Education Is Her Dream Come True

Six years after emigrating to the United States from Nepal, where she had fled with her family from political oppression, Yeshey Pelzom, 34, will realize her life-long dream of earning a college diploma. She will graduate from LaGuardia Community College with a degree in liberal arts, but her education is far from over. Pelzom, one of the first Bhutanese refugees to attend college in the United States, won a prestigious, $30,000-per-year scholarship, the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship, to earn her bachelor’s degree.
In addition, a human-rights activist at heart, Pelzom plans to use her to degree to become a professor, so that she can inspire other immigrants who are pursuing college degrees. A Queens resident, she has also dedicated a good portion of her time to work in her neighborhood.
“Now that I am back in school after much struggle and after almost a point of no return, there is no looking back,” she said.
In 1990, while she was a freshman in college, Pelzom was forced to flee Bhutan. With her family, she headed to India, where she met her husband, Manoj Pradham, who had also fled Bhutan six months earlier. For three years, the young couple stayed in India, and Pelzom’s first son, Manish, was born in 1991. However, Pelzom and her family dreamed of living someplace where they could have a better life, so in 1993, they left India for Nepal, where like many other asylum-seekers, they applied for documentation to emigrate to the United States.
While in Nepal, Pelzom volunteered at an organization where she could help other Bhutanese refugees, and she was given the opportunity to call for civil and political freedom in Bhutan before the United Nations Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.
But Pelzom felt that her work would carry more weight if she had a college diploma.
“Even while being useful acting as a voice for my community, I felt absolute emptiness because of my lack of higher education,” she wrote in the essay, which helped earn her a college scholarship. “I knew that the conference attendees would have responded better if I were an expert on those matters of political and human issues. No other time did I regret not having an education like during those days.”
Pelzom, however, had a long road ahead of her before she could even pursue her dream. After seven years in Nepal, Pelzom received the necessary visa required to enter the United States, but the documentation did not apply to her husband and son. It would take another year for Manoj was allowed come to America, and another five years before her son received his papers.
Without her family, Pelzom moved into an apartment in Elmhurst, Queens and began working towards gaining political asylum - a long and expensive process. “By the time I was successful [three years later], I was half drowned in debts,” she said.
In addition to the financial strains and the emotional toll of living without her husband and son, Pelzom fell into a deep depression. Once reunited with her husband, Manoj realized that the one thing that could truly make his wife happy was her education, so with some pushing, Pelzom began her first year at LaGuardia in 2004.
“On the first day, I was so nervous that I couldn’t go by train,” she said. “I had to take a taxi.”
Nevertheless, Pelzom’s nerves soon settled, and she earned a 4.0 grade point average throughout her college career.
“The college’s diversity made me aware of my background and made me proud of who I am. It was here that I found myself,” she said.
For Pelzom, the next step in her education is a bachelor’s degree in English from Agnes Scott College, a women’s liberal arts college in Atlanta, Ga.