Stellenbosch University
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Megan Smith
Meet Megan Smith: #MyTygerMaties60
Author: FMHS Marketing & Communications
Published: 02/12/2016

As part of its 60th-anniversary celebrations, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences is introducing 60 future healthcare professionals who are currently in their first year. Meet Megan Smith.

Megan Smith has big ambitions and an even bigger heart. Though she’s now still a first-year Occupational Therapy student at Stellenbosch University, she dreams of one day being the head of an organisation such as LIV Village in KwaZulu-Natal – a project that houses and fosters orphans and abandoned children. “I would like to use my skills and my knowledge to change the lives of our orphaned children,” she explains.

Smith says she decided on her course because she is passionate about helping people and making a positive change, particularly in South Africa. She says her Afrikaans high school teacher, who was tasked with trying to instil a love for Afrikaanse literature to a group of English KZN girls,  proved to her that through passion and perseverance anything is possible.

The motto she lives by sums up her attitude of positivity: “Every day, in every way, things get better and better.”

Did you know…
  • She has a way with words and likes to write poetry in her free time.
  • She likes baking and one of her specialties is her grandmother’s vanilla cake with a twist – it’s filled with nougat!
  • The most important lesson she’s learnt in her life thus far is to never give up. “My dad taught me to always drive through the storm, and not to hang around waiting for it to end.” 
  • She studies six to nine hours per day.
  • Her best habit is keeping a daily to-do list, and her worst is not folding her jerseys properly.
  • She is crazy about dogs.