This is a guest blog by Jess East, current BSc (Hons) Adult Nursing student at Yeovil Campus.

Let’s make this personal.

My name is Jessica East and I am a 31 year old full-time Adult Nursing student at BU. I am based at the campus in Yeovil, in Somerset. Choosing to go to uni was hard for me, due to being Mum to a little boy and having a house to run. I hadn’t really done very well in school and I left with only four GCSEs (Ds and Es).

Applying to university through UCAS was the easy bit. The whole application takes you through each step. When it came to choosing which university I wanted to put down, it gave me the option of choosing which campus I would like to be based at as well, that was easy. I live in Yeovil and the campus for BU is five minutes down the road. It’s even more convenient that my son’s school is just around the corner from it as well.

Yeovil Campus

There are a few facilities at Yeovil Campus. They include a computer room, a canteen, or common room with many tables and chairs. Unfortunately, there isn’t room on the campus for a library but students of BU have full access to the library within the local hospital. On the odd occasion we have to travel to Bournemouth for lectures or seminars, we can visit the library there, take books out and return them to the hospital library back in Yeovil when we are done with them.

There is a fully working kitchenette with two fridges, microwaves and dishwasher and there are a couple of vending machines for chocolate, crisps, snacks and hot drinks. It’s like a little community within the campus. Also, every weekday at around 12 midday, a sandwich van pulls up outside for students and staff to get their lunch. They provide hot and cold food and can even do it to order.

I love studying on campus. Sometimes, educational establishments can be quite daunting for newcomers because it can take a while to navigate your way round the corridors and various rooms on different levels. With Yeovil Campus it was easy. It’s small, it’s quaint and there’s no giant lecture theatres full of 200 students to accidentally stumble into.

Student Support

I have so far found that the support for students is pretty good. The lecturers are generally pretty swift at replying to emails. Although, Covid-19 changed this a little bit as they were working from home and having to organise new ways of teaching units online. During the hardest year of our academic lives, the staff at BU have done a fantastic job at supporting us as students with our studies and they should be extremely proud of themselves.