Join us as we look into the life of an academic genius Cherish Daniel-Markson from the University of Warwick, who emerged as Best Law Graduate. Cherish’s journey reflects dedication and resilience.
Discover how she achieved the academic feat of winning first prize for performance in law with a social science degree.
Can you tell us about your early education in Nigeria? What were some of your most significant academic achievements during that time?
I don’t remember too much, I’ll be honest. I know that I have always been good at school, and I have always been good at education. The memories are vague, but one of them I remember was when I was in primary school.
I would usually be either at the top of my class or near the top of my class, and I would always be involved in competitions between other schools.
I remember a math competition during primary school. It was me and two other students from my school competing against students from different schools. We ended up winning that competition.
I feel like I haven’t really had too much of a difficult time in school. I will say that things started to get a bit more real for me in the sense that I had to make a more conscious effort with education when I came back to Nigeria from the U.S.
I moved to the U.S. around 2013/2014, and I was there for about five years. The same thing happened: I didn’t really make a conscious effort in school, I just got by, I didn’t really try, but I also didn’t really fully take a back seat.
Once I got back to Nigeria, it was a totally different curriculum. I had to make the decision within myself to actually make an effort in school and to put in the work required to get the results that I desired.
When I came back, I started studying for the IGCSE exams. I started late, so it was really difficult for me to learn everything that everyone else had, like, three years to learn, and I had a year to learn.
I had to make the decision to work hard and put in the effort because I knew I didn’t want to fail. I knew that I wanted to do well.
I like to study in the morning, very early in the morning around 2 am. So what I would do was, when I got back from school around 4 pm, I take my dinner, go to bed by 7 pm, and wake up around 2 am in the morning, taking in as much content as possible.
And it all paid off eventually when my results came out. I didn’t have the best result in my school, but I came in 4th place, which was really good, especially because I started off so late and had trouble initially because it was a different curriculum from the American system.
I had my A-levels at Bridge House College. The transition from IGCSE to A-levels is one that is very difficult, the way you answer your questions in A-levels is different from how you answer them in IGCSE.
It was so difficult entering into this new phase that I really didn’t know how to navigate, but I told myself that I wanted to do well, I had to put in the effort, the work, and the hours, and that was exactly what I did.
So I took my studying routine for IGCSE a step further. So I would still be waking up by 2 am, trying to get as much content as possible, but I would also be going the extra mile, going to my teachers and asking them questions out of lessons, doing my own research, and I think that was what really helped me in getting the highest score in the world in my law exam.
I think doing things that other students weren’t doing because I wanted it so badly really paid off, I got great results for my A-levels.
After that, I went to the U.K. to do a foundations program in preparation for entering my undergraduate studies. I did well in my foundation program and also in moving into my degree, and this was a motivator for me.
I just wanted to do well, it didn’t really matter if things were difficult or if things were looking like they were not going to be easy for me.
There wasn’t much support at the university because it was a very different environment then. I really had to make that decision to be the best, so I put in the effort and thank God that it paid off.
How did your experiences at Bridge House College shape your academic career?
I think Bridge House was a good place for me to start from in the sense that it was a good balance between independence and having support as well.
In essence, I can say Bridge House allowed me to set expectations for myself and also allowed me to have that support to meet the expectations I had set for myself.
So I think Bridge House was kind of the perfect balance between independence and support. It prepared me for what I would eventually face during my undergraduate degree, and the right amount of support kind of made me confident in myself. In essence, it shaped me.
I would also say that before Bridge House, I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do with myself. I knew that I liked writing essays, I knew that I liked the arts more than I did the sciences, and when I would speak to people about what they wanted to do out of college, I would also start to get ideas of my own, seeing what aspirations they had.
That also helped me get the idea to apply for law because, before that, I didn’t really know where I wanted to go or even what I wanted to study at the undergraduate level.
So in that sense, it really shaped me, and I’m very grateful for the time I spent there, even though it was short.
What made you attracted to pursuing law and social science at Warwick University?
I studied law and other social science subjects like sociology and economics at college for my A-levels. I think that was my biggest motivator because I enjoyed studying those subjects.
I found them all equally fascinating, but in my heart, I knew eventually I would want to be a lawyer. So when I was picking courses to apply to, that was what I had in mind.
