Students Speak: Yewah & Ann

Yewah Kargobai – Psychology

Three years into the decade-long civil war that ravaged the West African country of Sierra Leone, Yewah Kargobai and her family escaped to neighboring Gambia. She was just 8 years old. For four years, she lived in a three-bedroom house with 10 others, including her mother, aunts, uncles and cousins.

During that time, she was able to start school again, which had ceased in Sierra Leone as the war had intensified. Her mother picked up odd jobs to pay for Yewah’s schooling. Then, when Yewah was 12, she was sent to the United States to live with an aunt who had moved to Minnesota many years earlier. "I had never met her before," says the St. Thomas junior and Minneapolis Southwest High School graduate, "but she is older, and her daughters were already in college. She liked having the company."

In 2004, her mother joined her here but soon was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer that had spread to other areas of her body. After a three-year fight, she passed away in June 2007. 

Yewah started attending St. Thomas in 2005. While earning a college education always has been her dream, she bounced from major to major, not knowing what she wanted to do. After watching her mom struggle toward the end of her life, however, Yewah developed a keen interest in the brain. Now she is a psychology major with a concentration in behavioral neuroscience. She is looking into attending medical school to become a human-behavior researcher. 

Yewah relies on scholarships, grants, loans and work-study aid to pay for college. Her work-study positions include jobs at Scooter’s, the Grill and the switchboard, totaling around 25 hours a week. She is grateful for the opportunity to attend St. Thomas. "I arrived in Minnesota to start a new life," she said. "College has always been my dream, and I am thankful to be able to go to school, work and have friends."

 Ann Defnet – Biology

When Ann Defnet, a senior, decided to become a resident advisor, she thought that she would be taking care of many young women. She never expected that they would be taking care of her as well.

"When they notice I’m sick," she said, "they tell me to go to bed early. It is so sweet! I was nervous to do this my senior year, but I am so glad I did. I have met so many great people!"

This isn’t the first time that Ann has signed up to help others. Last year, the biology major helped to organize a spring-break trip to New Orleans to aid in the relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina. "It was a life-altering experience," she said. "It is still so horrible there; there are big chunks of the city that still are not livable. We worked in a building that hadn’t been touched since the storm a year earlier. It was still soaking wet."

A Green Bay, Wisc., native, Ann also spends eight hours a week volunteering in the Hennepin County Medical Center Emergency Room. "You see so much so cool stuff in there," she said.  "People don’t get it when I’m excited about surgeries and gory things, but I see it as an opportunity to learn how to help these people."

The aspiring surgeon has attended Catholic schools her entire life and chose St. Thomas because of its Catholic nature and small-community feel. Her financial need did not arise until this year, when tuition rose again, other expenses came up and her sister started college. 

"I knew I could not leave this school, so I needed to help out more so my parents could help her," she said. "I applied for scholarships and became an R.A.. Donors didn’t help just me this year – they helped my sister and my parents, too."