My personal educational story is mentioned throughout the e-portfolio but in brief, I learned to read and write before I started primary school at the age of 5; my mother is very intelligent and literate and as I pestered her whenever I saw her with a book because I wanted to read too, she taught me to read using flash cards and story books. As a result, I found early schooling rather tedious while I waited for other children to catch up with me, but for all my advanced reading and writing, I was borderline remedial at maths[1] and simultaneously loathed and feared numbers.
I took the 11 plus and got into a grant-maintained single sex grammar school. The curriculum was standard for the 1990s, with a choice between French, German or Latin for languages, History or Geography for humanities, and Art and Design or Design and Technology for the creative subjects. Science was taken as a double award, and joined English (and English Literature), Mathematics and Religious Studies as mandatory subjects.
For various personal reasons I despised my school and barely went. My attendance hovered around 50% for several years, prompting visits from the Educational Welfare Officers. I was playing truant, not to go out with friends, but to sit in my room and read; often non-fiction textbooks or literary classics. I still very much wanted to learn, I just didn’t want to learn at my school. Despite my frequent absences I did reasonably well at GCSE level, getting A*s and As in subjects I liked, and Cs in those I didn’t. I completed my 6th Form at the same school, but only managed to get two A-Levels in English and Sociology (I missed my History exam due to personal issues).
I hadn’t planned on going to university as I had my eyes fixed firmly on a career with Dorset Police, completing work experience there in the late 1990s, but on finishing school it turned out that my unaided vision was too poor. At a loss as to what to do, I took a ‘gap year’ during which I worked in pubs and clubs, before starting a degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of North Wales. Bangor. I dropped out in my second year as I couldn’t afford the fees and living expenses, and entered the heady world of financial administration and mortgage advice.
For a decade or so I put numbers in boxes for a succession of banks, building societies and financial firms before having an early mid-life crisis as I turned 30, deciding to quit my job and go back to university to do subject I found really interesting. I applied to Reading University but got turned down due to not being academic enough (with only two A-levels) but fortunately I was accepted to the Institute of Archaeology, UCL to do a BA (Hons) over three years. Due to divorce and a serious accident it ended up taking me five years to complete this degree but I achieved a first and several awards for my dissertation.
There are many things in my life I’m truly proud of that finishing this degree is one of them. When I started the degree and had a husband and two working arms, neither of which made it to the end of the course with me. UCL were amazing and so supportive through both my crises and I am glad that I repaid that trust with my results. I don’t claim to be anything special, just an example of someone who does relatively poorly at school but finds the motivation and discipline as an adult to complete a course for self-improvement and enjoyment.
[1] See here for an example of my prior negative experience of mathematics at primary school.