Gloria, Victor and Blessing Oyeniyi are children of Nigerian immigrants. Their parents, who brought them to the U.S. in 1995 for a better life, wanted them to be doctors. Today, the three siblings all have that title.
Before the Oyeniyi couple moved their children to the U.S., Texas to be precise, they had professional careers.
According to Victor, one of the children, their father was a pilot for 19 years and their mother was a bank manager. But after moving to the U.S., he said their parents re-enrolled in college to get a second degree and further went on to pursue their masters while working odd jobs to put food on the table for the family.
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“We were on welfare for a while, coming back in the U.S. and starting back up,” said Gloria. “My mom was a janitor at her first job when she started back over, and they both went back and got their college degrees and their master’s degrees.”
The Oyeniyis wanted their children to be doctors. Be it a medical doctor or a doctor of books, they wanted their kids to have those titles because it had been their dream for them.
Seeing how their parents struggled to get back on their feet after migrating to the U.S., the sibling trio put in the needed work to make the dream of their parents a reality.
Today, they are all proud doctors. Victor got his Doctor of Pharmacy from Texas Southern University; Gloria graduated from John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. She works as a mental health professional. Blessing, the youngest and last to bag her degree, also graduated from McGovern Medical School and is practicing as a psychiatrist.
Blessing recounted how difficult it was for her at Harvard during her pre-medical courses. “It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I’d always excelled before that.”
The siblings would not have pursued their parent’s dream if they had not fallen in love with the profession. They admit that they thought of giving up a couple of times, but they encouraged each other and forged ahead regardless.
“We’re pretty close, so we would just tell each other, ‘Listen, we’re doing this. We can accomplish this,'” said Gloria.
Victor wrote an appreciation post on Instagram thanking their parents for believing in them and hoped they were proud of their achievements. He also hoped that their story will inspire others to also go for gold in whatever they do.
“We hope we’ve made them proud and hope we can inspire others to do the same here and afar, not just in medicine but in sports, business, entertainment and wherever excellence might lie.”
The trio are indeed siblings’ goals personified.
