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Finishing my Undergrad: Sacrifice and Strife. By April Williams

I am April Williams and I am a masters student in child and adolescent psychology! I am currently on a pottery course and I love to read and write poetry. Happy to connect with other care-experienced/estranged individuals 🙂 My LinkedIn is: April Williams

April & Roses

Today I am 22, with a degree in Psychology with Counselling, but I was once 19. When I started university as my second attempt to prove to myself that I can escape the life that was already written for me, I had no idea what I was doing. From a young age I have always been a curious learner. Sometimes being curious got me in trouble, just like my outspoken words that yearned for justice.

But throughout these years I have built some type of strength. It wasn’t the strength to stay in education because I need to, but it was strength to set foundations and build. My foster carer told me that nobody can take education away from me, but it was abandonment and disappointment that stayed the most. It was a common theme, and I’ve had to learn over the years how to not abandon myself as an estranged/care-experienced student. It hasn’t gotten easier, when people have let me down. And sometimes it makes so unbelievably sad that my life is one big let-down. But my life is also wonderful – I created my own community of care experienced students at my university, I show up every day for myself and others, and I never, no matter the circumstances let anyone take my goodness that I have for the world.

Moonlit skies above Greenwich

I have nonetheless, felt some loneliness that comes with that. The pressure to rely on myself or else it crumbles is immense strain that I have on myself mentally and physically. I hear how many people are proud of me, how amazing I am. And whilst I acknowledge that, I yearn to be ordinary. I yearn to just take a break, to relax, to laugh, without having something to prepare for in case something goes wrong. Despite all of that, I have come to the end of my degree through hard work and determination and can realise now what my foster carer meant when she said that to me at 15. It is not about my biological parents seeing how hard I’ve worked. It is about my truth and my power to give something the world never gave to me.

I am publishing research to help other care-experienced students be seen in education, and I will continue to keep fighting for that. My next chapter of doing my masters in Child and Adolescent Psychology alongside helping more people, gives me a strong sense of purpose. It tells me that my work has only begun, and while people continue to disappoint, I will continue to save. This next chapter I label ‘hope’. My fuel ran on survival through my undergrad, but this chapter will run on faith, glory, and happiness to contribute to a better society.

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