When the first lockdown happened I was furloughed, as a Cabin Manager for easyJet. At this point, the government was allowing everyone to only leave their house if it was mandatory and for 1 hour of excise a day. I felt quite helpless, as I am sure many did. I had many friends and family working as frontline staff and I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. So I decided to volunteer, I wanted to do literally anything I could do to help, I applied everywhere and a small start-up charity got back to me called Project Wingman. I was run by two Captains one from British Airways and the other from easyJet and when I joined there were no more than 20 of us all together. Their goal was to go around as many hospitals in the UK and open up pop-up lounges in the hospitals to support front-line staff with their mental health during this difficult time. 

I started at North Middlesex University Hospital where we created a cozy safe space for staff to come in on their break and have something to snack and drink on, have a chat, or even be a shoulder to cry on. Quickly our small family of Cabin Crew grew, as more volunteers jumped on board and I was asked to move to Barnet General Royal Free as a Team Leader. Here I would be discussing plans with the hospital management to open up one of our lounges to support their staff and bring in a new group of volunteers and train them up to work in the lounge. I volunteered 3 days a week in the hospital helping staff and another 1 to 2 days I spent contacting companies and collecting donations from them.

Everything from starting to this point happened so fast and I took on a big role very quickly and everything became very overwhelming. However, this experience also brought so many new positives and opportunities into my life. My leadership skill excelled massively, I was leading a team, coordinating donation stock, collecting donation stock, and leasing with hospital management on a daily basis. My communication and admin skills through this were vital, as I was emailing consistently with companies about donations. However, I believe this experience mostly improved my listening and empathy skills, talking to the staff every day, understanding what they were working through, and empathising with them was critical and all in all our main goal of being there. 

Wonderful opportunities were thrown my way, I was interviewed live by the BBC at a Great Ormond Street Hospital conference about high-risk jobs and working during the pandemic. Also, I gave a talk to the Barnet General Radiology department about the transferable skills from aviation to the medical industry, and how we can help them coach claustrophobic patients that are scared of MRI scanners, which is similar to people who are scared of flying. 

This experience not only improved my communication, leadership, time management, and listening skills but opened my eyes to the health care industry and spiked my passion to want to become a doctor.  

Well, I guess this is hello, my beginning, my journey of how I got here…here being Applied Medical Science at UCL and the start of my journey to medicine. 

If only it was as easy as sitting my A levels at 18 and making the right choices that got me here, but then would I be as happy as I am to be here? 

So I guess my beginning was COVID (I know, what a beginning), at this point I was probably somewhere in the clouds…quite literally! I was a flight attendant, a Cabin Manager for easyJet when the first lockdown began. Very quickly my day-to-day changed from holiday hopping to couch potato when Boris told me I couldn’t leave my house, apart from my daily walk. I decided I would volunteer to support the front-line staff since I can not sit still and I joined a charity called Project Wingman. We started as a small little family of flight

attendants that helped NHS staff with their mental health during the pandemic. Our family of cabin crew grew bigger and I opened a support lounge in Barnet hospital as a team leader, where I started heavily interacting with the doctors at this hospital. 

I never knew what I wanted to do forever, at 18 that was always a scary big question that I never knew the answer to. Barnet hospital changed that! Seeing how the doctors helped people every day and the satisfaction it gave them finally answered that big and scary question for me.

I took this opportunity to take voluntary redundancy from flying due to the COVID circumstances and retake my A-Levels, to journey to become a doctor! So now I am here and this is my story I guess…well the beginning of it anyway!