Isabella's Story
Hey, my name is Bella, and I study Chemistry here at the University of Birmingham. If you’d told my younger self that I’d end up doing a chemistry degree, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.
When you arrive at university it’s easy to assume everyone got there the same way. But we don’t. We all come from completely different backgrounds and my path to Birmingham definitely wasn’t the most straightforward.
An unconventional start
I’m originally from Stockport, but when I was in primary school my family moved to Denmark so my dad could pursue his dream job at Lego. The school I attended there was very different from the traditional UK system. Instead of SATs and structured lessons, creativity and play were at the centre of everything we did. We didn’t really study maths in the way my peers back in England were learning it. Instead, we built functioning Lego robots, performed music and plays, and explored the outdoors. The closest thing we had to science lessons was studying the “nature pond” our school had built (which my sister fell into more times than you’d expect).
Me putting on a show for my school in Denmark
When my family eventually moved back to Stockport, the transition was difficult. I could build a pretty impressive Lego robot, but academically I was behind my classmates. I was placed in the bottom sets for Maths and English and my confidence dropped massively. Friends I’d once been close to felt completely different from me and I struggled to find where I fit in. As someone who genuinely loved learning, it was frustrating to feel like I couldn’t keep up. My mental health took a hit and for a while I really hated school.
The subject that changed everything
Chemistry was actually the subject I found the hardest. But it was also the subject that slowly started to change things for me. Every year I would move up one maths set and eventually collecting my GCSE maths grade made my mum and I cry with happiness.
My nana was a pharmacist, and she would sit with me and help me understand the molecules and notation that completely confused me in class. She had her own story of overcoming barriers: she was one of the only women from her generation to go to university, and she once told me about being denied a job at AstraZeneca because they “only employed men” at the time. Hearing about what she had pushed through made my own challenges feel a little more possible. My nana became my inspiration for what resilience in that world looked like.
My nana graduating from her Pharmacy degree in the 1960s
When I started at a new sixth form, things slowly began to change. I chose psychology, biology and chemistry and I made a real effort to push myself. I even started going to chemistry stretch and challenge sessions after school because it was something I wanted so badly to be good at.
Choosing my own path
Originally, I planned to apply for medicine, but the pressure of applications (and the fact I hadn’t studied maths for years) eventually made me rethink things. Instead, I applied to Birmingham for Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences. The moment I visited campus, I knew it was the place for me. It looked exactly how I had always imagined a university campus — like something out of Gilmore Girls.
Once I arrived at Birmingham, I realised that chemistry was still the subject that excited me the most. So I made the slightly scary decision to switch my course and study it fully.
Passing my first-year maths test is still one of the proudest moments I’ve had at university. It might seem small to some people, but for me it felt huge. It was the moment the imposter syndrome of being “not naturally sciencey” started to fade.
Me and my friends at the Chemistry Ball
University hasn’t been perfect. I still get homesick sometimes, and there are moments where I wonder if I should have chosen something people expected me to do instead. But when I think about my nana and everything she achieved in her career, it reminds me why I’m here.
If there’s one thing my journey has taught me, it’s that there isn’t one “right” path into science — or into university. Sometimes the route that feels the most unusual ends up being the one that shapes you the most.