I knew that had to be my priority at the university, but also because there are so many different options for what courses you can apply to at the undergraduate level, I knew I couldn’t just limit myself by not exploring other things.
So that was how I ended up picking law and social sciences because it gives me the opportunity to have law as my focus while also having the opportunity to explore other subject areas like economics, sociology, and psychology.
I have done that throughout my degree, and I think it has been incredibly rewarding.
It has given me a more well-rounded perspective, not only on the career I want to go into but also on how it generally operates in the real world and how it kind of intersects with different aspects of our lives. That kind of explains why I chose law and social sciences as my course.
And the reason I decided to study at Warwick was that during my time in college, I heard that it was a great school, and I knew some people were going to go there, but ultimately, the decision came down to me and what I wanted for university.
I knew I wanted a place where there would be a strong sense of community, and I think Warwick has that because it has a campus, it’s not like a city university like the ones they have in London, where you can’t differentiate between a university student and someone walking on the street because the college buildings are so far apart.
In Warwick, everything is in one place. When you step on the campus, you know you are surrounded by students, and I think that kind of environment just makes you feel like you are at university. So yeah, that was why I decided to study law and social sciences at Warwick University.
You were awarded the first prize for performance in law with a social science degree. What do you believe contributed most to this success
Very interesting question because I don’t know, but I think it must have been God. He must have seen that I was trying so hard to do well, and he rewarded that tenfold.
But in terms of what I did in my academics throughout the university, as I said earlier, I always have that mindset where I just want to be the best, and when my results came out, I wanted to know that I did everything I could to always get the best possible outcome.
I think that mindset and also the fact that I have such a great support network in my family, especially my parents, who are always constantly motivating me with their words and also with their very high expectations of me.
I think that has always been playing in the back of my mind, and it kind of fuels me, especially in those moments where I don’t feel like getting up to study, or I don’t feel like researching for my essay, or I don’t feel like going to my seminar that day because I feel too tired.
It makes me want to get up and just do the work because I know it is important, especially seeing how hard they work to give me the opportunity I have. I feel like I’m almost doing it as a service to them.
And also, going the extra mile, I was trying my best to do things that other people weren’t doing at the university, especially at a school like Warwick.
It’s such a great school with so many brilliant students, and I think it’s very easy to get complacent because you feel you have reached the top, you can just relax and breeze through your degree, but no, I think having so many brilliant people around me also helped me to want to prove myself, to show I was here for a reason, and to prove to others that I am just as smart as they are.
This is because I constantly find myself facing this feeling of inadequacy, especially when comparing myself to other British students, people who have been brought up in these incredibly competitive and advanced educational environments.
Generally, I think it is a combination of all those things that helped me get the award, but I would say it ultimately comes down to God because it could have been the case that I put in all those efforts and things could not have gone in my favour, but I know that he definitely made sure that things turned out the way they did. I am incredibly grateful to him for that.
How did you engage with the academic community at Warwick outside of your coursework, like clubs, societies, and functions?
I would say that I engaged really well. For instance, in my first year, I was involved with the Warwick Law Society and another society called the Base Law Society.
There was this project called the Death Penalty Project, and we had the opportunity to assist U.S. attorneys who were helping inmates. You could help them with most of the tasks, like research tasks.
And also, with the Base Law Society, we had the opportunity to mentor students. Those opportunities were incredibly helpful in exposing me to the legal world, introducing me to other people on my course, and building a supportive network of like-minded people.
In my second year and my third year, I think I just carried on doing what I had been doing since my first year in university. I really enjoyed the mentoring aspect of the university because, as I said, since I am Nigerian and I’m in the U.K., I feel obligated to have that sense of community and to provide that for others.
In my third year of university, that was what I really focused on, just mentoring younger students, especially from minority ethnic groups, because I know how difficult it can be to come to university at first and feel out of place and feel like an impostor.
So that’s what I focused on: mentoring law students, especially when it comes to applying for opportunities like internship opportunities, training contracts, or graduate jobs. It was something I really enjoyed. I collaborated with the Warwick career team to write blog posts for students and even get personalised advice for them.
Aside from that, I also have a passion for helping people, especially younger people. I have extended that with work opportunities.
So I have worked with this company called ThinkHigher, whose focus is helping students in the area to increase their aspirations to want to go to university and to consider higher education options, especially students that come from unfavourable backgrounds.
