Rose Ifebigh Memorial Scholarship

My name is Stephanie, I am a Nigerian Igbo immigrant and have lived in the US for close to six years now. I am the middle child and I live with my mother and two brothers, with my dad currently "stuck" in Nigeria due to some issue with the immigration process. My hobbies include reading novels, crocheting, listening to music, and making bead jewelry. I am studying to become a doctor and am currently deciding between Gynecology and Psychology. Life as an immigrant has had its ups and downs. I have experienced both the difficulties of going through college without good financial endorsement, but I have also tried to allow myself experience the fun aspects of exploring and meeting new people. I am in my fourth year in community college due to the complicated process of immigrating as well as the pandemic, I do not qualify for any need-based scholarships and pay for college out of pocket. Although moving forward I am putting more effort into applying for scholarships as I am in the process for applying for schools to transfer to in the coming semester. One thing I have learned about myself since making the journey is how persistent I have been throughout the years. I think after spending so long in a community college with so little progress being made, I still choose to continue pursuing my education when I could be working full time, and using the money I on superficial things. Regarding my home country Nigeria, I already knew that there is a great improvement to be made in our education system but I have compared and learned about a specific section of the system that I think needs improvement regarding the use of the British curriculum. While in high school in Nigeria, I never disagreed with the things we were taught about slavery and colonization, but getting here and having more access to information, I recognize that a good amount of things we were taught about were incorrect and even quite insulting. One thing I have learned, still learning since moving here is that you cannot and should not live by other people’s standards. Immigrating to this country at the age that I did, I have been so easily influenced by outside sources i.e social media, aunties, among others and it took a toll on my self confidence. Having the confidence to do the most basic things is very essential living in this country because you never get informed if you don’t ask. I think one of my favorite things is seeing young children of immigrants talk and ask question no matter how ridiculous they might seem. Truthfully I’m not sure where my self confidence went because if you asked me I think I had that confidence as a young child, probably just on a different level. I’m learning that asking for things is one of the ways to gain access to things regardless of how ridiculous the questions might seem. And there’s really no shame in asking! I have always wanted to be a doctor or be in the medical field, moving here I have grown into my passion and found out the sectors that I am very passionate about. A major reason I want to become a gynecologist was because I learned about the rate at which women and children of color die or are neglected during the course of pregnancy, labor and sexual health in general. I want to be able to be a part of creating a system that invokes change in these types of statistics.