Living the Irish dream

Living the Irish dream


Anton McNulty

IN the United States they call it the American Dream. A foreign national arrives with no grasp of the English language and through hard work and dedication manages to thrive and prosper.
When Umair Majeed arrived in Ireland along with his sisters and mother to join their father who had worked in Ballinrobe, he was in that same position. The now 19-year-old had come to Ballinrobe from the bustling city of Lahore - the second largest in Pakistan - with no English and everything seemed alien to him.
“Everything was so different than compared to what I was used to in Pakistan. I came from a big city where you could get anything you want at 4am and you can’t get anything here after 10pm. It was very tough at the start because I had no English and it was a whole new environment for me,” he said.
Umair enrolled in Ballinrobe Community School and admitted that initially he had no clue what was going on. However with the help of the teachers and other pupils they helped him settle in and he started to learn English, with a mixture of a Pakistani and south Mayo accent.
“The school really helped me a lot in the beginning and after one year I was nearly fluent in English. When I arrived I went into Transition Year and I had nothing to do but to learn English. As time went by I got to learn from the other pupils who helped me and it was good.”
With a keen interest in maths and science, there was no surprise that the subjects he chose to study were Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Engineering, Biology and English. Just to give him another challenge he also chose to study Applied Maths in his final year but because they did not have the class in Ballinrobe he had to travel to Galway twice a week for classes.
Despite getting an A2 in Applied Maths and a B1 in Honours Maths and enough points to study Mechanical Engineering in NUI Galway, Umair admits that he squeezed too much into the last year.
“My teacher used to say you need at least five years to do this subject and I did Applied Maths and Biology in one year. I only had two classes in Applied Maths a week and you really need to have more than two. It was hard and in hindsight I shouldn’t have done that because those subjects took up a lot of time. Overall I was happy with what I got,” he said.