IN JAMAICA: A brilliant girl's dream shattered.....Shenordo Balgrave wants to study pathology, but…"Right now my sister and I are working on a community club which involves getting youths involved in sports, mainly netball, cheerleading and basketball,"

BY VERNON DAVIDSON Executive editor - publications davidsonv@jamaicaobserver.com  Sunday, August 03, 2014    

Shenordo Balgrave has always wanted to study medicine.

"Ever since I was little, that's why I made a straight path to that," she admitted to the Jamaica Observer.

That path saw her pursuing the sciences and achieving grade 1 scores in eight of the nine subjects she sat in Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams.

BALGRAVE… science facilitates curiosity

At the higher Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) Balgrave's Unit 1 scores were biology, grade 1; chemistry, grade 2; and physics, grade 3.

At Unit 2 she achieved grade 1 in biology and physics, and grade 2 in chemistry. She also holds a grade 1 in communication studies and grade 2 in Caribbean studies.

The scores earned her an Advanced Proficiency Diploma and an associate's degree in natural sciences from the Caribbean Examinations Council in August 2013.

To her great delight, Balgrave was accepted at the University of the West Indies (UWI) last September to begin studying medicine.

However, she had a major problem. She was unable to come up with the tuition.

Luckily, though, Balgrave was among a few students whom the education ministry was able to assist with a major chunk of the funds to pursue their tertiary studies.

"I got $2 million from the Ministry of Education, but the school fee was $2.84 million [and] I was unable to come up with the additional amount by the second semester," she told the Sunday Observer.

According to Balgrave, she applied for a semester break, but was not successful as she made the request too late. And even though the university appeared willing to bend over backwards to accommodate her, she just could not come up with the balance of the tuition, mostly because her mother is not working and her stepfather, who most likely would have been able to assist, passed away a few years ago.

In an apparent effort to earn the money to resume her studies, Balgrave got a job at a cafe. That, however, didn't last long, as she fell ill and had to be hospitalised in April this year.

The thought that she was no longer attending university left her in tears, she said. more