Photo Exhibit

A nationally touring exhibit of 50 framed, museum quality, color photographs coupled with narratives created by students who are welfare eligible, single parents changing their lives through the pathway of higher education.  The installation presents a unique view of poverty from insiders’ perspectives and reframes the cultural (de)valuations of poor single parents vis-à-vis family, work and higher education in the United States today. View the Gallery Guide.