We caught up with Misha Candlin, an A level student studying four A levels, whilst maintaining a busy life outside of college, with aspirations to study at Birmingham University.
“Originally I planned to do three however one of my lecturers suggested I give further maths a go and I’m taking it for my second year too, so I must have enjoyed it!
“I like studying further maths, it’s a lot different to maths because it’s all new. Maths is expanding on what we already know, but further maths is completely different. I’ve spoken to people at uni, the first two semesters is studying what I’ve already learnt in further maths. It gives me an edge.
“There is always something planned for us, I can always go into Ed’s room and I know I can just sit in there and do maths any time of the day. The lecturers’ doors are always open to help me out.
“I enjoy physics, I enjoy the fact I don’t understand it, it answers the big questions that I can’t comprehend, I see something I don’t understand, use a bunch of weird maths and it’ll just work. One of the first things we did was use trigonometry to roughly get the diameter of the moon and we got it pretty close! I thought ‘how weird is it that we can get these random numbers and suddenly work out the size of the moon!’”
Misha wants to study Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics at Birmingham University. “I didn’t think about uni until halfway through last year and I thought ‘what can I do with this?’ I picked subjects I enjoyed; maths, physics and media. I initially only did maths because I did physics, but I enjoyed maths so much I also did further maths.
“I came here to Telford College for an open day, I spoke to Stu and Ed (tutors) and thought ‘this seems alright’ and now I love it. I use the college’s free breakfast scheme, my favourite item is the waffles.
“I don’t feel like a student in a class, I feel like a colleague or a friend of our teachers.
“I can call them by their first name, I don’t feel like I’m below them and we’re at the same level and they’re giving me advice rather than just teaching, I can actually connect with them. There are lecturers who don’t teach me anymore, but I can still drop in and see them for advice.”
Misha is quite busy outside of college too, working at Blists Hill Victorian Town museum at the weekends, as well as being a sergeant in a local branch of the Army Cadet Force.
“I didn’t join cadets until I was 15, after lockdown. Initially all of my friend group went, however they all left but I’ve stuck with it, the past 2 years have gone so quickly and I got promoted to sergeant. I love the hands-on activities and I teach first aid, weapons handling and fieldcraft”.
