PHOTO: OWEN EGAN


Nicola Terceira: Rhodes warrior

Among her ancestors, Nicola Terceira counts an English mutineer and a privateer.

While she and these fellow Bermudans hale from different centuries -- the first, Christopher Carter, the island's first settler, jumped ship in 1600, while Hezekiah Frith arrived with his treasure in the early 19th century -- they share a sense of determination and a love of Bermuda.

What sets Terceira apart from these outlaws, however, is that she's managed to make use of these characteristics within the law, something that has brought her many rewards in life, the most recent of which being a Rhodes Scholarship.

That also means that come next September, she'll cross the Atlantic in the opposite direction from her English predecessors, when she settles into Oxford University's Trinity College to do her MSc in epidemiology, evolution and the control of infectious disease.

The first in her immediate family to complete a university degree, the first to have such a thirst for outdoor adventure and the first in her large extended family, of English-Portuguese descent, to go into medical science, Terceira was "very surprised" to be awarded the coveted scholarship.

After a "tough" interview for the scholarship, held last December in Bermuda, Terceira had "no idea" of how she'd done. She learned that evening of her success, left the next day for a family holiday to London and celebrated with them over dinner and champagne.

Terceira, who graduates next month with an honours degree in microbiology and immunology, has been active in many McGill clubs. She has been a singer with the McGill Choral Society, a member of the McGill Outdoors Club and McGill Students for AIDS Education and a tutor for under-privileged children through the McGill Big Buddies Tutoring Service.

She says her parents deserve much of the thanks for her success so far in academia. "They didn't come from much and they worked really hard to give me and my sister many opportunities."

She also credits the recreational organizations to which she belonged while growing up. Through her association with the Girl Guides (as a girl guide, then a leader) and Outward Bound, Terceira gained "a sense of confidence, leadership, commitment and of time-management."

Perseverance too. Terceira credits one experience with Outward Bound in Wales with giving her the toughness to persevere in the most difficult of circumstances.

"It was a 50-mile expedition and my feet were completely raw and bleeding by the end. So many times I felt like giving up, but I had to convince myself and the others to continue.

"Crossing that stile [to complete the course] is the high point of my life," she says. "Now I know that if I can just keep going, I'll come to the end… Thinking back on that time has got me through other difficult situations."

Karen Brassinga, Terceira's technical supervisor for her honours research project in Professor Gregory Marczynski's lab, observed that same perseverance at the bench.

"She spent many hours figuring out what she had to do," notes Brassinga, explaining that "the transition from teaching lab to research lab is a bit of a shock to the system. When it's your first time working in the lab with no instructions from the TA, you have to push yourself to do things."

Brassinga says she is already missing Terceira and her Bermuda stories of going down to the beach to buy fresh fish.

As for Terceira, after completing her studies at Oxford and studying medicine somewhere -- she's deferred her acceptance at McGill -- she plans to return home. "I'm hoping for a position in the department of health," she says, explaining that there's a need for someone to improve communications between the public and private health sectors in Bermuda.

"Many diseases in Bermuda are not managed as effectively as they could be due to a lack of communication between the public and the private health care sectors," says the 21-year-old, illustrating the problem with the matter of asthma. "Asthma has the highest rate of hospitalization, but much of that could be avoided if patients were given nebulizers [the device used to render medication into a spray form] but the insurance companies won't pay the $300. So, people end up in hospital.

"Anyone with the right skill and the right information can affect change," says Terceira who's determined to become just such a person.

Bronwyn Chester








The clock didn't represent the oppressive social force it has become today. It was a glorious urban toy, not present all the time in their life.



History professor Faith Wallis discussing the status of clocks in medieval days. Almost one-third of the medieval year was holidays and people weren't quite as time-oppressed as they are today. She spoke to The Globe and Mail.





Hold on there, Hillary


With her personal popularity soaring as a result of her public support for her embattled husband Bill during the Monica Lewinsky media circus, speculation is rife that U.S. first lady Hillary Clinton is seriously considering her own career in politics.

She is widely expected to make a bid for a New York Senate seat once Bill's term is done at the White House -- in fact, she seems to be building up a core of advisors for that very purpose.

History professor Gil Troy, an expert on the American presidency and the role that first ladies play in supporting their husbands, thinks Clinton ought to slow down and give the matter more thought.

In a recent op-ed published by The New York Post entitled "Hillary's Useless Popularity," Troy indicates he understands her temptation. "Nothing else could so revive her flagging reputation as an independent and powerful political force."

Unfortunately for Clinton, says Troy, her newfound popularity is largely a product of her acceptance of the "unspoken but clear protocols defining the first ladyship -- when she came to resemble Barbara Bush, not Eleanor Roosevelt. Only by trading in her power-suit for an apron, by writing a best-selling book about child-rearing not policy-making, by standing by her man rather than working with him, did Hillary become the popular figure she is today."

He acknowledges that the "gossamer shackles of the first lady certainly are frustrating for a modern, intelligent, accomplished woman" like Clinton. But he says whenever a first lady has tried to take on any kind of substantive role in policy-making, they "win reporters' cheers but see their poll ratings nosedive." The public wants its first ladies to know their place.

Troy's advice for Clinton? Enjoy the approval ratings and all the publicity, but remember "how fickle the public can be."








"When in Rome do as the Romans do" is not particularly good advice, and it's horrible advice for women in many cultures.



Management professor Nancy Adler talking to The New York Times about females on business trips in countries with markedly different cultures than North America. Adler's advice? Be sensitive to a culture, but don't mimic it. Businesswomen can avoid some local customs by making it clear they're different from local women.