Samuel Mersha Ewnetu

My motivation to apply for this programme stems from my career goals. I plan to be a mathematician, a researcher in academia or an industry, who tackles real problems. I was introduced to math at an early age, not in school but at home. I was fond of questions involving numbers. I heard stories about great mathematicians. That encouraged me to dream big, so I did. When I was in primary school, I already knew what I wanted to do. I invested my time on math; hence I became good at it. Moving on to university, I chose to study math. I did this despite people telling me to join other “worthy” departments. They saw education from a financial standpoint only. I disagreed with that. One has to look inside first. We shouldn’t let our circumstances affect us to the point that we abandon our dreams. We should strive to overcome the challenges be what we want. So here I am. I hold a B.Sc in Mathematics from Addis Ababa University. I was a private home to home tutor for students on different levels, i.e. primary school to university. Before that, I studied in the Natural Science stream in high school. I was third in Amhara Region, Top 15 across all of Ethiopia on the nationwide university entrance examination (EUEE).