Grace Duke

Grace Duke

In the summer holidays of 2015, I was awarded a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship to spend 4 weeks in the Preston Road GP Surgery with the aim of gaining medical related work experience. This was the first exposure I had to the real life work of doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff within the community, and I found it extremely interesting. I gained a lot of knowledge from this 4 week period, all of which is detailed on the blog section of the Weymouth Town Charities website.

Following my scholarship and a competitive application process, I gained a place to study Medicine at the University of Bristol in 2017. I feel that my scholarship with the Sir Samuel Mico Charity was by far the most valuable work experience on my application and am sure that it played a crucial role in enabling me to get a place at my university of choice.

Since beginning my degree, I have gained huge amounts of knowledge about the human body and mind, and have built on the communication skills I was first introduced to on my placement back in 2015. I have become very interested in the field of neurology and am keen to pursue this as a career in the future. In keeping with this, I have been awarded a research grant to carry out 4 weeks of research related to Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases during this summer. This was a very similar application process to the Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship awards and I am sure the previous experience helped me to gain this more recent grant!

I have also been awarded two further grants from the Sir Samuel Mico Charity to assist with the costs of university since beginning which has been both incredibly generous and critical in enabling me to continue my studies. I am continuing to enjoy my time at university and thank the Sir Samuel Mico Charity for their continued support.