Just Call Me a Master of Science

Last week, on the Thursday 23rd September 2020, was significant for me. It was the day I'd dreaded and dare to dream for. The day I found out that I had, not only passed my master’s degree, but earned myself a merit. Cue the fanfare, people.

I opened the email in a nonchalant sort of daze. Over a month had passed since my course's Pimms Zoom meeting to celebrate the end, and now I was looking at my phone's screen with the word 'merit' sprawled across it. I was over the moon but you wouldn't have known it from the outside. It just didn't seem real that this day I'd been waiting for for over three years had finally arrived after all the blood, sweat and tears. And bloody hell, there'd been a lot of tears. As the minutes ticked by and my mum and dad began to cheer more and more, it began to sink in. The adrenaline could finally cease and the heaviness that had built up on my chest and shoulders started to dissolve. I was free, and what was more; I was free with a qualification.

I had been circling the drain a few years before, working in a bar and drinking my wages. I’d wanted to be a teacher but had decided halfway through my undergrad that it wasn’t my calling. I felt that leaving was the best thing to do for me but I was so conflicted inside, having turned my back on what had been my childhood dream. So I worked away my hours at my local pub. I loved it and it was definitely the best thing for me at the time, but all I could think about was how I didn’t want to be there in five years-time, or even one!

Then, one march evening, I was working the quiet Monday evening shift and fell into conversation with a lady who worked for the local NHS trust. She spoke to me about how she was friends with the therapy team; the occupational therapists, the physical therapists, more importantly; the speech and language therapists. My sister had had speech therapy as a small child so I knew all about it and the valuable work therapists did. The notion hit me like lightning – what an amazing profession, and what a perfect end to the story after all the support they had given my sister!

I voiced this interest to my lovely customer and she was able to put me in contact with the therapy team, who talked me through the profession in greater detail and how I could get involved. My only way in was to do a master’s degree but there were a number of issues with that. They were insanely competitive, stupidly expensive, but more importantly; there are only seven universities in the countries that did a postgraduate speech therapy course and very few of them accepted my education degree as a suitable undergraduate to be considered for such a medical-based course. So the odds were against me at every hurdle.

I emailed and rang every university and got each and everyone’s individual application process. I chased around all my previous tutors and employers for references. I sent begging letters and fought my corner to universities that didn’t usually consider my education degree, pulling out all the stops that I knew what I was talking about, that my education degree gave me an edge in terms of knowing how to cope on work placement, how to work with teachers, kids, and how to handle the similar session planning responsibilities. Some universities gave me a chance and accepted my application, others refused and that there was nothing they could do to help me further. Eventually, after a gruelling battle with rejection, the University of Essex gave me an interview, and eventually accepted me. That day was something else!

The course was the longest, harshest, most challenging two years of my life. But I got through it, by some goddamn miracle, I got through it. It's been a damn long road! I've worked so damn hard to get to where I am now, harder than I ever thought I was capable. But I've done it. I've actually gone and done it!

The moral of the story is this; no matter what you've done before, where you've been, very little apart from you gets in the way of what you want to achieve and where you want to be. You're never too old to chase your ambitions.

Be the best you can be.