This Week We Feature Young Professional Amber V. Wheatley
Meet our Young Professional for this week, Virgin Gorda resident Amber V. Wheatley, a medical student, company owner and health care volunteer whose life at this early stage is already worthy of emulation.
At 22 years old, Amber has already racked up impressive credentials as an academic high achiever and is on the trajectory to even higher achievement when she completes studies in medicine in a few years’ time.
Though she was born on the island of St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands, she considers her present place of abode, Virgin Gorda, to be her place of origin, having grown up there. Her parents are Vincent O. Wheatley and Esther P. O'Neal Wheatley.
“My early childhood was interesting, at least in retrospect,” she said in an interview with Virgin Islands News Online. “I spent a lot of time outside climbing rocks and trees and also falling down them,” she said.
Amber said that her parents were very committed to making sure that she and her sister see the world. “So there was a lot of travelling involved in my early childhood from as nearby as St. Thomas to as far away as Mexico,” she said. “I also read a lot from a very young age. My favourite stories were always African or Caribbean stories with a lot of anthropomorphism which is reflected in the sort of literature I read today,” she said.
Our Young Professional attended the Little Rainbow and later Robinson O’Neal Memorial Primary School where she graduated Valedictorian and scoring the second highest marks in English for the entire Territory for the Primary Five Exams.
Noting that she always performed well in school, Amber graduated Valedictorian of my primary school scoring the second highest in English in the Territory for the Primary 5 Examinations. “I never really had a favourite subject because, with the kind of parents I have, learning never stopped. My ‘lessons’ were never limited to a classroom or single subject. I did however gravitate towards science and English particularly writing,” she said.
After graduating from the Robinson O’Neal Primary School she went on the BVI High School, now called the Elmore Stoutt High School.
“It was a bit of a shock having to go to school in Tortola with a significantly larger cohort of students and also having to take the boat every day,” she said, noting that despite the inconvenience of going to school in Tortola, Elmore Stoutt High School allowed her to take part in a number of activities that she would not have been able to in Virgin Gorda.
“While in high school I was in the school band, in the environmental club, I did the school newspaper for a bit and participated in debating. Most fun of all, I was able to travel all over the Caribbean with these various clubs,” she said.
“I graduated from 5-Science in 2008 with high honours and was then faced with the decision of what next. I had already decided that medicine was the career path that I wanted and was inspired by a forensic pathologist I met during my high school work experience to pursue pathology,” Amber said.
“When I realised that I was too young to go straight to the University of the West Indies to study medicine, I decided to do my A-levels at an international boarding school in Cambridge, England. In Cambridge I had my first encounter with the confusing and complicated process of applying medical school and ended up doing a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Biomedical Science at Cardiff University,” she said.
“This gave me the time I needed to figure out the medical school application process and also refine my reason for wanting to do medicine. After Cardiff I realised that research science was not where my interest lied and I am now pursuing my Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBCh) at Swansea University,” said our Young Professional.
Asked about her career goals, she said while she still has some ways to go before she could be a doctor, she said that she is interested in cancer medicine as well as forensic pathology.
In the meantime however, our Young Professional has started her own weight management company where she works part time in helping people to lose, maintain or gain weight.
“What I enjoy both about medicine and helping people with their weight is the combination of hard and fast science with human interaction. You would be surprised how strange the human body is to people,” she said.
Asked how her studies prepared her for the part time job she has at the moment, Amber said Swansea University is very good at preparing their students for a career in medicine “because we are exposed very early on to patient care both in hospital and clinical settings.”
The young woman said that the training also involves focusing both on learning the science of medicine and also the art of it i.e. the importance of doctor-patient relationships.
Our Young Professional finds the time every summer between her studies to return home and volunteer to teach swimming to children on Virgin Gorda and to give of her time at the clinic on the island. “It is always a very fulfilling experience and those kids really teach you how to be patient and caring but firm. I have also volunteered at Iris O’Neal Clinic in the past to gain more experience in what will be my future work environment,” said Amber.
In giving a word of advice to her fellow young people, she said, “Don’t wait for opportunity to come to you, make the effort to go out and get it. Most importantly stop wasting your energy making excusing or speaking negatively about others; instead invest that energy in building up yourself.”
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