National Merit semifinalist: Sierra Vista senior drives herself to succeed

Children in the streets begged them for money. Families lived in shacks without electricity or running water.

Her mother doubts she remembers it, but Durin Uddin went to Bangladesh at age 7 to see the crowded country from which her parents emigrated before her birth.

Her mother took her into the heart of the capital city, the most crowded corner of one of the world's smallest yet most populated countries. Durin's innocent eyes must see, thought her mother, Ismat Jahan. She told Durin to take note, realize where they came from.

"You have a chance," said Jahan, who with her husband, Mohammad Uddin, left Bangladesh after college for America.

He has a degree in biology, and she a degree in accounting and business.

He drives cabs in Las Vegas; she cleans rooms at The Venetian.

And Durin, now 17, ranks as one of America's smartest high school seniors. She isn't just an A student. She's an A student of the A students, sitting in the top 1 percent, according to her PSAT or Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test scores. She's a semifinalist in the National Merit Scholarship program, one of only two students at Sierra Vista High School and 46 in Clark County, the fifth-largest school district in the country.

Durin doesn't remember that drive through Bangladesh or her mother's message. It wasn't repeated ad nauseam throughout her youth. It was said just once.

"She listened to me," said Jahan, who never told Durin that B's weren't good enough or, "Do your homework."

In fact, Jahan and her husband beg Durin to do the opposite. Play. Relax. Sleep.

Durin said she only gets five hours of sleep a night, coming home from school and studying until going to bed. If she does that too many nights in a row, she'll fall asleep immediately after school and awaken about 3 a.m. to make up the studying she missed.

Jahan and her husband worry.

"I don't want her to get sick," the mother said.

For some hard-to-nail-down reason, Durin set the only-A's bar herself, she admits.

"They didn't tell me to do good in school," she said. "I told them."

Once she got her first A in elementary school, anything less seemed unacceptable. She describes it as "fear of getting B's, fear of failure."

That's because she's aiming high.

Durin has wanted to be a doctor since age 7 when she found some books on body parts. She knows straight A's aren't good enough. Just as getting into a good college isn't good enough. She needs to be the best. She needs scholarship money.

"We can't help her financially," Jahan said. "She knows that."

Durin keeps the acceptance rates, tuition rates and all other stats of good colleges -- Ivy league, state universities and in between -- at the tip of her tongue. It's on her mind all the time. She's done her research, saying it would be stupid not to. She's well aware of Clark County School District's high dropout rate and low graduation rate, and worried colleges won't appreciate straight A's from a Las Vegas school.

She's not taking any chances with her future.

"My parents are OK with anything I do," she said.

But medicine is her goal. And not for the money. She could make a lot more by working a lot less.

"Doctors work terrible hours," she said. "It's such a clichéd answer, but I want to help people."

She mentioned volunteering in Bangladesh hospitals.

Maybe she remembers more than she knows.

Durin is driven, but compassion is her strongest trait, said her mother, recounting a time from last year when her cousin in Bangladesh needed money to treat her kidney problems.

Durin, who doesn't have any income, gave her $360 from savings.

Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.