While hun­dreds of Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies grad­uands gin­ger­ly crossed the stage flash­ing smiles to col­lect their Bach­e­lor’s de­gree in their re­spec­tive aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suits at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya yes­ter­day, one stu­dent, Faith Wil­son, took mea­sured steps as she com­plet­ed her four-year-long jour­ney.

The 23-year-old, who suf­fers from par­tial cere­bral pal­sy dis­or­der, has had to over­come unique chal­lenges, just as she has done all her life, to earn a de­gree in Bi­ol­o­gy and En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, Faith said, “Just with the walk­ing alone, that was such a ma­jor task for me, just to learn how to walk prop­er­ly like this. I don’t walk the best, but it’s def­i­nite­ly an im­prove­ment.”

De­spite her tri­als, Faith re­mained un­wa­ver­ing in her jour­ney to ex­cel and nev­er dared to drift from her dreams.

“When I was born, I al­ways had cere­bral pal­sy. I was born with it but mild and pro­gres­sive­ly over the years, I have got­ten bet­ter. But this jour­ney has been re­al­ly re­ward­ing be­cause it was dif­fi­cult, es­pe­cial­ly with the pan­dem­ic, the on­line learn­ing was re­al­ly dif­fi­cult for me and my de­gree end­ed up tak­ing four years in­stead of three be­cause I had failed one course and that just goes to show, even if you fail a course you can still pick back up and don’t be dis­cour­aged.”

Faith cred­it­ed her suc­cess to her de­ter­mi­na­tion and her fam­i­ly’s sup­port.

“Lis­ten­ing to oth­ers and their in­spi­ra­tional sto­ries lift me and def­i­nite­ly my fam­i­ly has been be­hind me, root­ing for me be­cause I know they will al­ways push me be­cause they want the best for me and want­i­ng to make them proud has been my in­spi­ra­tion.”

Faith en­cour­aged oth­ers to trod on, even when the hur­dles seem in­sur­mount­able.

“In this in­stance, my cere­bral pal­sy would have kept me back in a lot of phys­i­cal as­pects of my life from since I was young, that would have been seen as a neg­a­tive thing for a lot of peo­ple. I guess the fact that I’m do­ing this in­ter­view right now, I turned it in­to a win so be­ing able to in­spire some peo­ple, if they see this, so just keep push­ing.”

Faith is now march­ing to­wards her Mas­ter’s de­gree in Oc­cu­pa­tion­al and En­vi­ron­men­tal Safe­ty and Health.