Nicola Terceira, Rhodes warrior
Excerpt from the May 27 issue of the by Bronwyn Chester
Among her ancestors, Nicola Terceira counts an English mutineer and a privateer. While she and these fellow Bermudans hail from different centuries -- the first, Christopher Carter, the island聮s first settler, jumped ship in 1600 while Hezekiah Firth arrived with his treasure in the early 19th century - they share a sense of nonconformity, determination and a love of Bermuda.
What sets Terceira apart from these outlaws, however, is that she聮s managed to make use of these characteristics within the law, something that has brought her many rewards in life, the most recent of which being a Rhodes Scholarship. That also means that come next September, she聮ll cross the Atlantic in the opposite direction from her English predecessors, when she settles into Trinity College, Oxford, to do her M.Sc. in epidemiology, evolution and the control of infectious disease.
After a "tough" interview for the scholarship, held last December in Bermuda, Terceira had no idea how she聮d done. Then she learned that evening of her success, left the next day for a family holiday to London, and celebrated with them over dinner and champagne.
Nicola Terceira, an honors student in Microbiology and Immunology, will receive her B.Sc. Honours degree, Monday June 7 at 2:00 pm, together with fellow Rhodes scholar Marco Gualtieri (Joint Honours Program in Mathematics and Physics) at the Faculty of Science聮s Convocation in Place des Arts (Salle Wilfrid Pelletier).
After completing her studies at Oxford and studying medicine somewhere - she聮s deferred her acceptance at UU直播 - Terceira plans to return home. "I聮m hoping for a position in the Department of Health," she says, explaining that there聮s a need for someone to improve communications between the public and private health sectors in Bermuda.
