'I wanted to be doing it rather than writing about doing it'
Academic high-flyer Carly Cook was just four weeks into her A-level course when she realised she had made the wrong choices about her future. She had her sights set on a career in musical theatre and began to study English literature, music, drama and performing arts at A-level, planning to later study drama at university.
The content of her courses were theoretical rather than practical. "It just wasn't for me. I wasn't happy," says Cook. So she left the school where she had passed 12 GCSEs at top grades to go to college.
"I have always wanted to perform, but I thought I had best get some qualifications," she says. "But it wasn't long before I realised I wanted to be doing it rather than writing about doing it."
Cook, from Connah's Quay in north Wales, is now studying for a BTech national diploma in musical theatre at West Cheshire college. "We sing, dance and act all the time. I absolutely love this college course," she says.
Her mother, however, took convincing. With her two eldest daughters having already taken the academic route to university, Carol Cook was confident that her third daughter would follow the same path to success.
"Initially I baulked at her change of heart," Carol Cook says. "We are geared up to think that the more qualifications, the better chances young people have and they should make university. But I thought, 'it isn't my life, it's hers'. I rang round to find her a place at a college, and now I am glad I did. She is so much happier and has grown in confidence too."
'The way I wanted to learn'
Bored at school and disenchanted with the results of her AS-level exams in science subjects, Sophie Harrigan believed her childhood dream of becoming a veterinary surgeon had faded.
But two years later, the teenager, from Colchester in Essex, has been accepted for a highly sought after place at the Royal Veterinary College in London.
Sophie is one step nearer to achieving her ambition after following a vocational route. She quit school and went to Otley college in Ipswich to study for a BTec national diploma in animal management.
"To get to vet school you probably need four A passes at A-level, but I was not enjoying school and didn't do too well in my exams," she says.
"So I found this course and I loved it. It was the way I wanted to learn — a mixture of practical and theory — and focused on what I wanted to do. It involves learning about animals rather than plants and is more course-work based than exams."
She passed her BTec with three distinctions, the equivalent in university entrance Ucas points of three A-level passes at grade A. "If I had not switched I don't think I would have got the A-level grades to get to vet school," she adds.
