Student Profiles

Noel Colley

Hi, my name is Noel and I had been out of full time education for 35 years before I started at Derby University. I left school at 16 without any formal qualifications at all, not even a 25m swimming certificate! During the time since leaving school I have had a variety of jobs which have given me a wealth of knowledge of life and developed a yearning to learn, especially about psychology.

Why come to Uni.? Quite simply, I came because I wanted to and was given the opportunity. Why Derby? Well, of all the offers of places I received, Derby offered a course which sounded really interesting to me, BSc (Hons.) Psychology & Counselling Studies (CL85), and also when I came for an interview I found the place and people both welcoming and friendly. I have to say that the course has been far better than I ever imagined it would be, challenging yet enjoyable. I was worried about fitting into Uni. as a very mature student but the reality has been that both the lecturers and fellow students have been wonderfully supportive and encouraging throughout. I have never felt out of place here. I was the student rep. for 2 years and found people coming to me with their problems to put before the programme committee, before passing that honour to another (reluctant) student.

Where next? What a dilemma, when I started on the undergraduate course I had no idea where it might lead, I was just interested in enjoying the journey. Now I have completed that course I find I have 2 avenues which have opened up before me. I have been offered as place on an MA at Derby which is tempting but, thanks to my Independent Study topic of new fathers experiences of fatherhood I find I also have the opportunity of following my interest and further exploring an under researched but important topic of the effect of birth on new fathers. This is the line I will be taking as I work toward a PhD.

Not bad for someone like me. Would I recommend Derby? Most certainly, to people of all ages and all walks of life I would say come and learn what I did, that Derby Uni. is a great place to grow but be aware that it does take some hard work to achieve all that you can be, believe me it?s worth the effort.

Tanya Webb

I am a 30 year old mother of two young boys - before I came to university I was a full time mother. When they were 1 and 2 years, I took three A levels, Psychology, Law and English. Initially, I was interested in prison psychology and working with long term offenders and their families, but whilst at university health psychology became more appealing.

I found Psychology at Derby University to be an informal and friendly department, the Mickleover site unimposing and easy to get around. The Psychology degree has a nice varied range of modules to choose from. I found the staff to be both approachable and supportive and even friendly! The modules I most enjoyed were Research Methods & Statistics and Personality & Individual Differences.

I made several life long friends, whom upon leaving I still see on regular occasions and still act as a invaluable support network. With having a young family I missed out on a lot of the social activities on offer, although cheap booze was drank on regular occasions. The graduation ball is not to be missed!!

My most memorable time was my final year, I found that everything came together, with all areas of psychology slotting together and what before I wasn't 100% sure of suddenly made sense. My Independent Studies Project looked at the quality of life and psycho-social stressors of adult skin disease sufferers with different facial and visible skin disorders. This involved a lot of contact with outside agencies, particularly Derbyshire ethics committee and the local hospital's research and development team (due to some of my participants being patients at the hospital and a private doctors surgery). This gave me a realistic view of what psychological research within the area of health was really like.

After working for a year with children with behavioural , emotional and learning difficulties, for social services, I have gained a PhD studentship at Nottingham University. For my PhD I will be investigating the psychological impact and compensatory behaviours of children with facial port wine stains. This exciting adventure will be a multicentre study involving hospital departments from around the UK. When I first started my degree, this is the path I decided I wanted to take, with motivation and hard work it anything can be achieved. If I can do it anyone can.

Darren Clayson

Studying Psychology at Derby University was a huge transition for me. I went in with a very basic knowledge of social psychology mixed with a little bit of Freud and came out three years later full of self confidence that I had a broad knowledge of the contemporary issues, debates, and research within the field of psychology. This was in addition of course to becoming self sufficient and independent from my parents, gaining quite a taste for real ale, and not to mention engaged to my university sweet heart who is now my wife!

There were many aspects of the course at Derby that I found particularly beneficial to my development. The first was the lecturing staff. I found them to be student focused as opposed to being pretentious and completely wrapped up in their own research. Ignore the guide books, when you are a student the number of papers a department chugs out is irrelevant, what you really want to know is how passionate the lecturers are about their subject and how willing they are to pass that passion and knowledge on to you, this is one thing the psychology students at Derby certainly receive in abundance. The second aspect of the course I enjoyed was the diversity of contemporary modules it offered. Three areas I particularly enjoyed which have shaped my current career choice were Research Methods, Personality Theory and Testing and Health Psychology.

The combination of studying enjoyable material and having supportive lecturers enabled me to do well and graduate with a 1st class degree. The passion I developed at Derby for Health Psychology also gave me a future focus and I decided to go on and study for an MSc in Health Psychology. It was noticeable very quickly on meeting my new peers from other universities that the scope and depth of research that they had covered in their degrees was far inferior to that which I had studied at Derby, this was especially evident in the area of statistics and research methods the cornerstone of psychological research.

I owe a lot to the grounding I received at Derby University. I recommend the course to anyone who is interested in studying the discipline, especially those intent on pursing psychology as a career.

This information refers to our campus based programmes - for details of online programme click here.