Nihal’s story

Nihal at IntoUniversity Bristol East

Nihal is an extremely able student and coming to Academic Support at the centre allows her to challenge herself further academically, as well as giving her more opportunities, such as to develop her Oracy skills. The centre team describe her as always giving everything her best and always being keen to participate.

Although her communication skills have always been good, the team have particularly noticed that she has developed her ability to speak confidently in front of a whole class, and she is increasingly able to respectfully challenge other students’ point of view, as well as to ask probing or clarifying questions. Nihal is incredibly aspirational and often asks staff about future options, university and careers, showing great enthusiasm to have these conversations.

“At IntoUniversity, we wrote poems in a Virtual Holiday FOCUS workshop and that was when we learnt about careers and aspirations. IntoUniversity has really helped me with public speaking because I would never have thought that I could speak to random strangers that I’ve never met, but now IntoUniversity has helped me a lot with that. The staff ask us lots of questions and sometimes I unmute my mic and I answer the questions. We did workshops with lots of different IntoUniversity centres all in one. There was more than 80 people and I actually unmuted and spoke to all of them and I am proud of myself for that!

Recently we also learnt about people who had done lots of amazing things. It helped me to see what I’m good at and what I need to improve so that I can figure out what I’m going to be when I’m older.  I want to be a fashion designer or an interior designer. When I was younger I thought I wanted to be a Prime Minister, but now that looks like a huge responsibility that would be really hard. But maybe I will do another job in politics; I like the idea of having a lot of responsibility and doing things independently.”

By coming to IntoUniversity I want to learn more about myself and the world. I remember learning about our careers and aspirations at IntoUniversity and I didn’t know before, but now I think I want to be a fashion designer! I really like putting outfits together and seeing what matches.