WEST BAY: Two local students have joined a select group of young Canadians that will each receive scholarships of $100,000 over the next four years.
SAERC student Janine Lock and Dr. John Hugh Gillis Regional High School student Kerilyn Kennedy were among the 33 students chosen earlier this month by the Loran Scholarship Foundation to receive the organization’s major scholarship.
Founded in 1988 to fill a gap in providing scholarships for Canadians seeking undergraduate degrees, the foundation narrowed down its field of 4,438 applicants to a short list of 400 semi-finalists and then put its 83 finalists through a rigorous series of interviews in 21 cities across Canada before choosing the winners.
“I’m absolutely honoured and still shocked,” Lock told The Reporter Thursday afternoon, adding that she “loved” the application experience and even enjoyed the interview process.
“I’ve only had one interview before going into this process, so for me it was a huge learning curve. But I just found it really interesting – I had a lot of interesting people who were interviewing me, asking me about world issues or our local communities or different projects that I’ve done. And in between, I got to meet all the other candidates, and that was so inspiring. It was wonderful to meet them, and I got to learn about other programs that I had no clue about and would love to start here.”
Apart from their new status as Loran Scholars and their dedication to their communities’ respective 4-H Clubs, Lock and Kennedy also share another common thread, as the pair visited Mexico last March to participate in the Nova Scotia – Campeche International Leadership Camp (NSCILC).
This experience, combined with three years in Uruguay, South America for Lock and her family as a result of her father’s work commitments, have the SAERC student expressing enthusiasm about the Loran Scholarship’s requirement to spend two summer internships outside of Canada, in addition to a third to be spent outside of Nova Scotia.
“They sort of want us to push our boundaries and go different places,” Lock explained. “And I’ve always wanted to travel and be immersed in a culture away, and Loran gives me that opportunity.”
As Lock prepares to pursue an undergraduate degree in agro-environmental science at Montreal’s McGill University, she is also hoping to eventually become a medical doctor. These seemingly-diverse interests link together for Lock, whose career paths are partly motivated by her own grandfather’s struggle with Parkinson’s Disease.
“They say that you can have a genetic disposition to it, but it might not show until it’s triggered by environmental factors,” Lock noted.
“Can someone have a nervous system disease triggered by agricultural toxins and environmental factors, and can it go one step further and be triggered by PTSD or depression? So I’m wondering if toxins – more specifically, agricultural toxins – can impact PTSD in things like that and have it trigger them along the same way as Parkinson’s.”