A random decision to self-teach myself A Level Psychology for fun turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. And it all started from bad luck due to something completely unrelated; a football injury sidelining me.
Life-changer
I needed to occupy my time after this and I thought I would do something productive so I chose to study Psychology. I thought it would help improve my grades and as I worked full-time I had to find somewhere to do it in the evenings. I signed up at a local charity called Alpha Tutorials which provided education in the evenings for GCSEs and A level tuition within Leicester.
Unfortunately they didn’t have a psychology teacher so I made the decision of paying for the exams but teaching myself instead. It wasn’t easy at all but through sheer determination I scored one of the highest grades in the country all without any guidance and even 100 percent in two of the hardest exams.
Helping others
As I had posted my journey on the Student Room forums something strange started to happen shortly after, and I started to get constant emails from students asking for help and guidance on how they could achieve the same. My brain got ticking and I thought the current textbooks available were useless so I spent a few months writing my own and released it so students could grasp one of the units. Within a year it had been downloaded over 2000 times which was quite an achievement considering it was really niche-specific, but this set the foundation for what would come next. I had no intention of following this up further up until something happened at work.
A new route
After applying for a job I really wanted and being passed over for promotion I realised I would need to find my own success somehow. I came back to this book I had written and decided to take it further and cover the whole A Level subject out of sheer anger and frustration. I never thought I would get as far as I have now but two bad incidents combined to set me on a path to achieve something really amazing and help students across the UK. I ended up not only writing books that thousands of teachers and students now use across the UK, I also run one of the most popular A level psychology revision websites in the country too.
Thousands of students have used it to achieve some of the highest grades possible with many sending me pictures thanking me for helping them get into university and doing so well. It’s amazing how you can find opportunity in some of the darkest places and how life can set you on a path you never see coming.
And it all started from a series of unfortunate events.
Do you know someone who has found opportunities from bad luck? Let us know in the comments below!
Photo: Artotem / Flickr
Fighting crime by day, part-time author & entrepreneur by night.
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