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Dr Shezree Tiel graduates top of her class

13 December 2023 | Story André Damons | Photo Charl Devenish

As she achieved the goals she had set for herself, Dr Shezree Tiel, one of the latest graduates from the University of the Free State (UFS) Faculty of Health Sciences (FoHS), developed the courage to not only define her goals, but aim for even more. This is the reason she graduated not only summa cum laude, but as the top student in her year group.

Dr Tiel was one of 459 students who graduated on Friday (8 December 2023) during the FoHS’s December graduation ceremony. She graduated with a MBChB degree and is one of eight students to do so summa cum laude. During her five years of studies to become a medical doctor, she was the top student in each of her year groups.

“I feel very excited and still in disbelief, because it has been my dream since first year to graduate cum laude, but there were moments I felt I may have to accept that it may not be possible. So, I am very delighted that despite all the challenges I faced, my dream was realised,” she said.

According to her, she decided to study at UFS as it is the only university in South Africa that offered a five-year medical degree.

Building healthier and happier communities

Talking about how she achieved this, Dr Tiel, who will be doing her community service year in her home province of Mpumalanga, said what was consistent throughout her years of study, was the need to avoid a uniform approach to studying. Instead, she continued, she embraced different ways to learn.

Said Dr Tiel: “I embraced different ways to acquire knowledge and used these to identify a method of study that would be best suited for each module, chapter and sometimes each day. Everyday courage, resilience, patience, and perseverance played a vital role in accomplishing all my achievements. In spite of all of this, I will always attribute my achievements to my trust in Christ.”

Her desire to make the best possible use of every opportunity she gets to gain knowledge and the hope to use that knowledge to be useful to people and communities, motivated her on her journey to become a doctor. She decided to study medicine because she aspired to work with people in the pursuit of building healthier and happier communities. She believed that medicine would provide a great foundation and platform to accomplish this.

Though she is yet to decide in which field she would like to specialise one day, she believes it would be in internal medicine because it has always been one of her favourite rotations. “I do hope whichever one I go into will provide me with an opportunity to teach because that is one of the things I delight in.”

News Archive

'Structures of Dominion and Democracy' by David Goldblatt at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery

2015-08-03

Photograph by David Goldblatt, On August 16 2012 South African Police shot striking mineworkers of the Lonmin platinum mines, killing 34 and wounding 78 within a radius of 350 metres of this koppie, where the men used to meet. Seventeen of the men, seeking shelter among boulders from police fire, were shot with seemingly lethal intent, some with their hands up in surrender, none were given medical assistance for their wounds. Beyond is the Lonmin smelter, which stood idle during the strike. Marikana, North-West Province, 11 May 2014.

The University of the Free State, in partnership with the Goodman Gallery, presents the exhibition, 'Structures of Dominion and Democracy', by renowned South African photographer David Goldblatt.

This exhibition, which runs from 13 July to 7 August 2015 on the Bloemfontein Campus, is dedicated to the series, “Structures”, one of the major bodies of works by Goldblatt. For over three decades, Goldblatt has travelled South Africa, photographing sites and structures weighted with historical narrative: monuments, private, religious and secular, which reveal something about the people who built them. These sites allow us a glimpse into the everyday. Each place is a repository, a landscape containing an epic story that has involved whole communities: the experience sometimes told through the memorialising of remarkable individuals.

The exhibition, Structures of Dominion and Democracy, traverses two distinct eras in South Africa history. As Goldblatt explains: "Over the years, I have photographed South African structures, which I found eloquent, of the dominion which Whites gradually came to exert over all of South Africa and its peoples. That time of domination began in 1660 when Jan van Riebeeck ordered a cordon to be erected of blockhouses and barriers that would exclude the indigenous population from access to the first European settlement in South Africa and its herds, lands, water, and grazing. The time of domination ended on the 2nd of February 1990, when, on behalf of the government and the Whites of South Africa, President FW de Klerk effectively abdicated from power. Beginning in 1999 and continuing to the present, I have photographed some structures that are eloquent of our still nascent democracy. In the belief that, in what we build we express much about what we value, I have looked at South African structures as declarations of our value systems, our ethos.”

Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, UFS Sasol Library
University of the Free State
206 Nelson Mandela Ave
Bloemfontein

Gallery hours:
Monday to Friday 08:30 – 16:30

Entrance: Free
Enquiries: 051 401 2706, dejesusav@ufs.ac.za

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