After graduating with her L4 HNC in Public Services last year, Tanya Moger decided to stay at Chesterfield College and advance onto the Level 5 HND in Public Services. We caught up with Tanya to find out how the year is going so far and what her next steps are towards a career in the police force.
How is the course going so far?
“I’m currently in the midst of trying to decide which university I’m going to. It’s exciting but stressful. This will be my second year at Chesterfield College and I need to do a third top up year through a university to get my full honours degree.
I put four different options down through UCAS and I’ve got conditional offers from all four of them! This is a big deal for me, so I need to make sure I pick the right one.”
Tanya told us more about the application process…
“As I have kids, I’m not like your regular university student where I can just pick up my life and go, I can’t go too far away. However, there’s still so many options including local universities and colleges and remote learning through providers based further away.
The UCAS application process was really easy. Hub was really easy to navigate and there is a lot of useful information on the website.”
Plans for the future
“There were two pathways on the course, either Blue Light Services or Criminal Justice and I chose the Criminal Justice pathway because I want to be a police officer eventually.
I think the majority of people on the course are either looking to get into the police force or offender management in the prison service.”
Read more about Tanya’s plans for the future here.
Transition from Level 4 HNC to Level 5 HND
“This year I have noticed a difference. It’s definitely stepped up, there’s a lot more onus on being on time and getting assignments in on time. There’s also been plenty of fun activities.
In October, we went to Linnet Scout Camp and that was great fun! It was the second year I’ve done it and I’m going to be gutted that I can’t mentor this upcoming year because that is something that I’ve really enjoyed. The staff teach the kids different things and this year I was able to teach a class. I taught communications, so I taught them the phonetic alphabet and how to use the radios. You also teach them discipline and skills which will help them in the Public Services.
One of the things I always pride myself on is that I would help the students, but I wouldn’t directly tell them the answers. I’d tell each student something which was useful, but they’d have to work together to get the whole picture and that was what the trip was about – working together and building those transferable soft skills, like team work.
A few weeks ago, we also went to court in Sheffield and watched a couple of court cases which was a really interesting experience!”
Is there anything coming up that you’re looking forward to?
“We have a unit coming up that looks at Serious and Organised Crime and I’m looking forward to learning about that.
I seem to like the hard-hitting modules, but I think a lot of us do because it’s those sort of things which really grip your attention. We’re curious being aren’t we.”