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Hi, I'm Emma. I'm a third year of the Residential Property
module, mature student. This is my third and final year
now, really enjoying the course. I came to it from a long
interest in property, but basically a completely different background.
I'd been working for nearly 20 years massaging
people, been a sports therapist for a while – loved that
career, really interesting but not as mentally stimulating
as I had hoped towards the last few years. Basically just
got to a point where I had an injury. I was off for a few
months and just gave me time to reflect at home alone
whiling away the hours with my legs in the air, thinking
what I would do for my next career; it's not something I
wanted to do ongoing, in my sort of forties and fifties and
sixties. I think that type of career is something for a young person,
although I had had great fun with it. So I just started to
think what else would I want, and property is the only
other passion that I thought I could see myself working in
that would allow me to be a self-employed consultant,
which is what I've been for the last 20 years in my
previous career. So then I heard about Kingston; I heard it
had a really good reputation, it was one of the leading
schools in surveying in the country. So I came to an open
day, met some of the tutors, talked to them about it. I
came with no A-levels – I left school at 17, half way
through my A-levels, so I didn't have the necessary points.
But being a mature student, they assured me that I
wouldn't need points and they can take several people
per year per module without those A-levels and
qualifications. So I got straight through – got recommended
to take the residential route, which would have been the
route I chose anyway because my interest is in houses
rather than commercial and retail. The first year was
challenging – I hadn't really been in a formal environment
with so many people. There's about 20,000 students
here so I found that a little bit odd the first couple of
months; and also all the group projects I found quite
challenging. But then I got into the swing of it. I'd been
working solo for 20 years so it was working with a
bunch of people that you don't know – some of them don't
come up, some of them have got lots of strong ideas like
me – that was a challenge for the first few months but I
began to get into the pace of it, really enjoyed it and then
year two got even better. You started to work with groups
still but you would have the choice of who you work with
and a lot of people ended up changing modules or didn't
make it through to year two; so by year two you're really
quite established and you know the people you like, you
know your strengths and your weaknesses a bit more in
terms of academic work, and it's just gone from strength to
strength. This is my last year so getting a bit more
steeped up now, but really looking forward to the final challenge of
the dissertation and final courseworks. And yeah, really enjoying it. I would definitely
recommend coming here. The School of Surveying's a great
school. There's a lot of really inspiring people to talk to,
even if they're not your lecturers anymore; there's people
I met in year one that I still really enjoy talking to and
have been really helpful to me, in fine tuning where I want
to go. Although I did come in with quite a strong idea of
what I wanted to do at the end of it, but definitely get lots
of support and encouragement from tutors that have been
and gone in the career of a student. I was also put forward
to the Women in Property Award in year two which was
something I hadn't heard of until I got nominated for it;
and I went and did an interview; and it's a fantastic
organisation. I'm so pleased I got exposed to it. I don't
think I would have found it on my own – I hadn't as I say
heard of them – but that's a really great organisation that
is really championing the cause of women construction
managers, which currently take up about 15% of the
management roles in industry. But yeah, that gives you a
great exposure – you get offered a mentor if you want one
if you join the scheme, which is really, really worthwhile; and the
mentor can help you with any topic you like. I've chosen
my mentor to help me find a job, which I just think
the fact that it is even available to you is fantastic.
They also hold loads of meetings and you can go
networking, listen to talks on various topics that might be
related to my course or might be related to my
dissertation or my work post academia. Yeah, a really good
organisation. If you're thinking of coming here and you're
a girl, check out Women in Property.