A Visit from Millie Harris, University of St Andrews
For many of the young people in the room, Millie's story was something they had never encountered before — not in school, not at home, not in their immediate community. A young woman who grew up not far from where they sit, now studying Mathematics at St Andrews, with internship experience and a clear sense of where she's heading. That kind of proximity matters enormously. It's one thing to be told that university is possible. It's another to sit across from someone who is living it.
Millie walked the group through her path – the decisions she made, the work it took, and what life at university actually looks like day to day. She shared her internship experiences and the real-world applications of her degree, giving the young people a concrete picture of where academic commitment can lead.
The session also introduced the group to Starmast – a free, accessible online resource for maths and statistics – opening up another practical tool for those who want to keep developing outside of school hours.
In a community where exposure to these kinds of trajectories is limited, sessions like this one do something that can't be replicated in a classroom. They show young people not just what's possible in the abstract, but what it looks like in a real person who was once exactly where they are now.
