Home away from home: Student finds niche at Princeton

Ognjenka "Goga" Vukmirovic, a water polo player and senior majoring in molecular biology and earning a certificate at the Wilson School, recently sat down with 'Prince' senior writer Sophia Hollander.

P: Where have you lived?

V: I was born in Sarajevo, and I lived there until May of '92 when I left for Caracas, Venezuela. I enrolled at Choate-Rosemary Hall, a boarding school in Wallingford, Conn., in September of 1993.

P: What was it like living in Sarajevo before the war?

V: It was great. If you go to the city square, there's the largest Catholic cathedral in Bosnia, the largest Muslim mosque and the Orthodox cathedral all within 100 square yards. So at noontime you hear the distinct bells of the Catholic church, distinct bells of the Orthodox church and the voice of the Muslim Imam who sings five times a day. It's kind of a surreal setting, something that I was very used to, that I took for granted growing up. Sarajevo was a city where most music groups were from. It was the artsy-est type of place, and a great cultural scene.

P: What happened in Bosnia?

V: Yugoslavia fell apart in the early 1990s. A bloody war broke out first in Slovenia, then in Croatia — and we were watching this on TV while it was happening. The people in Sarajevo, they had the sense that nothing would happen in Bosnia, and especially in the city. Sarajevans were very carefree. They were not obsessed with politics. So at least among the majority of the people, there was a huge sense of denial that anything bad was going to happen in the city. Maybe somewhere else in Bosnia, but definitely not in Sarajevo.

P: What do you feel about the ethnic division within Bosnia?

V: If you get me going on this I'm not going to stop. What is it to be an American? You identify yourself with the country, with the state, rather than a narrow ethnic identity. The problem is that more often than not, people will deny the Bosnian nationality. You always hear about the Muslim government. You hear about the Serbs and the Croats. Very rarely do you hear about the Bosnians. And that's my pet peeve. That's definitely my pet peeve. It's very important to me that I'm labeled as a Bosnian. It's important to my family that they're considered Bosnians, even though they come from different backgrounds.

P: What was Venezuela like?

V: The disparity they had between the rich and poor was shocking. The rich would live like you see on TV — country clubs, huge houses, whatever else. And the poor — it's awful. They had a hurricane in Venezuela while we were there that we didn't even wake up for. And then you watch the news the next day, you'd see 70 people got killed because they live in paper houses.

P: Since you didn't know English, how did you manage at an English-speaking school in Venezuela?

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V: Well, the first book I read in English was "Great Expectations," which was challenging at the time. In science classes, I knew the formulas, and I could do the equations. In math, the word problems were tough at first. Some of the questions were asking about nickels and dimes, and I would think, "What would be the nickel and what would be the dime?" But those are just very minor things that everyone who goes to a different country has to experience.

P: Why did you decide to go to Connecticut?

V: My sister decided to go to college in Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania and Connecticut looked that far away from each other on the map [indicates about an inch]. I figured I'd be right in the neighborhood of my sister. So when we went to the states, my mom went back to Bosnia.

P: What was the atmosphere at Choate?

V: It's a great place. It's the greatest place there is. The school is very diverse, and the teachers are very approachable and committed to the students. It made the transition of living away from home much easier. I loved it.

P: You began playing water polo at Choate. What do you like about the sport?

V: It's a challenging sport because you're out of your element. You're not on the ground and you have to do something with the ball. You have the two challenges put together. It's a very aggressive game. There's a lot of grabbing, pulling, hitting, kicking. It's a brutal sport. I think girls are even more vicious than the guys because if the guys did what the girls did, there'd be broken noses, broken fingers all over the place. I don't get involved in that as much because I'm a goalie. But I get harassed. I know I get aggressive too when somebody comes near the cage, so it works both ways.

P: What is your molecular biology thesis on?

V: I am studying how different technologies can be used in functional genomics research, and what are some of the lessons learned from model organism sequencing efforts.

P: What is your Woodrow Wilson thesis on?

V: I'm trying to figure out whether a truth commission could or should be established in Bosnia and whether such a commission can complement the work of the International War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague.

P: Why did you decide not to go to Bosnia and try to implement your thesis?

V: I spent some of my time talking with people in Bosnia about this, and it was a very discouraging experience. One of the people I spoke with, this very well respected, considered liberal, law professor asked me what was the most fundamental question and the question that I completely didn't expect. It was why do I want to promote reconciliation in Bosnia? And I thought, "Isn't it obvious?" I took it for granted. It's the greatest assumption of my thesis there is, that reconciliation is actually good. Never quite thought that I would have to justify this, especially not to him. In many ways Bosnia is still very much ruled. People are enslaved by symbols, and they live on ideology more than I could really tolerate.

P: So it's off?

V: I may decide tomorrow that my mission in life is going to try and change it. So I'll pack my bag and go.