Shout Out to the Brave podcast

Thank you for downloading this Shout Out to the Brave podcast, brought to you by UWE Bristol. In this podcast, we are joined by Roberta, a current postgraduate student studying MSc Physician Associate Studies. From alcoholism to being a single mother, Roberta discusses the many challenges she's overcome to get to where she is and why her postgraduate degree means so much to her.

My name's Roberta Johnstone, I'm a Physician Associates Masters student at the University of the West of England. I came to UWE through a bit of a random series of events actually. I had a past of addiction, alcohol and drug addiction. I went to rehab in the South West and one of my only options to go to as a move on place was Bristol. So I settled in Bristol, always knew I wanted to study, saw a Biomedical Science degree at UWE and I jumped straight on board. What led me to do post-graduate study after that was realizing through my undergraduate degree that I actually really liked people and didn't want to be stuck in a lab my whole life. Which of course had its interesting parts as well and I'm sure lots of people would say that that's the bit they enjoy rather than the dealing with people part. But wanting that people-facing element to be in my daily working life, that was really important to me, and when I found the Physician Associate master's degree at UWE, not only was it absolutely fitting me perfectly to a T, but it gave me everything that I wanted in a career. 

From when I was younger, I always had this feeling of not being good enough and feeling like I was less than everyone else. Like there's a bit of the jigsaw puzzle that wasn't there, it was missing. And all the metaphors that go along with it. When I came to UWE - I mean I was 22 when I started my degree and turned 23 I think within the first month or so - there was this massive element of feeling almost like I was back at school. And that was what really scared me. When I was at school, I just didn't fit in. But I was able to kind of get over that with the maturity that I had coming into university and being aware of who I was as a person and what I wanted in my life, rather than what other people expected of me. So being able to stand up for myself - not in a sort of physical sense but an emotional sense - and build that resilience and strength to really find myself on my academic journey, that was what I really needed. If I'd had that when I was at school, that would have been perfect. But I didn't. I didn't have the maturity at the time. 

I met some like-minded people in the first week or two of my undergrad and I knew that I fitted in just perfectly. So the opportunity arising for the Physician Associate master’s at UWE not only gave me that sort of sense of like this is a perfect degree and it's at my favourite university, but I was going to be around the same people that I fell in love with in my undergrad. I love UWE and I would never have gone anywhere else. 

In terms of challenges that I've faced in my journey and how I've overcome them…What have I not faced? I mean obviously there's some major things that I haven't faced in my life. I'm a cis white female for example, but everything that has happened in my life that has impacted my life for me has been of great importance. The “not feeling a part of” when I was growing up obviously played on my mental health. I started just lots of self-abuse really, cutting myself, getting quite heavily involved in online forums that led to me developing anorexia and subsequently bulimia. I started binge drinking when I was 15, and every now and then when it was available I’d get into drugs. Before I knew it, when I was 17 I was in an inpatient unit for children actually, children in adolescent mental health services, so CAMHS. I was an inpatient there for anorexia and I was weighing, I think 82 pounds. 

I was really done in at that point, but that didn't stop me because when I came out of there, I developed bulimia. The binge drinking became worse, and fast forward a lot of trauma including just feeling like I had to be more, had to be better. A lot of that involved sex and boys, and trying to be my best self around boys. And I thought a lot of the time that was sleeping with boys, and that just hammered down on my self-esteem. Then obviously the unfortunate cases of when there was no consent at all in a few of those situations. 

Before I knew it, I was 21 and I had chronic pancreatitis and gastroenteritis, quite extremely from eating disorders. My skin was literally rotting off me from the fact that I wasn't nourishing my body or my mind either. To my mind I was completely gone, I was a shell of a human being, a shell of me. In fact, I didn't exist in my head anymore, so much so that I actually thought a demon had taken up residence in my head. That's how bad the psychosis got really when I was drinking and abusing drugs. I basically took my fist and slammed it into my head as many times as I could to the point where I fractured my skull, because you do smart things like that when you're off your head on various bits and bobs. 

But thankfully, I was given the gift of sobriety. I'd clinically died twice and I'd been brought to life by the same person, my best friend at the time, through resuscitation. I got to do a detox and once I detoxed, I subsequently went into rehab and that was on 2 February 2016 and I was 21 years old. I think from that moment, I'd like to say things changed instantly but they didn't. I mean, throughout my recovery - which is now five years and a few months of sobriety and clean time, three years of not abusing eating disorders - I've not self-harmed and I actually care about myself now. But there have been challenges along the way which include my degrees, which include trying to find myself. Finally for the first time in the 20 odd years I've been on this planet, I've just been able to take those steps now. 

