Stanlee Uy (Special Education Needs Support)
Attended St Brendan's 2009 - 2011
Subjects Studied: Psychology, Sociology and English Literature & Language
Previous School: St Bede's Catholic College
Stanlee Uy
After St Brendan’s I went to UWE and got a degree in Psychology. Within the 3 years at university, I was a student ambassador, student representative for my counselling module, psychology A-level tutor at Filton College and a mentor for a non-profit organization to a young child. On the last year of my degree, I presented my dissertation for the annual British Psychological Society Undergraduate South-West Branch conference.
I went into university without thinking I would make friends, I initially just thought, I would go in and out; no fuss. Despite that what you might call negativity; surprise, I managed to find friends that are for the long-run! So my message here is that, you’re in the same boat as everyone, you are going to meet new people and some of them are bound to be in your life, whether it is your choice or not.
The challenges at university are achievable but it doesn't happen without putting any work into it. You can still have fun as long as you don’t get distracted and lose focus on your goals or the reason why you are at a university in the first place.
After finishing my degree, I do feel more competent, adequate, independent and confident, mostly because from the experience you get from being at university. When I graduated, I kept working at the restaurant for a while for my travel fund. Then I left Bristol for Sydney, Australia. I lived there for 9 months and worked as Recreational Activity Officer; my role was coordinating activities for dementia residents and the elderly. Then flew to South-east Asia for 3 months, to see family and for more travelling. During the time in Asia, I also volunteered to work as an assistant psychologist at a psychiatric clinic and got more than I bargained for.
Now I'm back in Bristol, as a special education needs support at a primary school and I hope to stay and advance my career in the mental health field.
St. Brendan’s prepared me for everything that came after it; university, building up your self-confidence and making and maintaining relationships.
Advice to current students would be; try your best on you’re A-levels exams and coursework, because I felt that it was much harder than first year or even second year of university exams, so if you can do well on A-level exams, you’re going to do great at university. Know that, there are two forces in life, fate’s way of putting things into places and your will of moving things to where you want them to be; if fate is not on your side, you might as well get that will of yours to work in your favour.
