間眅埶AV

The sun is shining through the windows as 間眅埶AV (間眅埶AV) Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology (BPK) graduate Saba Hosseini checks in for a Zoom call during a break at BC Children���s Hospital Research Institute, where she works as a research assistant. 

���I feel really lucky to be here,��� she says, ���and I think my BPK journey led me to it, helped prepare me to be the sort of person for this place.���

If you���d asked Hosseini six years ago, this is not where she expected to end up. She had just finished grade 11 in Iran when she made the snap decision to come to Canada. ���I was just a kid,��� she says. ���I chose to leave, and my parents made real sacrifices to support that choice.��� 

It was a leap with a rocky landing. She arrived in Vancouver in July 2019 to finish high school knowing very little English. A few months later the world locked down for COVID-19 and she was alone in a foreign country. 

She enrolled in general science at Langara College where Professor Simon Casey helped her improve her English. While at Langara, she connected with 間眅埶AV science recruiter Claire Wilson and science advisor Maisie Morsara. 

���You can feel it when you meet someone,��� she says. ���Life was so chaotic before that. I didn���t have a stable place to live, work or study, but meeting Maisie and Claire made me feel like it���s going to be fine. 間眅埶AV can be your home.��� She moved into residence the following January.

At 間眅埶AV she began to connect with her biomedical physiology and kinesiology professors and became interested in their research. ���Sometimes you see people and you don���t necessarily want to do what they do,��� she says, ���but they���re so passionate and charismatic that you think, oh my god, I want to be like that!���

One of those people was BPK professor Peter Ruben, who hired her to work in the Molecular Cardiac Physiology Group researching the electrophysiological properties of the cells. In the lab she gained hands-on research experience and got the chance to present her work at conferences.

Now that she���d discovered that she enjoyed research she set her sights on a highly competitive Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) position in professor Dylan Cooke���s lab. 

���I really wanted to get that USRA position, but they actually rejected me the first year,��� she recalls. ���I was so frustrated. I asked why did that happen to me? But now, looking back, I���m so thankful that happened to me.��� When she tried again the following year she was the top-ranked applicant. 

���I learned patience and that things happen when you are ready. And it doesn���t change who you really are. If you get a setback, it���s just a matter of time. If it���s for you, it���s going to come.���

At the hospital Hosseini has found that the work can be challenging and mistakes have more serious consequences than they do in the classroom, but knowing that she is helping people makes her job rewarding. 

���I really love it here,��� she says. ���I come every morning around the sunrise and bow my head down to the hospital because here there are so many people fighting for life, for a bit of light. And I really respect that because it���s not easy. It takes a warrior spirit. I want to be in that building.���

Looking back, Hosseini wishes she���d been told that everyone is doing the best they can from different starting points. She wants to remind students not to compare themselves to other people and just focus on what success means to them.

���Every day I call my dad and joke that I���m coming back to Iran; that this life isn���t working for me when things get hard. We���ve been having that same conversation for six years, almost every day. And every time, we end up agreeing: just stay one more day. Fight one more day.���

���I think with everything life throws at you, it can break your heart and tear through your soul,��� she says. ���But let that break be a window, one that opens your heart, open to uncertainty, to hardship, to pain. Because in the end, it���s about how you choose to respond, how you rise, who you fight for, and who you choose to be. Life is hard and it���s easy to feel defeated. But you have to fight to find that power, because you have it.���