Your reflection

I was 26 when I came to Glasgow for the first time. I had a masters degree in geology from the university in Warsaw. I was working for a Polish humanitarian organisation. They sent me here to work as a part of a project to see how they teach refugees and how the whole process of getting asylum works here.

It was May, it was lovely here. I stayed in the West End. I loved Glasgow and decided to move. I moved hoping that it would be really easy to get a similar job here, which never happened. It’s quite difficult to get into work if you didn’t study anything similar or if you didn’t meet the right people or volunteer for a certain amount of time. It’s the same everywhere. I have a friend who struggles to get into the field. She’s Scottish and she’s had problems, so it’s got nothing to do with me being foreign. It’s just the way it is.

It was really hard. I tried with Oxfam. I had done a little bit of work for them, mostly photography. That was my hobby and I had done a little bit of work with that before. I tried a few places to get a job but it just didn’t work out. And at some point I thought, what was I doing?

I was working in cafés, mostly, and got a bit tired of that, as you can imagine. I worked in one photography studio for about a year before it got shut one day, just like that.

At that time, when you knew you were educated and you couldn’t get on, sometimes you don’t see the end – you know it’s there, but I was getting frustrated.

I was born in China and lived there for 24 years. I completed school and then went to work in a factory. I didn’t enjoy this work. After that, my sister and I started up our own business, but we didn’t make much money.

In 2000 I moved to the UK and have now been here for 12 years. For the first five years, I found it very difficult, as I didn’t have any English. I was isolated, I had a baby and found it hard to get work. Eventually I got work, but it wasn’t what I wanted.

Later, when I started to learn English at a local college, I began to build contacts and make friends. I found out about Bridges Programmes, and through this organisation I heard about the OU.

I then began studying business courses with the OU in 2010. The first course I did, an Openings access course called ‘Learning to change’, was a big step in giving me the confidence to believe in myself and to know that I am equal to everyone else and can make a better life for myself and my daughter.

While studying, I got work in an office as a bookkeeper. I enjoy this work. I’ve now been in this work for one year and I am hoping to continue with this work.

My daughter is now aged 10 and at school. Now that I can speak and understand English I am involved in my daughter’s school community.

I was really curious as to how it was going to be, living and working abroad. It’s just, it turned out to be a little more complicated job-wise than I thought it was going to be. I was working in cafés mostly. So after three years in Glasgow, I decided to go back to university.

It was quite a long time since I graduated, so I kind of lost confidence to look for a job with no experience in the field and no specialist vocabulary. I looked at what was available, at what was quite similar to what I had done back home, so that I could get to masters straightaway. I found geotechnics, which I did a little bit of as a part of my course back home. At some point I had wanted to choose that as a specialisation but I never did. Choosing geotechnics, I think that was the right thing to do and it kind of fits with what I did back home. Altogether I think it gave me quite a strong base.

I think I got a little bit lucky with the move here, and obviously it was not always very nice all the time, but I still got quite lucky that I met some people on the way who helped out, who supported me – but you really have to do a lot of work yourself. I was trying to encourage my friend to do a similar thing.

I think I am in a nice position right now, finally getting a job in the field, and personally, life is good as well. At the moment, I am looking to buy a flat. I am a geotechnical engineer. A friend. A girlfriend.

My parents, I think they are quite proud – they would probably say that I have finally got where I wanted to be. I think I would like to believe that being a friend is the most important thing.