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Coding Your Future: A Guidebook for Students

26 Eman’s Story

Meet Eman Ahsan, shown in figure 26.1. Eman graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science with Industrial Experience. She completed her placement year at Bentley Motors in Crewe (see section 26.7) and volunteers for Code Your Future, an organisation that trains refugees and disadvantaged people to write code, codeyourfuture.io.

Eman Ahsan linkedin.com/in/emanahsan. Picture re-used from LinkedIn with permission, thanks Eman.

Figure 26.1: Eman Ahsan linkedin.com/in/emanahsan. Picture re-used from LinkedIn with permission, thanks Eman.

Listen to the episode by clicking Play ▶️ below, or subscribing wherever you get your podcasts, see section 24.2. An annotated and edited transcript of the audio is shown below.

26.1 What’s Your Story Eman?

An edited podcast transcript will appear here in due course. In the meantime the raw transcript can be found here with highlights from One Tune, One Book, One Podcast and One Film and some initial show notes below.

26.2 One Tune

For her music, Eman chose Tu Jhoom performed by Naseebo Lal and Abida Parveen, see figure 26.2.

Coke Studio Pakistan (Urdu: کوک اِسٹوڈیو) is a television programme which features studio-recorded music performances by established and emerging artists. Tu Jhoom at youtu.be/7D4vNcK6D38 featured on series 14. (Lal and Parveen 2022) If you don’t speak Urdu, turn captions on in YouTube to translate the lyrics into English. Fair use image from commons.wikimedia.org 🇵🇰

Figure 26.2: Coke Studio Pakistan (Urdu: کوک اِسٹوڈیو) is a television programme which features studio-recorded music performances by established and emerging artists. Tu Jhoom at youtu.be/7D4vNcK6D38 featured on series 14. (Lal and Parveen 2022) If you don’t speak Urdu, turn captions on in YouTube to translate the lyrics into English. Fair use image from commons.wikimedia.org 🇵🇰

26.3 One Book

For her book(s), Eman chose A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, see figure 26.3.

Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel The Kite Runner was a critical and commercial success; the book and his subsequent novels have all been at least partially set in Afghanistan and have featured an Afghan as the protagonist. Hosseini’s novels have enlightened the global audience about Afghanistan’s people and culture. CC BY licensed portrait of Khaled Hosseini via Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/ApdT adapted using the Wikipedia app 🇦🇫

Figure 26.3: Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel The Kite Runner was a critical and commercial success; the book and his subsequent novels have all been at least partially set in Afghanistan and have featured an Afghan as the protagonist. Hosseini’s novels have enlightened the global audience about Afghanistan’s people and culture. CC BY licensed portrait of Khaled Hosseini via Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/ApdT adapted using the Wikipedia app 🇦🇫

26.4 One Podcast

For her podcast, Eman chose the True Crime Podcast Serial Killers

26.5 One Film

For her film, Eman chose The Terminal, see figure 26.4 (Spielberg 2004)

The Terminal is a 2004 American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci. The film is about an Eastern European man who is stuck in New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport terminal when he is denied entry to the United States, but is unable to return to his native country. (Spielberg 2004) Fair use image from commons.wikimedia.org ✈️

Figure 26.4: The Terminal is a 2004 American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci. The film is about an Eastern European man who is stuck in New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport terminal when he is denied entry to the United States, but is unable to return to his native country. (Spielberg 2004) Fair use image from commons.wikimedia.org ✈️

26.6 Studio Selfie

Eman took this studio selfie at the end of the podcast, see figure 26.5

A selfie from the Coding Your Future studio 🤳

Figure 26.5: A selfie from the Coding Your Future studio 🤳

26.7 Bentley Motors in Crewe

Eman did a year long placement at Bentley Motors in Crewe, see figure 26.6

Eman working at Bentley Motors, see careers.bentleymotors.com. Collage of pictures reproduced with permission. (Ahsan 2023)

Figure 26.6: Eman working at Bentley Motors, see careers.bentleymotors.com. Collage of pictures reproduced with permission. (Ahsan 2023)

26.8 Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

During the podcast, we talked about Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) and Eid al-Fitr. This followed on from an EDI panel that Eman served on (second left) at the Institute for Teaching & Learning conference in 2024, see figure 26.7.

The paradox of inclusivity within Higher Education Institutions (HEI), a panel at the ITL conference in 2024. (Cobb and Blake 2024)

Figure 26.7: The paradox of inclusivity within Higher Education Institutions (HEI), a panel at the ITL conference in 2024. (Cobb and Blake 2024)

26.9 Big Sisters in STEM

Eman also talked about the importance of having role models that students can identify with. In her case, one important role model was Zahra Montazeri who was a guest on the Big Sisters in STEM podcast, shown in figure 26.8.

Figure 26.8: Jasmine Barrow talks to Zahra Montazeri and Cagla Velidedeoglu about role models, unlocking creativity and shedding stereotypes on the Big Sisters in STEM podcast. (Barrow 2024; Shervin, Stout, and Barrow 2023) The video in this figure can also be watched at youtu.be/aTglnAVpBxY

26.10 Disclaimer

⚠️ Coding Caution ⚠️

Please note these transcripts are generated with speech to text software and are not perfect word-for-word transcriptions. Some speech disfluency has been manually removed and links, cross references and pictures have been manually added for clarification. Extra (non-quoted) words are given in brackets like this: (some text added afterwards).