Mrs Craddock was Scottish, and she taught me maths at secondary school. But I didn’t like maths. I didn’t think I was good at it and I was struggling with it.
Mrs Craddock was very stoic though: she simply kept on going, for two or three years she kept on chipping away at what I needed to learn. She never gave up on me and gradually she made me realise that... I could do it!
In the end I think life is changed more often not by one transforming event but by simply sticking with something. It might seem dull and tedious at the time – and you frequently wonder what the point is and whether you’re actually getting anywhere.
Miraculously, I eventually did well in maths and if I hadn’t I couldn’t have gone on to be a doctor. Today I’m a teacher myself, teaching clinical medicine to postgrads. So now I understand what Mrs Craddock knew all along – which is that there are no plaudits in this job.
Years later people like me will look back on what you did and appreciate it, but at the time, you just have to keep on going.
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