Leah Dean: [Music playing] [BTEC Award winner, Leah Dean, Where are they now?] I'm Leah Dean.
I'm studying computer science and management studies at Lancaster University. I ended up
here because I left school at 16, and I always knew I wanted to be an IT teacher. I didn't
really want to do anything else and didn't really know what else to study. It made sense
to do what I liked, which was IT. I chose a BTEC, because it just seemed like the most
logical thing to do at the time, it was going to buy me the strongest platform of knowledge.
In the first year of college I ended up researching universities and Lancaster was just the most
suitable course for me about what I enjoyed. I then applied, I was starting my second year,
and within a couple of days, actually, I got an offer which I was very happy about. First
one in my family to go to university. I'm from Manchester. I remember my first memory
of wanting to do so. I was in the back of my dad's car. We were driving down Oxford
Road in Manchester during graduation season. I seen all the graduates throwing their hats
in the air. At that time, I probably didn't know what it meant, but I knew that's what,
one day, I wanted to do. That's never changed really. My understanding has just got better.
I've always done IT during school. It was always something that I, particularly, excelled
at. I think you should do things that you do excel at because you're good at them. Being
good at them, it gives you a sense of purpose, and being good at something. From there I
just decided to do it at college and from college, from uni, it's been one clear-cut
path, if you like. Well, going back to my 16-year-old self, making these choices, it
made, and still makes, logical sense to me to have done a BTEC. I don't regret the decision
that I made. It was a very logical thing to do. It was the biggest qualification that
I could have done. There were alternatives, but it wouldn't have offered me as much knowledge.
My advice to anybody going to university would be to make sure you've got good time-management
skills and to, quite frankly, not procrastinate. From experience, as every student will tell
you, you'll always say, 'I'll do it tomorrow,' but tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow you'll
say, 'I'll do it tomorrow,' You're always pushing it back. All I would say was, 'Just
do it now,' even if you just get started on it now, just act in the moment. Before you
know it, you're going to be a couple of days away from the deadline and you're going to
have to spend a lot of all-nighters doing your work. That's not healthy. I'd been nominated
for the award during my first year of college. I think I was knocked back at the first round
of judging. I think that did knock my confidence quite a lot. Then, by the same admission I
was only in my first year. There was people with more experience than what I had had.
Then, in the second year, the same teacher re-nominated me. I got to the next round,
and a next round, and a next round. Before we knew it, we had the email to say that I'd
won. That was nice, but it was difficult to believe at first because I'd been knocked
back in the first year. Getting [?new 0:03:09.2] one has fulfilled me with the confidence that
I can achieve anything that I want as long as I put the work into it. Obviously, going
to London and receiving the award was a great day, really, and probably a day that I will
remember for the rest of my life. Of course, doing a BTEC, it's just as good as any other
qualification that you could do. At university you'll find everyone has come from a different
background. There's people here from all different qualifications, all different walks of life,
even different countries. No matter what background you've got, you have got what it takes to
come and do an undergraduate degree. I'm at a great university. We've just been named
university of the year. I think we're in the top ten, nationally. That is something that
I am really proud of, because I've come from a BTEC and I've achieved just as great as
what anybody else could have achieved. When I was choosing my BTEC, again, going back
to my 16-year-old self, I'd looked two steps in front, if you like, to ensure that what
I was doing at college would provide me with the platform to study at university. What
I found then is that the top universities, the Russell Group universities, and even the
elite universities around the world, accepted a BTEC. They wouldn't accept it if it wasn't
good enough and it didn't provide students with a strong enough platform to pursue a
successful education. With that in mind, I knew that doing a BTEC would provide me with
what I needed to progress. [Music playing] [Pearson] [Always Learning]