Seventeen-year-old Margaret Eastman of the Number 29 Primary School who placed among the top 10 in Region Five at this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination has her heart set on becoming a doctor.
And although she was not offered the choice of writing any science subjects at the exams she would not be prevented from going after her dreams. She has already decided to study Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Integrated Science on her own.
She plans to “write the exams through a school” and is confident that she would obtain high grades so she can gain admission to the University of Guyana to pursue studies in medicine.
In the meantime she has applied to become a teacher and is awaiting a response from the Ministry of Education.
The soft-spoken but very assertive Margaret has secured passes in seven subjects: distinctions in Agriculture Science and Food & Nutrition, grade ones in Mathematics and Home Management, grade twos in English ‘A’ and Social Studies and a grade three in visual arts.
Margaret who hails from Ibini on the Berbice River was attending the Kimbia Mission Academy (KMA) in Region 10. The fourth of nine siblings, she moved with her family two years ago and now resides at Number 30 Village, West Coast Berbice.
Margaret attended the Number 29 Primary School along with her younger siblings. She was the only student preparing for the CSEC exams and received individual attention from her teachers.
Her proud mother, Myrna Hercules said her daughter was always a good performer at KMA but she tried in vain to have her accepted in a secondary school when she moved.
Hercules was not surprised with her daughter’s performance and said “she was always a determined child… I would go to sleep and wake up and she is still with her books. I used to wonder if she would make it to go to school.”
With a chuckle the girl said she “started working hard to compete with other children. I was jealous of the bright children from my lessons and I wanted to be bright like them.”
She stayed up almost the entire night studying with a kerosene lamp and although she was happy to be placed among the top students she was “disappointed that I did not get a distinction in Mathematics and a grade one in English.”
In fact she “aimed for grade ones and distinctions in all my subjects but I was too excited when I saw that the questions were so easy and I guess I was over-confident so I didn’t spend my time applying myself properly.”
Margaret, who said the extra lessons also helped her to do well, prayed a lot for guidance and fasted while writing the exams.
A firm believer in God, she said, “If everybody can trust in the Lord and study their work they would be successful and like Ben Carson, the great doctor said: `We should all think big!’”
She thanked the headmistress of the school; Monica Fraser-Carmichael “for always encouraging me and my teachers for the confidence they had in me. They kept telling me that I had the ability to get distinctions in all my subjects so that made me study more.”
Meanwhile, Hercules told this newspaper that her husband, Lennox Eastman is a farmer in the Berbice River and whatever he earns has to be used to send Margaret and five of her other children to school.
She developed her skills in sewing in order to save on expenses. “I would rip open their old school uniform and sew them back until I was able to do it on my own.”
Further, she said, “Education is important and I do not think poverty is an excuse for some parents not to send their children to school,” the woman said.