SHADEE Morrison was a shoo-in to land a scholarship and realise her dream of studying medicine abroad.

Her Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) results are impressive: seven distinctions and two credits. So too are her Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations grades — distinctions for chemistry unit 1, biology unit 1 and communication studies unit 1, as well as credits for history unit 1 and mathematics unit.

Throughout her five years at Westwood High School and two sixth-form years at Hampton School Morrison was extremely active, serving as head girl for the year 2008-2009; holding membership and/or executive positions in at least 12 clubs and societies; playing netball, tennis, badminton, and rounders. She did track and field, was also a grade captain, monitor, dorm prefect and peer counsellor.

A number of awards and honour roll certificates decorate her profile — one of the documents she needed to submit with her scholarship applications.

But Morrison’s desire to become a doctor was dealt a crushing blow when she sought to get her transcript from Westwood, leaving her feeling robbed of a future that could have made life better for her and her single-parent mother who had made huge sacrifices to send her to school.

“The problem started with the length of time it took to even get the transcript. The school had no sense of urgency,” Morrison said, adding that she had requested the document with more than enough time to have it prepared for the universities to which she had applied.

“When I finally received the transcript I did not understand how lacking it was until I compared it to my Hampton transcript. The Westwood transcript was very basic. The document did not include my clubs, my awards, my school and community involvement, nor did it include my CSEC results. Most importantly, the grades were not translated for [me] to be internationally competitive,” Morrison related.

At the time Morrison was a student in Dr Dennis Minott’s A-QuEST programme which, since 1987, has been preparing top Jamaican students for colleges abroad. Minott has, for many years, complained that some school administrators have been stifling opportunities for students to study overseas by preparing poor transcripts and, in a number of cases, deliberately submitting the documents late.

As part of his preparation programme Minott arranged for his students to meet in Jamaica with an admission officer from Kalamazoo College.

“I presented the officer with my personal inventory. I also had both transcripts from Hampton and Westwood. He said while my personal inventory and transcript from Hampton are impressive, when the admission officers sit in front of thousands of applications, for them to figure out what my Westwood transcript is saying they’re just going to set my application aside. They don’t have the time to translate it. If you look at the transcript you would not believe I participated in anything at school,” Morrison told the Jamaica Observer.

“So the admission officer said that, from his point of view, I did nothing at Westwood and he didn’t understand the grades anyway, so ‘Why would I want to give you a scholarship’,” Morrison said.

That discussion sent her to the school where she explained her dilemma to an administrator but, according to Morrison, the official “insisted that she would not be changing the transcript. I even told her that Dr Minott is more than willing to assist her to change the transcript, but she said she does not need any help, she will not be changing the transcript. Before I left, she said ‘Why do you want to go to school abroad? Nutten nuh wrong wid UWI (The University of the West Indies). Come gwaan a UWI’. ”

Attempts by the Observer to get a response from Westwood were met without success as calls to the phone number listed for the school either rang out or went to voicemail, and a request sent to the e-mail address listed for the school was not answered.

Asked how she felt when the administrator said that to her, Morrison replied, “It was not that I had any problems with UWI, it was just not something that I wanted for myself, particularly because UWI doesn’t have the kind of scholarships that I would have been exposed to had I gone through with my other plans. In addition to that, there were some things that I was aware of that the other school did, like doing semesters abroad, and because I was interested in languages I was really looking forward to semesters in France or Spain, or China.”

Morrison acknowledged, though, that The UWI does offer a somewhat similar programme to students studying French, however it’s not covered by a scholarship.

“You have to pay your tuition in full [and] you have to prove that you can meet living expenses overseas. I don’t have that, so I couldn’t have gone on that programme,” she said.

“So basically, forcing me to go to UWI because you think I should go to UWI, robbed me of choices I wanted to make, opportunities that I could have had,” Morrison stated.

Although she was disappointed by the school’s response to her plight, Morrison said she decided to reapply to schools abroad.

She again sat the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) in biology and scored 740. But that, she said, was not good enough as the admission officers at the US colleges could not understand the transcript, nor did they have any official proof that she was active in the clubs and achievements listed in her personal inventory.

“Feeling defeated, I went to UWI,” Morrison said, and because her original dream was to do medicine, she started doing biochemistry.

But finding the tuition proved difficult, especially for a degree she did not want. “UWI was adamant that if you didn’t pay you couldn’t do your exams, so I stopped school, didn’t go the second semester,” Morrison, who lives in Montego Bay, told the Observer.

