'The View' has been one of the most popular of the newer columns in Capital and has elicited several comments since it was launched in June 2007.

Yoseph is currently enjoying his first year at the prestigious Harvard University in Boston, U.S.A. from where he has been sending us his weekly column.

'The View', you may recall, accommodated a wide array of topics before it entered the present series under the sub-heading 'Letter from Harvard', after Yoseph began classes and is a compendium of his first impression of "a school of leaders producing leaders" and other experiences encountered by the young academic in New England's college district.

This week, Capital provides Yoseph with feedback from his readers in Ethiopia as well as from abroad who access www.capitalethiopia.com regularly.

Over the decades many thousands of young and not so young Ethiopians have gone abroad in the pursuit of better educational opportunities.
Through royal patronage, bilateral protocols, university scholarships and by many other ways and means, some of Ethiopia's brightest minds have soaked up immense reserves of knowledge in some of the most complex fields of endeavor.
Overseas educated Ethiopians, through disparate in individual background and in academic options pursued, nearly all exhibit an intense pre-occupation with all things that pertain to their native land; to a degree of commitment that long term foreign based can appreciate better than most Ethiopians at home.
True, a large - okay, an overwhelming proportion, of Ethiopian academics do not return to the native land - opting in most cases, for citizenship in the second country. A large part of their productive life, the prime of their existence, is spent in foreign lands, and at best, it is in their waning years that they can return home.
Of course, there are also these but not nearly as many, who diligently attend and complete their studies and just as soon as they earn their degree(s) return to their homeland eager to apply their expensively acquired education in helping solve Ethiopia's many challenges.

Something about Yoseph Ayele says - "yes that's my club!"
We start with Molla Abera, a computer skills instructor who has been influenced by Yoseph's running mini-series on good study habits and conclude with Hirut Asmare, a homemaker who lives in Milano, Italy.
Dear Yoseph,

I greatly enjoy 'The View' and must confess that the sections you published dealing with improving study habits and on how to prepare for exams has been of greatest benefit to me. I speak both in terms of my profession and also in my efforts at personal growth. By this I mean that I have shared with my students some of your suggestions and witnessed an improvement in their performances on exams. I then applied the theories on myself and I am pleased to say that my ability to prepare my students has improved. This has reflected positively on my career prospects and standing at my workplace. Thanks a million!

Molla Abera
A.A Ethiopia

Dear Yoseph,
I am an ardent pan-Africanist so I usually like to read material on African issues. This includes any material on the great African leaders of the past and also of the present. That is why I so much enjoyed the piece on 'The View' about Nelson Mandela and Frederick de Clerk. It was a concise, well written article that illuminated the importance of dialog even between and among hostile and seemingly irreconcilable belligerents. Yoseph - keep it up and may you have a successful academic life!