For eight long years, Bianca Vermeulen held onto a dream that the world repeatedly told her was out of reach. Now graduating during the April graduation ceremonies of the University of the Free State (UFS), she is not just an MBChB graduate but is living proof that failure does not have to be final. 

After previously being rejected 32 time to study medicine, she can now call herself Dr Bianca Vermeulen. A childhood dream has been finally realised. 

“This moment feels like the first clear sunrise after a long storm. Quiet. Humbling. Almost unbelievable. This moment means that the girl who refused to stop believing in her purpose was right to hold on. It means endurance mattered. It means faith bore fruit.”

Dr Vermeulen compares her journey to that of Tori Murden McClure, the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic – a story that once felt impossibly far from her own, but somehow now mirrors it.

“Like Tori, I walked a road people around me couldn’t fully understand. I carried dreams no one could row for me. And today, I hear her words echo inside me: ‘Listen, dear heart … you fell off the map, but you did not fall apart’.”

A dream with no expiry date

Dr Vermeulen remembers the rejection letters – frustrating, disheartening, but never final. Her dream did not dim. Not even when she finally began her studies in 2020 and her eyesight started to fail during her second year. Myopia (short-sightedness) crept into her life quietly, blurring screens, lecture notes, street signs (she lost her driver’s licence) – blurring hope itself. More hurdles followed with financial pressures and administrative complications. 

Still, she did not stop. 

“It felt cruel,” she admits. “Like reaching shore after years at sea only to be pushed back by another wave. It was heartbreaking to think that after overcoming years of rejection, I might still lose the opportunity I fought so hard for. I cried. I prayed. I questioned.” 

Grace arrived and met her in places she did not expect. It came sometimes as people, sometimes as opportunity and sometimes simply as renewed strength to stand back up. She rebuilt, just like Tori rebuilt her boat. “It felt like living out the words of Dickens: ‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.’ 

Choosing perseverance every day

With the new challenges came sharper determination – not loud and heroic, but quiet, consistent, like oars striking water in the dark. Dr Vermeulen says she has learned that perseverance is not dramatic, rather it is steady. 

“Dreams and goals don’t disappear simply because the path is difficult. I held onto Scripture, onto prayer, and onto stories where characters rise again and again. Maya Angelou wrote: ‘You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.’ 

Becoming Dr Vermeulen

When Dr Vermeulen received her final results, stating that she had passed, she was overcome with thoughts of the years of tears, prayers, waiting, disappointment, and the courage it took to try again. “I felt overwhelmed with gratitude – not just for the success, but for the strength the journey built in me. The exhaustion, the tears, the waiting, the doubts – they all folded into gratitude. 

According to her, these few years did not just challenge her, it stripped her down, dragged her through moments that forced her to meet parts of herself she was not ready to face. 

“I lost versions of myself. People think survival is loud. But this year taught me that sometimes the strongest scream is the one you don't let out. I carried storms in silence. I walked through days that felt like battlefields. With wounds I covered so well, even life itself couldn't see where I was bleeding from.

“Apart from all the counted losses, I gained something too. A harder truth. A sharper fire. A spine built from nights I thought I wouldn't survive. To grow through the storm … growth is a painful experience.”

She found out, she notes, that strength is not beautiful but rather it is brutal. It is choosing to get up when your soul is still on the floor, and it is holding your own heart together when nobody notices it's falling apart. 

She refused to break and now she can help strengthen others to stand strong. 

The doctor she wants to be

Dr Vermeulen, who has a great love and passion for paediatric and child health, internal medicine and anaesthesiology, wants to stand in hospital corridors one day remembering the version of herself when she was the one who waited, fought, prayed, failed and tried again.

“I want to be a doctor who never forgets what it feels like to be on the outside looking in. Someone who treats patients with the dignity and gentleness I learned from hardship. I would love if my career path and plans could lead me back to a specialist area like intensive care,” she says.

On the eve of her graduation, she thought about the tears, the waiting, and the doubt. How every rejection stitched into her story led her here.