Ready to join mom, dad and two sisters in the medical field
STEPHEN Keene’s parents are both doctors. His mom is a pathologist and his dad is a cardiothoracic anaesthetist. Both his older sisters are studying medicine at Wits University – one is in her sixth year and the other is in her fourth year.
And now Keene, 17, will join his sisters at Wits – making the number of doctors in his family five. He is one of five Redhill High School pupils who have been provisionally accepted for medical school and, having achieved eight distinctions, he is likely to keep his place.
“(I want) to cut people,” jokes Keene’s classmate, Jared Falcke. “It’s great to see how the body works.”
Falcke achieved six distinctions in his exams and has also been provisionally accepted to study medicine at Wits. But before he embarks on his long medical studies, he is going to spend a year in Los Angeles studying film. “I knew I wanted to give drama a shot. I wanted to put it behind me because you can’t make money that way.
“But one day I was watching TV and I decided to just do it, apply and see what happens.”
Michael Radomsky, who achieved seven distinctions, was just seven when his grandfather, who is also a doctor, started trying to encourage his grandson to join the medical profession. “He bribed me, offering me a R40 000 microscope if I went to med school… I’ve got the microscope now.”
Radomsky will also attend Wits.
The five pupils are tight friends who joke about sharing notes and helping each other in the upcoming year. Diandra Antunes, who was deputy headgirl of the school, and Leonie Bell have been talking about doing medicine since Grade 8.
Antunes and Bell were both listed as outstanding achievers by the IEB, achieving eight and nine distinctions respectively.