Amy – Access to Science

Course: Access to Science

Progression: BSc Dental Therapy and Dental Hygiene at Cardiff University

Career: Dental Nurse

It took travelling, a ski season and a variety of career paths for Amy to find the perfect career. It all changed for Amy when, following her mother’s footsteps, she started a career as a dental nurse. A Levels in Art and English made this feel like a faraway dream and the thought of doing two years of A Levels again was off putting, Amy was determined to find a way. Luckily, a chance conversation with a colleague at the dental practice introduced Amy to the route an Access to Higher Education course could provide.

Amy said: “It was all great until I came back from Australia and thought ‘what am I going to do now?!’ I got into dental nursing because my mum was a nurse. I worked for a surgery in Falmouth and they put me through my radiography training which made me realise just how much I loved this type of work and then the Access course came along.”

” I cannot praise the Access to Science course enough’ it was really confidence building but also really helped with my degree because of everything that it covered was very relevant to what I did at Uni. I learned referencing, presenting skills.”

“A girl I was nursing with was already doing the Access course, however she didn’t end up doing dentistry and actually went into Childhood Education but it made me think I could go and do that actually!”

“After attending an open day,  I found out that as I was over 24 years old I was able to get a 24+ loan which was brilliant. I always thought I would have to do 2 plus years of A levels and night school and it would cost me a lot but in the end I worked 3 days a week and did the Access course 3 days a week and part time work on Sundays so it was a very busy year although in reality it was probably 9/10 months. I really enjoyed it.”

“Originally part of me always put it off as I thought I would have to go back and do A-levels, applying for Uni on my own and go back to school with everyone being 18 when I was 29. I knew the Access course would be with older people or a mixture at least though.”