I ended up in abusive relationships, one in particular where I had a child. I was in my second year of my undergraduate degree and I have now got a little girl. But I did have to face the second half of my second and third year of my Biomedical Science undergraduate degree with a little girl, on my own. Thankfully I had my mum come down and stay with me for the first four months, as they're back home in Scotland and I'm just down here on my own. Of course, that brings about challenges because kids are really hard to look after, and when you're that kind of person who finds it hard to look after yourself, looking after something else is really difficult. But you manage because you have become this parent figure that has to look after another human, and that even gave me a little bit more of a kick up the back side to really push forward in pursuing my degree. Because I knew it wasn't just for me anymore, it was for me and my little girl.

Thankfully, the majority of my third year went without glitch and I was able to get rid of the domestic violence relationship. And when reaching the end of that undergraduate degree, I knew that without a doubt – in fact I'd pestered every person on my degree pretty much to get as much information as I could about the Physician Associate masters. I pestered the staff on the course and the program lead to make sure that they knew who I was, because I knew that's what I wanted to do. Finally, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was worth more than I ever thought I was, and was comfortable in being myself. And I think that kind of self-awareness, especially from a mental health perspective, going into a post-graduate degree, because it is tough, is really important. Not saying that everyone has to be a superhero at reading their own thoughts and being aware of themselves at all times, but having that self-assurance to say, “Actually, I need a little bit more help” and to be absolutely okay with that. The supervisors and everyone will be there to help you. That's what UWE does, it's a helping hand in a time of need, and I've experienced help throughout my undergrad and my post grad thus far. 

If I could put every single little thing that I love about learning into a degree, that is this master's degree that I'm doing. Not only is it giving me the opportunity to learn more in an academic sense, but from so many perspectives, I'm learning about how other people work. It's about getting that kind of self-awareness. Knowing about yourself is one thing, but being able to be there and be a helping hand for someone else, that is a gift that I never thought I'd be able to do. I always wanted to be there - I wanted to be there for myself, but you know, I didn't have the strength at the time. But to be there for someone else in their time of need, when they're at their low point, maybe they've just been diagnosed with cancer, or something as simple as they've got eczema and they need to get some cream to sort it out. You know, all these little things do affect people in various different ways, and being able to be there as that number one person and help that patient in that time, you can't get any better really.

The coursework is tough. The learning is tough. But the outcome and the goal at the end and reaching that goal is what matters the most. And I think that's the same for the majority of master's degrees and in fact any degree. It doesn't matter what level you study at, it's tedious and there are times when you have little breakdowns. There are times when you need to cry and there's some times when you just want to put on Netflix and ignore life entirely. But once you get started on a project, you really get into it and it's the same with this degree. I've loved the support that I've received from the staff on the course. We've got some absolutely wonderful Physician Associates. When you're on a postgraduate course, in most instances the class size is a lot smaller and you build relationships that run much deeper. You can rely upon absolutely every single person in the course to be there in your time of need, because we're all experiencing the exact same pain and we're doing the exact same exams and we're doing the exact same course work. But we're a smaller cohort and having that WhatsApp group or that Instagram group of people who are all like-minded and all absolutely love doing this specific thing is so important when it comes to battling any form of mental health difficulties that you might be going through at the time. 

Completing this degree is something - I dream about it a lot actually, and I sort of see like big crowds and fireworks and it's all going to be amazing. And I know that if I translate that down, it's because I am so excited to even have a postgraduate degree under my belt. I've been lucky enough to have been given a sponsorship placement, whereby in first year there's potentially a couple of GP practices or maybe even a hospital, that will come to UWE and say, “We want four, five, six, seven of your PA students to work with us when they graduate.” And then I interviewed for one in Taunton at Musgrove Hospital and they are taking me on which is incredible. And it also means very kindly that it's going to take some money off my second year funds which is working out really well for me. Because it gives me that little bit more financial security when it comes to paying for child care. 

Having that ability to know that ahead of you, there are great things to come and progression for the role itself, then I mean - if health care is up anyone's street and they want to be that person directly helping the patient, then Physician Associate as a postgrad is 100% for you. I've been given so much autonomy in what I do already, even on the first few weeks of my placement, but knowing what I'll be doing in clinic, either in a GP or at Musgrove, it's just going to be incredible. 

That scared little girl who would stick a big fake fat smile on her face, and just pretend that everything was perfect and rainbows and unicorns, and inside it was dark and bleak and just painful, has now turned into something that I freaking love and celebrate on a daily basis. Is that egotistical? Hell no, and if anyone thinks it is then maybe you need to give yourself a little bit more love, because celebrating yourself should be something you do every single day. No matter what happens, no matter what your journey is, you can be your best self, so long as you stick to being you and promise yourself that you're never going to give up on your dream, because if I can do it, you can do it too. 

