Mary is making her career goals a reality and it started with an access course at Redcar and Cleveland College.
Redcar mum Mary believes there’s no better time to follow your ambitions than today.
That’s the 34-year-old’s philosophy as she puts plans into place to make the dramatic career change from welder to midwife.
Studying the Access to Higher Education in Health course at Redcar and Cleveland College has already got her on the starting blocks.
Now moving on to the college’s Level 4 Certificate in Health and Social Care, she said: “It is a huge change to become a midwife, but it is something that I have wanted to do for a lot of years.”
She said losing her mum in 2019 gave her the push to realise life is too short to wait.
While going back to college has been a challenge, she believes a future career delivering babies is worth the hard work.
Looking back, Mary explained it was as a young mum that she fell into a career in welding.
She said: “I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My big brother was a welder and he said come and have a go, I did, and I loved it and from there life took over.”
Going on to study welding kickstarted, what would be, a 15-year career.
In 2017, after the birth of her second daughter, Mary and her partner started their own business, repairing everything and anything that moves, from old bangers to horse boxes.
It was last summer that Mary made the first tentative enquiries about how to go about retraining.
“I called into Redcar and Cleveland College with no idea where to start, they told me about the access course, I signed up and everything has gone from there.”
At first, she said, juggling the commitments of family life, work and college studies, came as a bit of a shock.
She said with a laugh: “I had always been quite academic at school, so I thought I was going to breeze it.”
As it turns out, she added: “There were times when I started to think, have I made the right choice?”
But with the support of her tutors and settling into the swing of assignments, she completed with distinctions in every subject and was even nominated for the college’s access student of the year award.
Mary said the access course has been a great help, preparing her for the demands of university.
And while the competition for places to study midwifery is fierce, she said the college’s level 4 certificate offers the chance to build on her knowledge, hopefully giving her the extra edge when it comes to applying for a university place next year.
Of her time at Redcar and Cleveland College so far, she said: “It has been amazing, and all the staff have been fabulous.”
With her eyes firmly fixed on her goal, she added: “I want to deliver babies for the rest of my life. I am a very empathetic person and what could be better than being able to help people through that stage of life with such an amazing reward at the end?”
Are you looking for a change in direction or want to upskill in your career? Redcar and Cleveland College offers Access to Higher Education Diplomas in Health, Counselling and Humanities and Social Sciences as well as a range of higher education courses.
To find out more visit: www.cleveland.ac.uk/access-to-higher-education
Head along to Redcar and Cleveland College's Adult Education Open Event on Tuesday September 5th (2023), from 5pm to 7pm. This is a chance to chat to the team about the full range of adult courses including higher education, access to higher education and part-time opportunities.
