17 year old Megan Turner wins Outstanding BTEC Student of the year

17 year old Megan Turner wins Outstanding BTEC Student of the year

7 September 2012

Megan Turner is a 17 year old Engineering student from Loughborough. She is the winner of the BTEC Student of Science and Engineering award and the Overall Outstanding BTEC Student of the Year in the National BTEC Awards.

From quite a young age I remember thinking and wondering how things worked. My first real taste of engineering I would say was in year 9 when I was chosen as team leader for the Formula 1 in schools, where you had to design a small car which would be propelled by a gas canister over 100ms.

After completing and enjoying the formula 1 in schools I began to consider Engineering as a career. I chose to work with a local Land Rover specialist for my work experience and it was here where I decided that Engineering was for me, I loved everything about it (apart from my interest wasn’t in cars as such!). I always remember my boss saying to me ‘Men can lift heavy things but women can get into small areas, you work together to get the job done’, this was so true because it showed me that men and women have different abilities but if you work together you can get much further with a job.

There have been quite a few people who have inspired and encouraged me to pursue my career in Engineering. My dad has been a key person in my success as he would always take the time to explain why things worked and how they worked. When I was young, he would creatively describe how things worked – in one case, he even used pink elephants to help me understand how something worked!  My dad has always believed that I could do anything I put my mind to. Together we have built a tear drop caravan, he has taught me things about cars, how to change parts, I can decorate, put wallpaper up, he would take me to events which he thinks I would be interested in such as Greenpower. I would say my grandad has helped me through the past couple of years as well, spending the time explaining and researching if neither of us could understand the information.  The key thing is that they both treated me as an equal to my brothers.

I have also had a lot of support from my mum, who has spent hours reading and checking my assignments and also my grandparents, all of which have been truly supportive of what I am doing, and have been immensely proud of me winning my two BTEC Awards.

When I was told by my tutor Richard Miller that I had not only won one award but I had also won the Outstanding student for BTEC Award my only response was, ‘Great, that means my grandad can buy me a pretty dress!’  I immediately rang to tell my dad the good news. “I did it, I really did it, I’ve won” I told my him. My mum was extremely happy and proud, whilst my brothers cheekily said, “At least one of us is a geek!”