Thank you for downloading this Shout Out to the Brave podcast, brought to you by UWE Bristol. In this podcast, we are joined by Zoe, an Aerospace Engineering graduate. Zoe discusses how, despite financial challenges during her postgraduate degree, she's managed to fulfil her dream of working in the space industry.

Hi, I'm Zoe and I went to UWE Bristol in 2012 until 2017, doing my undergraduate in Aerospace Engineering, and then I continued on and did my master's in Aerospace Engineering. My route into UWE is quite conventional, in the sense that I did my AS Levels, then I sat my A Levels and then applied to UWE and it was actually my first choice. However, I guess I was very typical in the sense of I didn't actually know what I wanted to do. I was very confused as a 15, 16-year-old doing my GCSEs. I was confused when I had to pick my AS choices and as such I ended up doing five against all advice because I just didn't know what I wanted to do. And on top of that, a lot of the careers I was offered didn't seem to suit me. I was told I'd make a great accountant, but I couldn't see myself working in an office. It wasn't until I started looking at prospectuses that even I noticed that there was a massive section dedicated to engineering, and I hadn't even heard of it as a career. And I remember going to a careers fair in Exeter in 2011 and UWE had a big stand. And I was talking to someone there and luckily that person was in Engineering. So it's funny because the more they were talking to me, the more it was felt like they were talking to me. Like it wasn't just a career that didn't fit, it was actually like, ‘This is everything I love.’ I managed to get into UWE which was, like I said, my first choice, especially after speaking to this person at Exeter. 

So that's how I came to UWE. In terms of how I came to do my postgraduate study, a lot of that comes from the fact of what I want to do in the future, which is I love the space industry. So I've always been fascinated by space, which is why I felt like the careers of accountancy and architecture never fit what I wanted. And my mum said when I was a kid I used to do that typical thing of, ‘I want to be an astronaut.’ And everyone says it when they're a kid, everyone wants to be an astronaut. I don't think there's a four-year-old alive that hasn't put a box on their head and run around pretending to be an astronaut. So, I love space. I got a telescope, I used to learn astronomy for fun, I was really fascinated by cosmology, but again I couldn't see myself being an astronomer. It is funny because when I looked at the jobs out at the end of [astronomy], they all ended up being in engineering. So everything was pushing me into engineering. And a lot of the jobs also required masters. I found a lot of the time when I was speaking with recruiters when I was doing my undergraduate, they would say one of two things - you need a placement year, or a master's, preferably both. So that's why I ended up, one at UWE and two doing my master's.

The biggest issue I actually had when I was doing my degree was finance. And I know there's a lot of talk about student finance and how it's changing, and I was that unfortunate 2012 year where everything changed. And I'd like to put the disclosure that I've never had a problem with my student loans, that's not been the issue. My problem was with my bursaries and what I actually had to live off, in terms of rent, in terms of food. In that my mum's self-employed, so unfortunately, I sit in that group where the finances can be slightly unusual. And I had to work and I had to work numerous jobs. I've worked all the typical student jobs, I worked in a bar, I worked in a call centre. And I was really lucky that I ended up being part of UWE's ambassador scheme. And it was really great because you could work your hours around your lectures and around your downtime, and it meant that I was able to build it around the time the labs were free. And what was really great about the UWE ambassador scheme was I saw all these people like me when I was 15, 16, 17, completely clueless not knowing what I wanted to do. And I could see people who looked exactly the same as I did. 

We would do a lot of outreach schemes for university. We would do a lot of it to promote UWE but we'd also do a lot of it to promote STEM itself and it got me involved in some very cool projects. I did some volunteering for the Bloodhound supersonic car, I did some work for Airbus's flying challenge and they ended up sponsoring my group dissertation in my final year. So a lot of the opportunities that I actually got from UWE also helped out. I was able to join this scheme which actually helped me overcome the problems I had with finances, because I couldn't work a typical job. But it also helped me pad my CV because of all this ambassador work that I was doing with STEM. And I got in contact in a company called Space Generation Advisory Council, and although it was voluntary, there was loads of bursaries and I was able to travel all over the world doing conferences. And all of that came out of the outreach programme. So I think a lot of the challenges I faced ended up almost being my greatest assets. In the fact that, in terms of finance, it ended up helping me by being able to become part of the ambassador scheme, which led me to becoming part of the Space Generation Advisory Council. And today I'm actually the national point of contact for the UK for the Space Generation Advisory Council. And I've been to gala dinners for the European Space Agency in Vienna, I've been invited to the United Nations Peaceful Treaty of Outer Space annual conference, and it all stems back to the fact that I had this opportunity to join the ambassador scheme. But also it comes back to the fact that I needed to join it, I needed to join it for finance reasons. So it all became full circle.

