While most of her peers in fifth form sat the recommended eight Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) subjects, Amelia Dunkley did 10, adding to the two she had secured the year before. And in sixth form, when they took four Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Exams (CAPE) subjects each year, she did five.

Her grades? All ones, with the exception of CAPE pure maths, which she secured with a two, and only because she was ill.

“I just didn’t want to be ordinary; I wanted to be a little bit extraordinary,” she told the Jamaica Observer in a recent sit-down when asked what guided the number of subjects she chose to sit. “I always try to take a little step further to see what I can do.”

Dunkley, a graduate of Hampton School, enrolled in the medical programme at the University of the West Indies, Mona, this month on a UWI Open Scholarship which covers tuition, boarding and related expenses for the duration of her five-year course.

“It covers everything and that is free of worry for my parents. I wouldn’t have money to go to college otherwise. Plus, there is the benefit of having my relatives close by,” she said of the award.

Her parents Kerol Dunkley and Heather Myers, and her sponsors, territory leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers Leighton McKnight and his wife Novelette, couldn’t be more proud.

“Mommy won’t say anything to me directly, except to smile, but I hear her talking to people and I can hear the pride in her voice. She says she doesn’t expect any less because she knows what I’m capable of. She is always very proud,” Dunkley said.

“McKnight, who she calls ‘dad’, described the 19-year-old Dunkley as “a brilliant girl who continues to shine despite numerous challenges”.

On the announcement of the exam results in August, he paid tribute to her on his Facebook page.

“Amelia, you are an inspiration and I am very proud of you!” he wrote.

“Amelia is a little girl from deep rural St Elizabeth (Catabboo near Slipe) who I ‘adopted’ by chance (or divine intervention) some eight years ago while she was still in primary school (many of my fellow Kiwanians and family members know the story). Despite numerous challenges, including a trying health condition, she continues to shine and has now been offered the UWI Open Scholarship to do medicine, and a full scholarship to the prestigious Wesleyan University in the USA,” he continued.

McKnight, who has sponsored and mentored several other children over the years, says he is driven by a passion for youth development.

In response to his post, Dunkley wrote,”You have been my soldier to fight for me, my angel to guide me, my teacher to teach me, my father to love me. So many roles you have played in my life. I met you eight years ago [and] my life has never been the same. In fact, you have made my life what it is. From instilling great morals, to paying fees, to buying medication so that I would be spared the pain, your actions are the epitome of unconditional love. I often ask, who am I without you? You, Auntie Novelette, and the rest of the family have enriched my life. Is heaven missing angels???”

The medication to which she refers are for two auto-immune diseases — systemic lupus and sjogren’s syndrome — as well as secondary fibromyalgia, a chronic condition characterised by pain in the muscles, with which she was diagnosed while in lower sixth form and preparing for CAPE exams. She became severely ill and had to be hospitalised “for quite some time”.

“Those were really trying times,” Dunkley recalled.” There was a lot of pain, a whole lot of pain and severe fatigue. Sometimes I would feel fine and I go down to the [classroom] block and can’t do a full day of school. Sometimes it would feel like someone was hammering me in the back, and excruciating headaches, and a lot of tears.

“I spent a lot of time in hospital, and even outside of that I was battling with illness so I missed a lot of classes; so the time in school was to catch up on labs and not much time learning. Coming up to the [pure mathematics] exam, I was not prepared and I remember trying to study but sometimes the headaches were just unbearable or the fatigue was so much that I couldn’t keep myself awake and it was really rough,” Dunkley revealed.

As a result, she said she only really learned one of the three modules in the syllabus.

“I remember calling my mommy crying and saying I wanted to come home. I told her I couldn’t do it, but she just said, ‘Weh yuh ah stress out yuhself fah? Gwaan go sleep!’”

What happened next caught the young woman off guard.

“I did the exam but I felt like I did nothing on the paper. I was convinced that I had failed. I was so worried, but by God’s grace, when the results came I was blessed with a grade II. I was very happy because one can’t just read for the subject and pass; you have to practise, and I didn’t get the practice. I just read the book and went and did the exam,” the young woman told

Career & Education.

She had a similar experience when studying for the CSEC exams, Dunkley explained.

“Every time exams come up, there seems to be some obstacle. For example, for CSEC, no matter what I did, the information just didn’t seem like it was going anywhere and I was worried because up to days before the exams I felt like I knew nothing, but sometimes it’s that paper that I would have taken up an hour-and-a-half before exams that the majority of the questions would come from,” she said.

Dunkley said some of her teachers, particularly Mrs Green-Daley, and several of her friends at school helped her through the difficult times. These days, the conditions are still unpredictable and the medications she takes to keep them under control come with a litany of side effects.

“I’ve become accustomed to being ill,” she said, adding: “I thank God for a day that I don’t feel ill.”

She plans to take to take things easier while in university in an effort to get more rest and keep illness at bay. But, as she stressed, that doesn’t mean she will stop pursuing excellence.

“I will continue to be extraordinary, but I’m going stick to the required credit load and develop other interests so I can be more rounded and get time to rest,” she said.

Ironcially, it was her illness, and moreso the treatment she received at the hands of public health care practitioners, that made Dunkley settle on medicine as a career choice. She complained that she often felt like a statistic rather than a person.

“I always wanted to do medicine. At first, it was driven by fact that it was a prestigious career and I thought of it as a means to earn money to help those around me, but as I grew older and I became ill myself I realised that I really wanted to help people get the best health care possible. I even plan to build my own hospital because many times I go the hospital and I’m annoyed at how long it takes for me to get help, or at how I’m treated. That’s what really makes me want to go into medicine; to see if I can make a difference,” she disclosed.

“Sometimes you tell them good morning and they don’t even respond, and those things can help you to feel better, even a little bit,” Dunkley said.