Helena is a 23 year old First Class Graduate, hard-worker, passionate about travel, believer in Jesus Christ (who she knows helped her a lot when she was struggling with things at university), a wife and dog-mum.

She was someone who throughout her whole life was told she wasn’t good at school or academia, she was normally in the bottom sets at school and she didn’t get the A-levels she wanted, but she still got accepted into her first choice at the University of Chester in the UK.

In one of her first ever lectures, the teacher asked everyone “so who here wants to get a First Class Degree?”, she knew she did (who wouldn’t?) so she put her hand up straight away, to her surprise not many others did. The lecturer looked at her, smiled and said “Well that’s a great way to start isn’t it!”. She thinks the other students didn’t put their hand up because they didn’t want to seem ‘too keen’ or perhaps they didn’t actually believe they could so why wish for it? She thinks if people have that kind of perspective, they miss out on some great things because they didn’t believe in themselves in the first place. Sure she remembers thinking ‘it’s unlikely’, but that wasn’t going to stop her from trying! 3 years later, she graduated from University of Chester with that First Class Degree, one of her happiest moments, but it wasn’t without hardship!