Twenty-eight-year-old Viktorija Mišeljić from Niš, a former football player for Mašinac and once the captain of the Serbian women’s national under-19 football team, recently earned her doctorate in chemistry at Wesleyan University in the American state of Connecticut.
The young woman from Niš received an offer last fall to teach at Fairleigh Dickinson University in the state of New Jersey upon completion of her doctoral studies, so she will be a lecturer at that well-known American university starting in August.
Mišeljić told the Beta agency that football and chemistry are her two great loves, and she decided to study in the United States precisely because she could play football and study at the same time there.
She said she fell in love with football in early childhood, and with chemistry during elementary school.
“My father, Jovo Mišeljić, was a professional football player and a football coach, so as soon as I was born, I already had balls, boots, shin guards, socks, and jerseys in the house… As soon as I started walking, I began kicking the ball with my dad and friends in front of the building, and I started training football at Mašinac when I was 11 years old,” Mišeljić said.
She added that she played football at Mašinac and then for the Serbian national team until she left for her studies in America.
“Several European clubs offered me the chance to join them and play football professionally after finishing secondary medical school, but my mother, Jadranka, opposed it. She wasn’t for it because I would have been left without a university education, and then after my football career ended, I would have had to work with only a high school diploma,” Mišeljić said.
According to her, for a while she considered enrolling in pharmacy studies in Serbia, but that would have meant she had to stop playing football because she would not have been able to balance all university obligations with training and matches at Mašinac and in the national team.
“I got the idea to go to America after talking to a friend a year older than me who had gone there to study. I realized that in America, I too could both play football and study. My mother agreed with that, and in August 2017, I started my studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University,” Mišeljić stated.
Thanks to good grades in school and good results on the football field, she received a scholarship that covered all the costs of studying.
“It wasn’t easy to both play football and pass exams, but I made many friends who had similar schedules of obligations, so that helped me. We trained together, had matches, lectures, exams… The good thing in America is that you can choose which days you have lectures, so you can coordinate them with training and matches,” Mišeljić pointed out.
She said that she completed her undergraduate studies in the spring of 2021 and that summer she participated in research in the field of biochemistry with a professor at the faculty where she graduated, which helped her skip master’s studies and immediately apply for doctoral studies.
“After working in three different laboratories during my doctoral studies, I decided to focus on research and earn my doctorate in a laboratory that deals with organic chemistry. I was involved in the design, synthesis, and characterization of multifunctional organic molecules so that they could be used in electronic devices such as smartphones,” Mišeljić stated.
Last fall, she added, she presented her work at the university where she completed her undergraduate studies as part of National Chemistry Week, after which she received an invitation to become a professor.
She passed all the necessary interviews and got a job in the chemistry department.
During her doctoral studies, she added, she did not have the right to play football for the university team, but she worked at the faculty as an assistant coach and trained recreationally with the other football players.
That, she emphasized, was a great pleasure and a break from the numerous obligations of her doctoral studies.
“In America, a tournament is organized at the end of the league, and the winners qualify for a tournament organized at the national level. After my arrival at Wesleyan University, the university women’s football club qualified for the national tournament every year, and our coaching staff was named the best in America two years ago,” Mišeljić said.
She said that good women’s football is played in America, but it differs quite a bit from the European game.
“In America, the game is faster; however, less attention is paid to technique than in Europe. Because of the time difference, but also the obligations of my studies, I haven’t been able to follow developments in European football much in recent years. I am looking forward to the World Cup being held in America, Canada, and Mexico, so I will be able to follow the matches,” Mišeljić said.
Source: N1, Photo: privatna arhiva