Access to HE

Salia-Isabela Tramandau

I moved to the UK from Romania towards the end of 2013 with almost no school education and with no knowledge of the English language. With the desire of learning, I enrolled at Milton Keynes College.

With my hard work, determination and persistence I have passed GCSE English, GCSE Maths and BTEC Business Administration. I now have a strong will and self-belief to achieve more. With the same passion and greater interest, I am continuing my journey of learning this year with ‘Access to HE in Computer Science’.

This course helps me to develop the technical vocabulary to share information and my understanding with no just colleagues but beyond. It has also groomed my ability to work under the short and tight timelines, taught me how to prioritise things and how to work as a team.

The first achievement on my assessments is Animation. I got a Distinction. This has been encouraging and motivating to do my very best to learn what I can, share all I have and contribute as much as possible to the class.

Through this course I pursue my dream of achieving a degree on Computing. Moreover the whole experience has also helped me to guide my children and inspire them.

One of the assessments in this current year is programming language. I was able to inspire my nine year old son to learn programming. He now reads ‘Python for kids’ learning tricks to program. His ultimate aim is to create a computer game using python.

My daughter is 17 years, seeing me continue my studies she feels inspired to achieve more. Having my responsibilities as a mother of two children and taking care of them, parallel with the time of doing my assessments has been a very demanding task. My time management always has been a challenge. I take my children to and pick them up from the school. I am taking my driving lessons. I train four times a week. I have a part-time job. My big struggle in my assessment is the language barrier as English is not my first language. I can say that the amount of time I had to put on my own research, planning and writing on a paper took me longer than expected.

All these factors at one point were affecting my study time. Though managing my time due to above whilst attending my classes at the college has been challenging, my persistence and determination has always kept me motivated. I am excited and glad to be studying this course now, not only does it satisfy my interests but also provides me with a great platform and immense confidence to pursue my Bachelor’s degree in the field of Computer Networks. I am currently enjoying my time doing my assignments and submitting it in on time.