On my SM college course, only once did I feel as though someone had supported the way I worked. I remember it clearly. I was working in the doorway of the store cupboard making a dressing table out of an old desk. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it, how I wanted to rebuild it. I knew that there were time constraints but I knew what I could achieve in the time left and I knew how to do it. I didn't have the skills (eg; how the hell do you use a drill? (...I know now))and so all I needed was a person of authority to help me and teach me, you know, like teachers should. My teacher begrudgingly had the technician help me and only because I'd been off for a while ill so needed 'help to catch up'. It was awkward at first. We'd never worked together properly and the only real contact we'd had aside from when I first met him, was on a show during first year drama where I didn't exactly come off as a great person to work with. I was considerably uncomfortable with my teacher's direction concerning the content of the play and was not going to be put in situations that offended me just for the sake of a unit grade that could be re-sat. It became an issue when another girl from the course stood up for me and there was a mini-mutiny. From then on, I'd been marked as an instigator for trouble (quite a first for me). After a few awkward minutes of stunted polite talk, the atmosphere relaxed and we began to talk about university choices. At that point he'd asked for some screws and I handed him a little package of tape where I'd stuck the screws in relevant groups to stop them being lost. He looked at me in a strange way and said that of all the kids he'd taught guitar to or helped with tech in the college, that I had the most common sense and that I was very good at what I was good at. He seemed to get it and he understood why I had had the opinions that I had during the play in drama and throughout my tech course. From then on he treated me as though I was an equal or however equal a student and technician can be.

I don't know why this has stuck with me but it was a thought that I carried though to my uni interviews. It made me stay true to myself and not to conform to what the interviewers wanted. What would the point have been to fake somebody that fits into their working style and then 2 weeks into the course having to drop out because it just wasn't working? As a result of me staying true to myself, I got rejected from everywhere non-university I applied to except from the only school that gave me an unconditional place. Trouble is the only place that gave me firm acceptance straight off happens to be one of the best and most well known drama schools in the world.

Those taped up screws really paid off.