Spotlight shone on youngest student

A GCU student has been drawing comparisons to a 102 year old thanks to a feature piece from The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP).

Hannah Thomson was contacted after it was discovered that she was the youngest member of the CSP at 18 years old, while Virginia Rowbotham, from Oxfordshire, was identified as the oldest – with just the 84 years separating them.

This led to an article comparing the background of both and their experience in the world of physiotherapy.

Hannah explained how she felt hearing about Virginia’s career and how her relationship with the CSP came about.

Hannah said: "We were told when we first started at GCU about how useful it was to get involved with the CSP.

Getting access to their website and all the learning materials has been really helpful and also having the magazine sent out each month is interesting to keep in touch with everything that’s going on.”

She added: “It’s quite funny because I’m not actually the youngest on my programme - but they aren’t signed up to the CSP.

I found the whole thing really interesting. We obviously come from the same field of work but our experiences are not aligned at all because so much has changed through the years.

It was really interesting hearing about her involvement during World War II in particular. My dad had mentioned that she would’ve been qualified during that time so it was fascinating finding out about it.”

Hannah admitted that she wouldn’t have expected to be involved in something like this when she first walked through the door at GCU last September – with this being the latest positive experience at university.

She said: “It was definitely a surprise to get involved and also a bit unusual – it’s great to get the opportunity to do things like this.
I’ve absolutely loved being at GCU overall so far, it’s really really supportive and I’ve never felt worried about anything because there’s always someone you can go to.

During the pandemic everything has been really clear. A lot of my friends at other universities have been stressed about how things will be but I feel like we’ve been kept in the know for months about how everything will work.”

You can read Hannah and Viriginia’s feature piece with the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy here

By Ross Clark
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