Chinedu Chukwuemeka, who graduates this week with a first-class Business Management BA discusses coming back to university as a mature student.
Date: 25 July 2022
“The atmosphere, the students, lecturers and staff are all friendly,” says Chinedu Chukwuemeka, who graduates this week with a Business Management BA. “The best you could ask for. As a mature student, that anxiety of how to cope was wiped away the very first lecture I took at the university thanks to the lecturer herself.”
He admits that going back to university as a mature student was daunting, and “doing that in a pandemic, with a family and in full-time employment makes it even more daunting.” But ultimately the university experience was a challenge he “welcomed with open arms.”
Chinedu sadly lost his father during his exam period, at one of the peaks of the Covid pandemic. It was “the most significant thing,” he says. “I could not travel to Nigeria to bury him. I had to do everything from afar. I managed to complete all my coursework without any mitigating circumstances, and no resits, achieving top marks in all but one module.”
As a result of his hard work, he is now graduating with a first-class degree. Asked how it feels to achieve such success, he said, “Words cannot describe my feelings. It just seems like I am in a trance.”
His advice for other students is to, “ask as many questions as you can. You can never ask enough and it’s better to ask than to keep quiet. Coming out with First Class honours is something I never thought I could achieve but hard work does pay off.”
