Bianca Vermeulen. (Photo: University of the Free State)
It may have taken several years and even more applications, but Bianca Vermeulen finally has the title of her dreams: doctor.
This native of Henley-on-Klip in Gauteng submitted 32 applications over a period of eight years to finally be admitted as a medical student. This dream has finally come true and today she can officially call herself Dr. Vermeulen mentions.
“This moment feels like the first clear sunrise after a long storm. Quiet. Humbling. Almost unreal. This moment means that the girl who refused to stop believing in her goal was right to hold on. It means persistence mattered. It means faith paid off.”
Vermeulen compares her journey to that of Tori Murden McClure, the first woman to row alone across the Atlantic Ocean, a story that once felt impossibly far from her own, but now in a strange way matches it.
“Just like Tori, I walked a path that people around me couldn’t fully understand. I carried dreams that no one else could row for me. And today I hear her words in my echo: ‘Listen, dear heart… you fell off the map, but you didn’t fall apart’.”
She remembers every letter that turned her away. Although it discouraged and frustrated her at times, she also knew that those rejection letters were never final.
In 2021, Vermeulen’s second year as a medical student, her eyesight began to deteriorate. It deteriorated to such an extent that she eventually lost her driver’s license. More obstacles followed with financial pressure and administrative complications.
Still, she didn’t give up.
“It felt cruel,” she admits. “Like reaching shore after years at sea, only to be dragged back again by a wave. It was heartbreaking to think that after years of rejection I had overcome, I could still lose the opportunity I had fought so hard for. I cried. I prayed. I wondered.”
Vermeulen earlier told Maroela Media that she received the first rejection letter shortly before her record exam. That was in 2011, the same year her parents divorced. Although she looked forward to the future with her friends, she knew that tertiary education was not really her destiny.
Bianca Vermeulen, a native of Henley-on-Klip in Gauteng, completed her matric year in 2011 at HTS Vereeniging. (Photo: Provided)
She completed her matric year at HTS Vereeniging and then started working at a local pharmacy in town. Now that she thought about it, saying goodbye to her school friends was actually worse than coming to terms with the fact that she hadn’t been medically cleared.
An exciting student life awaited them all while she was left alone. She had to grow up overnight, something she was not at all prepared for.
“The position I found myself in seemed impossible. I tried to come up with various plans to go swot, but every door remained closed at that stage,” she says. “However, I think it would have been much worse if I had received a medical examination and could not have gone to study because there was no money.”
However, she clung to her faith throughout this challenging and often grueling process.
“Dreams and goals do not disappear simply because the road is difficult. I held on to Scripture, to prayer, and to stories in which characters rise again and again. Maya Angelou wrote: ‘You may face many defeats, but you may not be overcome.'”
She was overwhelmed when she finally received her final results and was able to walk across the stage to officially receive her medical degree earlier this month.
“I’ve lost versions of myself. People think survival is loud. But this year has taught me that sometimes the loudest scream is the one you don’t let out. I’ve borne storms in silence. I’ve walked through days that felt like battlefields. With wounds I’d closed so well, that even life itself couldn’t see where I was bleeding.
“Beyond all the setbacks, I also won something. A hard truth. A sharper fire. A backbone built from nights I thought I wouldn’t survive. Growing through the storm… growing is a painful process.”
Vermeulen, who has a great love and passion for paediatrics and child health, internal medicine and anesthesia, wants to stand in hospital corridors one day and think back to the version of herself that had to wait, fight, pray, fail and try again.
“I want to be a doctor who never forgets what it feels like to stand on the outside and look in. Someone who treats patients with the dignity and gentleness I learned through hardship. I would like my career path and plans to lead me back to a specialist field such as intensive care,” she says.
On the eve of her graduation, she thought about the tears, the waiting period and the doubt. How every rejection woven into her story brought her here.
“It feels like a story that comes full circle,” she says, “and the beginning of a brand new one.”
Additional source: University of the Free State