I've really enjoyed how much UWE also opened up my doors and opportunities to me, in the sense of my STEM ambassadoring, in the sense of the conferences that I've done with Space Generation Advisory Council. I'm such a yes person, so whenever there was an opportunity I would say yes, I would always sign up, I would always do it. And it's just meant that I was able to always be doing something. I'm always busy and it's great, because UWE really did allow me to completely fill my timetable, whether or not it was working for UWE, whether or not it was doing my degree at UWE or whether or not it was volunteering, which was based off of things I got from UWE. That is probably why UWE is so important to me and Aerospace Engineering is so important to me, because of everything I've achieved since then, but also everything it allowed me achieve at UWE. It's just allowed me to pursue the space industry which is what I’ve wanted to do since I was that four-year-old that put a box on my head and ran around saying, ‘I'm an astronaut.

When I finished at UWE, I ended up working at CERN in Switzerland for two years on a fellowship program, and you wouldn't have been able to apply for it without the masters. So the postgraduate actually allowed me to get my first job and it was amazing, because I got to work abroad. The fellowship program at CERN was specifically designed around training new engineers, so they signed me up for multiple education programs. I ended up doing a specialty in superconductive materials at Oxford. I also ended up doing papers and conferences for the Future Circular Collider annual conference, and they ended up actually signing me up for language courses, so they signed me up for numerous French courses and allowed me to learn a second language. And I wouldn't have had any of that if I didn't do the postgraduate. 

Since I left CERN, I went to a company called Open Cosmos, and it was in the space industry, so I finally did get my dream of working in the space industry. This year in March, I did one of my other dreams which was I launched a satellite. So I was part of the design and test team, and now there's officially a satellite around the earth right now which I was part of designing. And the satellite that I launched is actually a communication satellite, so it's not going to be taking pretty pictures of the earth, it's actually going to be for use. And none of this would have happened if I hadn't done my postgraduate.

I think if anyone listening is on the fence about doing a postgraduate degree, I would advise them strongly to think about where they want to be and who they want to be in the future. And I know it's a difficult thing to think about, because I remember myself at the time even though I knew what I wanted to do, I didn't know how I could go about it. And it is so much bigger out there than anyone can imagine, and I never would have thought that I would have been working all around Europe, I would have volunteered all around the world. And I think that's the thing - my advice is to dream big, and to think big, because it's amazing how much is out there if you're willing to chase it, and to just say yes.

Thank you for downloading this Shout Out to the Brave podcast, brought to you by UWE Bristol. In this podcast, we’re joined by Lamare, an MSc Human Resource Management graduate. After studying his undergraduate degree, he realised that to really stand out in his career he needed more. He talks us through the challenges he has overcome and why it was the best decision he ever made.

So, my name is Lamare. I am a Senior HR Advisor for a company called Epson Europe, and I have been so for the last three years. I finished my bachelor's degree at the University of West of England, studying business studies with Human Resource Management. And then two years from that, I started and then finished a part-time postgraduate degree in Human Resource Management.

I was always very interested in business studies from a young age – understanding economics, politics, philosophy, and the world of business. I was meant to be doing Accounting and Finance when I was at A-level, and that's what I was thinking I was going to do my degree in. But actually, I had a change of tack from a lecturer that I had who said that you might be really interested in the people dynamic and how that works.

So that led me to apply for a variety of universities. And one of them was the University of the West of England, and I chose them not just because I was from Bristol, but because they had a combination study programme where you could study your bachelor's degree – business studies – and then your elected subject would be human resource management. So, I spent three to four years completing my degree, and I was able to have an internship at Intel Corporation, where I was a graduate recruiter. That was really a great experience to have so young, and I really liked that the degree allowed me to have a placement year.

I got my 2:1 at the end of that, and I went into a graduate role for Caterpillar. When I started to work for Caterpillar, I began to realize that I needed a little bit more or something to stand out from the crowd, really. In addition to that, I'm part of a profession, which is the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development. They had another level to be a member, where you had to be qualified to a certain level. So, all of this led to my profession requiring extra studying and an extra qualification.

I was always looking at postgraduate study, and I decided to choose UWE again. The reason why I chose UWE Bristol again was I always found studying with UWE very easy, very modern - always growing, always changing. And I really love the town, the city, the people, and I'm a UWE boy at heart. So that's what really led me to study at UWE, and study Human Resources Management at UWE as a master's.

