Scholar won’t give in despite deferred dream
Published:Monday | August 26, 2024 | 12:07 AMAinsworth Morris/Staff Reporter
Like scores of Jamaican youth before him, Brandon Farquharson, 2024 Burger King Open Tertiary Scholarship recipient, has to bury the idea of becoming a medical doctor because he failed the self-financing programme required by the university of his choice.
The rejection highlights that, although Farquharson passed the secondary-level courses required for him to become enrolled in the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) programme, he comes from a poverty-stricken family. In his case, his mother, Maureen Morris, is unemployed, and his father, Dudley Farquharson, is a farmer from the rural parish of Westmoreland who cannot pay for his studies.
During a conversation with The Gleaner last Thursday at the Terra Nova All Suite Hotel in St Andrew, after he was awarded his scholarship valued at $500,000 each year for three years, Farquharson said he has instead opted to join the Faculty of Science and Technology at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, to pursue a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science.
“I wanted to enter the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery programme I applied for it and I got accepted for the self-financing programme [but] that is very, very exorbitant. It costs about US$28,000 (about $4.4 million) per year for each academic year. That’s excluding the dorm fee so, due to that, I’m going to do a year first at [the] Science and Technology Department, after which I’ll reapply where I’ll see if I can get the subsidy where the Government covers 80 per cent of the US$28,000. I’m relying on that. That’s my plan,” said 18 year-old Farquharson, who is from the Berkshire district in Westmoreland.
He said the Students’ Loan Bureau was not a saving grace for him, as it only offered to lend him $1.5 million annually towards his MBBS.
With a matter of days left before the start of the academic year, Farquharson is still hoping a Good Samaritan will come along and change the trajectory of where his 2024-2025 academic life seems to be heading.
“I really want to do medicine because I really want to become a doctor. I want to help people in need and those in need of medical help. This is my passion. This is what I really want to do from a very young age; from primary school coming up and it’s just my dream to become a doctor,” said the young man who once attended Cornwall College.
“I don’t really want to do that programme. I want to go straight into medicine, but I can’t afford it. I don’t really have enough,” he said with a sigh.
When asked what were some of the challenges he was facing, Farquharson had to catch his breath, especially with Hurricane Beryl putting further obstacles in his and his father’s lives.
Farquharson, the youngest of three children for his parents, reiterated that one of the major struggles for him is that what his father earns as a farmer is not adequate enough to pay his tuition and boarding fees at The UWI, Mona and for an MBBS.
“There is no real money there for university, so I had to apply for a few scholarships,” he told The Gleaner.
From his sitting of the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations, he earned distinctions in English language, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, information technology, Spanish and additional mathematics.
In CAPE unit one examinations, he received five ones in biology, chemistry, physics, pure mathematics and communication studies.
Apply even when doubtful
After gaining his excellent grades, Farquharson said he applied for the scholarship but was doubtful. Now, however, he offers words of encouragement for students seeking scholarships, as he did, to apply even when doubtful.
“You might get it, you might not, but know that you applied,” he said.
Now that Farquharson has been selected for the Burger King Open Tertiary Scholarship, he is excited because it will still take him to The UWI and pay his annual fees.
He said, both times when he was contacted by the team from Burger King, he was elated, especially for the second when he was informed that he had been awarded the scholarship.
“I am very, very happy. I’m very excited and very appreciative of the Burger King scholarship, because this has been very helpful right now, so I’m very ecstatic,” Farquharson told The Gleaner.
His daily motivation is from American activist and social worker Wilma Mankiller, who states, “The secret to success is that you will never ever, ever give up” as well as “Each day that I get up, I say to myself, you have to get out of this [poverty]. I have to get out of poverty and do better, achieve my dream and take my family with me”.