One of my friends once said to me that there were three things in our life that belongs to our destiny rather than our decision. Those are: job, marriage, and house. It seems true because success is not only a combination of one’s intelligence and effort, but it is also created by many factors coming together at once such as opportunities, time, support and accumulated experiences. So it is with my success in getting a scholarship to Oxford University to do a DPhil in Bioethics.

I have been questioned as to how an administrator was able to get a scholarship to do a DPhil at Oxford University! And my simple answer to it is “It is all because of luck”. It was definitely good luck that I had a chance to take the post of administrator of the OUCRU Clinical Trials Unit which provided me a lot of wide range experiences, especially an opportunity to approach and deal with problems and ethical dilemmas in research. It has also given me the opportunity to work and communicate with excellent scientists, doctors and managers of all departments. They have told me about their lessons in career and life, their passion in pursuing life targets, taught me about working methods, the way to stand up from failures, and given me chances to try and advance. Three years in the role of an administrator has been an eventful period for me, with the work at the beginning being only to maintain study files and PhD student files, later stepping up with more important and specialized tasks which I could utilize my knowledge in law school. There I saw the connection between theory and practice and the flexibility in our application. And so the more I worked, the more interesting I found in exploring new perspectives and methods to apply policy to real matters arising in work. Then good luck came again when the Director of the Unit, Professor Jeremy Farrar, asked me whether I would like to do the DPhil about bioethics, which is a very new subject in Vietnam and for which there are few local experts. It was difficult to start in a field without an expert on hand to give me specific instructions. When I struggled to think of a way to broaden the scope of the proposal I expressed this difficulty to Professor Farrar, who answered me “Binh, this is science, and in science no one is an expert”. This encouraged me to come up with my own ideas and complete the proposal within a month. After that, I had to continue by taking the IELTS exam. This was the big challenge to me because at that time I had to work during the day and attend law classes and sit exams in the evenings. When I was exhausted and thought about giving up, then I had to remind myself how far I have come so far, and I was encouraged to continue. Needless to say, when Training Committee allowed me to register with Oxford University and when I received the acceptance letter from Oxford University are amongst the happiest days of my life.

There is still a long road ahead and I know I will have work hard to achieve my goal. However this experience so far has given me a lot of treasured lessons, and especially the confidence to step forward. Do you believe in yourself and have enough passion to pursue your goals? Keep trying and one day, chance and success will shine on you.