So I did it part time and I worked in another job, which involves me working around 40 hours a week. But on a Wednesday, I would finish working at twelve and travel to UWE, and then from one till eight, I would be studying and be in lectures. So, I did that for nearly two years and then the final half of the year I finished my master's degree.

So why didn't I do it full time? What was really cool about doing it part time was I was surrounded by people who have already had experience within HR. And usually when you do full time, you're in a room with people who have just finished their bachelor's, where doing part-time you're in a room with people who are working or have experience. So, the amount people and the breadth of experience that they gave in that room was really profound and I really enjoyed that. After studying for two and a half years, I came up with a merit, so that was really fantastic, and I was able to become a chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Personal Development within two months of my graduation. Those were some of the key reasons as to why I chose UWE. Most of their qualifications are not just for qualifications' sake, they're actually something that adds value to your employment applications. And I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't do that.

Emotionally, the biggest challenge that I had when I was doing my postgraduate degree was that there weren’t many people like me. I'm talking about people who didn't have a traditional family, so my mum raised me. I didn't have a father. I'm black. A lot of people in my family necessarily didn't go to that level of education. So I found that really tricky to walk through. There was an extra element of, “okay, I'm at university, so there's not going to be many people like me.” But then also, fortunately, at particular UWE in Bristol, there was a mix of cultures and where people were from as well, which was really good. And it just opened my mind to different ways of how people have lived their lives and how they worked. And I really found that interesting.

I really, throughout my studies, struggled with exams. I'm more of a coursework person. If you tell me in a couple of weeks or months, you need to write this amount of words, by this amount of time, I can do that. No problem. If you put me into an exam room, I emotionally freak out. So a lot of things that I had to deal with when I was studying, was speaking to my lecturers, understanding from other people that were my peers, how do you do your exams? What do you do? And whilst I had different styles completely, the style that I kind of fell upon was turning up last minute when I turn up before and I speak to other people. I just got into a panic because I really couldn't handle how much some people knew about particular subjects, and I got paranoid. I just tried to learn as much as I possibly could before. And then I would literally turn up maybe five minutes before. So everybody's already seated. And it was like, sometimes I remember turning up and it was like, time starts now. For me in that particular moment, I was able to get over the nervousness because I had no choice. My time has already started, so I just had to get on with it. Fortunately, I put in enough of the work that I got the grade that I needed.

My kind of things that I really took away from my journey was, don't feel like you're just on this course by yourself. I remember being on the course there would be 20 of us all talking over a Starbucks about something. And sometimes you just need that just to reassure yourself that you're not alone in this situation. I've always really enjoyed working with people and the subject of people, because it's an ebbing and flowing thing. There are so many things that we don't know about each other or are so complex. So I really enjoyed learning Human Resource Management because really, to me, it was almost just like the psychology of people at work and how do you manage that? For me, it's all very emotional at work, and I've always really found it interesting or profound how people can approach things or the way they go about it. And that's why I really enjoy the postgraduate study of Human Resource Management because we got to tackle that in so many different ways.

What I really enjoyed the most was not just the topics that I was studying, but also the people that I was studying with, who had that same passion. So I wasn't this crazy person who really had this love for people, I was surrounded by people who also had that passion. No matter how many textbooks or journal articles or just even books that you can read, there's always an extra element of being sat with somebody and then explaining their life and what they've gone through in their experiences that has such a profound effect on you. And that's why I really feel passionate about this subject. Thinking back and being in that moment when I actually decided to sign up to do the postgraduate, master's degree, I was really passionate about the subject; but also, I knew it could add value to me, whether that be in a sense of getting to know the subject more in detail than I've always wanted to know. So just general interest, but also how it made me more attractive in the employment market when I finished.

In addition to being chartered and having all of those three things combined in my postgraduate degree, at that time, to me, it was a no brainer. In a sense of my emotion, once I achieved everything that I set out to achieve, I think I was really surprised that I felt so relatively normal. It was almost like it was supposed to happen that way. You go through all the challenges that you go through, and you really panic in the moment. Oh, I'm doing this exam and I'm doing this and that, I hope I get it right. I hope I'm not. And then when you reflect back, you kind of go, oh that was like kind of a very short feeling. It wasn't like a feeling that went on forever. So, I think for me, how I felt when I really completed everything was really satisfied that I just kept pushing myself. So for me, it's like the anxiety and the stress is a short term pain for a long term gain. And I wouldn't really feel that stressed out if I didn't care about it or it wasn't challenging. And I think that was the whole real point in studying my postgraduate in the first place. It's meant to be challenging, and it's meant to push you beyond what you think is possible.