Defying the odds – “Brenda’s baggage to and from the University of Oxford”
We asked our scholars to go back to the moment they packed their luggage in preparation for their journey to Oxford. But instead of clothes and books, we asked them to think about the stories, people, memories, hopes, and all immaterial things that they would put inside. We also wanted to know what they would probably like to add to their baggage when leaving Oxford. Find other stories in this series here.
Brenda during orientation
“The University of Oxford is too Grand! Don’t apply for it! The chances are higher that you will be taken if you apply to smaller universities than if you apply to those Grand universities.”
“Scholarships are a VERY difficult thing to get, almost Impossible.”
“Do not bother to apply for the Weidenfeld-Hoffman Trust Scholarship. No one from Central Africa ever made it. It is a scholarship for East and South Africans, South Americans, Asians, Europeans, ...mostly other continents.”
Against all odds, I was granted 3 fully-funded scholarships to study my dream course at that said ‘Grand’ University of Oxford!! The Weidenfeld-Hoffman Trust Scholarship being the most prestigious of them all. The records were beat as the very first Cameroonian to be awarded this scholarship.
I believe in conquering the odds and setting the pace! Even the impossible can become a possibility once you set your mind and heart to it, and let the ever-present God take charge.
“You cannot succeed the entrance examination into that medical school. You do not have any connections with the decision makers and the high classed.”
Against all odds I sat, wrote, and passed this entrance examination with distinction.
“You cannot get married this young. It will slow down all your dreams and career ambitions”
“Have your children later. They are too much responsibility.”
The list goes on and on…
One thing remains ever constant. When you are consumed by your dreams and passions, you become an unstoppable being.
Witnessing the alarming preventable causes of deaths to pregnancy and infectious diseases at the various regions of my country Cameroon while growing up, drove the passion within me to change the narrative in the Cameroonian health sector.
The skills and knowledge I shall acquire in critically appraising and handling public health matters from the International Health and Tropical Medicine course that I am currently undertaking, together with the leadership, communication, and entrepreneurial savoir-faire that the WHT programme offers us are terrific springboards I shall be set upon to assist me in achieving my dreams. The rich network of brilliant peers that I have gotten to meet and that keeps building-up, together with my outstandingly knowledgeable lecturers from diverse international platforms who pour out their all to teach us how they made it and of course my ever-present God are just what I need to set me off in accomplishing these goals of mine.
So if you are reading this, and the odds seem innumerable, just remember that:
“if something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, press on regardless!” Elon Musk
