Thu | Mar 28, 2024

Khadeelia nurses big dreams

Published:Tuesday | September 29, 2020 | 12:12 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
Khadeelia Simpson.
Khadeelia Simpson.

WESTERN BUREAU:

Despite hurdles, Khadeelia Simpson remains optimistic about achieving her next goal of becoming a nurse, having accumulated 19 subjects and units in external exams while at Anchovy High School in St James.

“It was a lot of work, especially with the labs that I had to do, but the grace of God guided me through all of them,” said the 18-year-old. “However, I am not sure what is next because due to not having any Internet access, I have missed my interviews for nursing school from both The University of the West Indies and the University of Technology, but I am going to watch and see what happens.”

Simpson, who hails from Seven Rivers in St James, passed nine Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate subjects between 2017 and 2018 – biology, human and social biology, chemistry, electronic document and preparation management, mathematics, English A, geography, physics, and food and nutrition.

In 2019, Simpson conquered communication studies as well as the Unit One components of biology, chemistry, physics, and pure mathematics as well as communication studies at the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations level. She continued in her high-achieving ways this year, attaining success in Unit Two for the same subjects, as well as Caribbean studies, and also pursued a skill in commercial food preparation.

No Internet service

Despite her success this year, the COVID-19-forced closure of schools in March made things challenging for Simpson with no Internet service at home. Purchasing phone data plans became quite an expensive affair.

“I have to be topping up my phone with data, and most times when I am trying to use the hotspot from my phone to the laptop, it is giving problems, so I have to send my classmates or teachers messages to send me the notes,” she said.

“For internal assessments, my laptop crashed, and I had to do them over. Then I had to send them out without my group members helping, which was kind of hard because they have access to the Internet, but I did not,” Simpson recalled.

Despite current uncertainty, Simpson is sure that one day, she will become a nurse and, eventually, a doctor.

“I wanted to become a medical doctor, but due to financial problems, I tried to cut it down to start at nursing first before I could venture up. This is literally my dream due to my mother having sickle cell disease, and I want to help her medically,” said Simpson.

“I cannot let challenges get me down because I know every strong man and woman faced difficult challenges before they could reach where they are today.”

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