“Then a friend of mine who went to Westwood with me, between her and her family they said to me they’re going see what they can do to get me back in school because they knew that not going to school was not what I want for myself. So she worked it out so that I could have someone I could stay with in Kingston because, in addition to the tuition, I had to find lodging in Kingston,” she explained, adding that she got a job on The UWI campus to help meet her expenses.

“So the plan was to do one year biochemistry then switch to medicine. But if I couldn’t afford the biochemistry tuition there was no way I was gonna afford the medicine tuition which, at the time, was US$10,000 per year, and that doesn’t include books. So when I resumed UWI I did liberal studies,” Morrison said.

At the end of that school year, in 2014, she started a job in Montego Bay when she went home for the summer. Morrison performed so well on the job that her boss told her to work out a schedule that would allow her to continue at the company while attending the UWI when the new academic year resumed.

She did that, grouping her classes Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Thursday in order to be able to travel back to Montego Bay on Thursday evenings to start working Thursday nights on a 40-hour schedule.

Morrison said she also took a student loan and resumed The UWI full-time.

However, she ran into another obstacle, fraught with danger, that further disrupted her life.

Morrison had left work at 5:00 pm on a Toyota Coaster bus to Kingston, given that her first class was at 8:00 am the following day. But when the bus got to Spanish Town an altercation between some men resulted in a gun being drawn. The driver, she said, was almost shot.

Shaken by the experience, she opted to start taking Knutsford Express.

“My financial situation, which should have got better by my full-time job, was no longer to my advantage. I had to spend at least $10,000 on transportation each week. Additionally, as the return commute between school and work took about six hours, I spent many hours over the next few years on the road. I would get back from Kingston at 6:00 pm, head straight to work until midnight, get home by 1:00 am and get back to start my 7:00 am to midnight shift again,” Morrison shared.

“I still had to find time to research and write no less than 12 papers per semester, study for exams, read the books for each course and somehow sleep.

“As determined as I was to complete my education, it was just not something I wanted. I had researched and planned and was looking forward to the advantages of school abroad. Not only would I have had access to a wider array of courses, but I was also looking forward to semesters and summers abroad. I was desperate to learn as many languages as possible by immersing myself in the culture. I was going to spend a semester in France and continue learning French. I was going to go to Spain to find back my love of Spanish. I was also going to go to China since they are a huge world power and it makes sense to learn about these world powers and understand the drive behind their success,” she shared.

“I am not saying that successful people do not attend UWI. I, however, was robbed of my right to choose. One person made this decision for me. And while UWI might offer what one person needed, it offered very little for me. I did what I needed to get my degree but it was a degree I did not want, student loans, and what feels like years of my life wasted,” she said.

“My memories of university included too many hours on a bus, rushing from one class to another because I had to schedule all my classes into a set timeframe since I needed to work at least 40 hours per week. I also had to turn in my assignments earlier because they are usually due when I would have been at work in Montego Bay,” she said.

“It is imperative that schools get out of students’ way. I could somehow understand if the change in transcript was a difficult task but when an administrator makes the decision out of spite, then others need to step in. Westwood High has had an amazing reputation over the years but if the girls from this wonderful institution cannot pursue their dreams, their way, then less of us will be happy, successful world players. We have the power to dominate any field. We just need our right to choose how we will lead,” said Morrison, who is now 30 years old.

Today Morrison, who eventually graduated from The UWI with a bachelor of arts degree with upper second class honours, is a data entry specialist.

She still wants to study medicine, but the cost, she said, is prohibitive. She’s also not impressed with the work she did at The UWI.

“Now, I want to do a master’s degree. I don’t even know who to turn to at UWI for a recommendation, which you need, because I just did not care at UWI. There are probably a few teachers who would remember me as the student who, even though she lived in Montego Bay and worked in Monetgo Bay, all her assignments were on time, but other than that I did not make an impact on UWI. Now, for me to move on from here I don’t know who would write the recommendation,” she said.

“I didn’t do anything at UWI in terms of community and participate in school; I didn’t have the time. Clubs were only on Thursdays and by the time I finished school on Thursday I had to go catch the bus to come to work, so I couldn’t be a part of the clubs. I just needed to ensure I handed in my assignments, was present in class, did the exams, and move on with my life. So asking a teacher for a recommendation, I mean I might have to do it because I don’t want to stay in the position I’m in, but it’s not encouraging to ask a teacher,” she told the Observer.

Now, Morrison makes use of free courses on Coursera.

“Whatever I can get my hands on to advance myself I’m making use of it. Dr Minott is pushing me to do my PhD, but again, my concern is where will I get the recommendation.”