Winding road for grad

Many students take a the expressway through higher education, finishing degrees in the shortest amount of time possible.

But others, such as Timi Davie, 38, who graduated from the Medical University South Carolina on Friday with a doctorate in pharmacy, take the scenic route and find a rich and fulfilling life in the detours.

Davie was one of about 650 students who graduated earning bachelor's, master's or doctoral degrees. The students came from the university's six colleges: medicine, nursing, dental medicine, pharmacy, health professions and graduate studies.

Many of them donned caps and gowns and participated in a sun-drenched morning commencement ceremony on the Horseshoe, in the center of the campus.

Davie, who is married and has two daughters, said her enrolling in pharmacy school in 2004 was really "a family decision."

Davie got married in the early 1990s during her junior year at Baptist College of Charleston, which is now Charleston Southern University, she said. But six days after her wedding, her husband was killed in a car accident.

She soon remarried and finished her undergraduate degree in biology at Erskine College. In 1992 she enrolled in pharmacy school at MUSC, but learned in her first semester there that she was pregnant.

"I'm a family-first kind of person," she said. So she chose to put off pharmacy school and raise her family first.

Davie, whose husband Phillip is a former principal at James Island Middle School, said she never gave up on her dream to someday re-enroll in pharmacy school. In 2004, with the support of her husband and two children, she was finally able to do it, she said.

"The love never left me," she said of her passion to return to school. "When you know something is right, it doesn't go away."

The importance of having passion for their work was one of three thoughts or "reflections" that commencement speaker Kenneth Kizer, chairman of the board of Medspheres Systems, shared with students.

"If you lose that passion, you need to do something else," said Kizer, who is the former undersecretary for health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

He also told graduates that it's important to make to make a living, but more important to make a difference.

The health-care field, he told students, will provide them with the opportunity "to make a difference, a very big difference."

Finally, he reminded graduates, "the business that you're really in is giving people time."

"It may be years," he said, "or it may be just a few hours without pain."

Reach Diane Knich at 937-5491 or dknich@postandcourier.com.