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Some friendships survive school. Rarely do they survive exams, late-night study sessions, clinical rotations and still end with five friends graduating side by side as doctors. But for a group of friends from C&N Sekondêre Meisieskool Oranje in Bloemfontein, that is their story – a story of shared dreams, shared pressure and shared victory.

On Friday (12 December 2025), Drs Bea Louw, Carli Olivier, Ivanke van Jaarsveld, Katia Geustyn and Jana Campbell crossed the stage together at the University of the Free State (UFS) as they graduated with an MBChB degree – classmates once, now colleagues for life.

To add more joy to their friendship, four of them will continue their journey as junior doctors at Pelonomi Hospital in Bloemfontein. Dr Louw, however, will spread her wings in Cape Town at 2 Military Hospital. Together with Drs Oliver, Van Jaarsveld and Geustyn, they completed their degrees with distinction. Dr Van Jaarsveld received the honour of best 5^th year MBChB student, while Dr Geustyn was recognised as the best student in clinical internal medicine and Dr Campbell, while she did not pass cum laude, she, just like her friends, achieved numerous distinctions for her subjects.

For Dr Olivier, the moment feels surreal.

“It was truly a blessing to have familiar faces in a very daunting and new experience during first year, and someone to bond with during the tough times. It’s unbelievable to go from sharing a desk in biology class to calling each other ‘doctor’. We have walked together for almost 10 years, and I’m so proud and grateful to have had a front-row seat to their journeys,” she reflects.

She and Dr Geustyn became friends in Grade 8, sat next to each other in biology class, whispering dreams about white coats and stethoscopes – long before those dreams looked real.

A dream is realised

According to Dr Campbell, they all started dreaming about this very moment early in high school. “Ivanke, Bea and I were quite good friends since high school, and I believe Carli and Katia are good friends. Ivanke and I liked studying together from time to time. It was nice to know you had someone to ask for help when you needed it,” she recalls.

It is very rare to have the opportunity to know someone long enough to see them grow, she says. “That is the case here. What an amazing experience to meet someone as a timid little girl and see her grow into a brilliant and strong woman who stays resilient, and goal oriented. It is such a blessing to be able to know a familiar face when everything around you seems to be changing all the time.

“I think the trust I have in my classmates gives me so much strength for the years to come, because if these amazing women are next to me, internship doesn’t seem that bad”

Medicine only

“At school things were competitive,” recalls Dr Geustyn, “but at university we became a team. We helped each other through everything – from dissecting a sheep kidney to watching our first surgery together. It’s an honour to have shared and grown in this journey with my schoolmates and now my colleagues.”

For all three medicine was never one option – it was the only one.

Dr Olivier grew up watching her father (Dr Ferdie Olivier) work in his medical practice, knowing she wanted to follow him. “He has been my biggest inspiration and now it is my biggest honour to be able to call myself Dr Olivier, because the first Dr Olivier moulded me into the person I am.”

For Dr Geustyn, the calling was written into her childhood memories of playing doctor to dolls, pets and family members. “What an honour to serve people, just as Jesus served people. This journey is my Story for God’s Glory. May He use me as His hands and feet,” she says.

From as early as primary school, Dr Campbell remembers wanting to become a doctor. For her, there was no plan B and still today, she believes medicine was the best decision of her life.