I'm 19 years old, just finishing one final A level at school. Right from being a little girl, I have always known I would end up going to university, I don't know why. It just seemed a natural progression; GCSE's, A levels and then onto the best possible university that I could get into. I have applied to do Midwifery. A very difficult course to get into in the first place due to the overwhelming number of people applying for the course. If you get the grades they ask for and complete occupational health and police checks to a satisfactory level and you are offered a place on the course, its just the beginning of a gruelling 45 week a year, 3 year long course, involving working a full time job working shifts as well as being in university 50% of the time to learn the theory, including physiology, psychology and sociology.
At A Glance Author Emma Contact [email protected] IAM mekofairy When N/A Now I bet you are wondering what on earth any of this has to do with body modification. Well quite simply I'm modified myself. Various piercing ranging from my nostril and 6mm stretched lobes to my nipples and septum. As well as that I have a couple of small tattoos, one on my spine the other on the nape of my neck just under my hairline. As much as society harps on about the acceptance of others, In the eyes of many today, modifications are seen to be something only possessed by the lowest of the low. Criminals, druggies, bikers...well you get the picture. In short they are not the sort of thing possessed by a young student midwife. But honestly, do my few piercing and tattoos make me any less of a person? Easy. No of course they don't! Just because I happen to have a stud in my nose, holes in my ears and other various parts of my body and art etched into my skin, it doesn't mean that I have any less intelligence than your average person. If I am to be brutally honest and bl ow my own trumpet, I wouldn't be surprised if I was more intelligent than average. I didn't get accepted to one of the top schools in the country, receive a grammar school education and then later go onto one of the other top schools to study my A levels by pure fluke. I must have something going on between my ears! After 5 years of hard work I have come out with 9 GCSE's and I'll soon have 4 A levels to my name. In three years time I will emerge from University with a Bsc hons degree in Midwifery and registration on the nursing register and be allowed to practice within the NHS as a midwife. A job not many people are willing to or want to do. But I WANT to, and I will work hard to get there and I am determined to make a difference.
It is interesting that you can actually see the prejudice towards body mods. At the moment I work part time in the local Spar store in the small town near to where I live. I have to hide my septum piercing and I've not exactly in the habit of whipping out the nipple piercings in front of customers so, besides the tragus, stretched lobes and nostril piercing, all my piercings are all hidden from view. That's how my bosses want it to stay, and I have a feeling that the majority of the customers who come into the shop (if they knew about them) prefer that they are hidden from view as well. Out of sight, out of mind, that's how the saying goes isn't it?! I live in a very small village in the Yorkshire Dales. I live in the sort of place that people come to retire and as horrible as this sounds, its a place that they come to live out the rest of their days. So as you can imagine the average age of residents around here is considerably higher than the national average! One night I was on my way out and I stopped in at the place where I work to pick up some food or alcohol, I happened to be wearing my septum jewellery and a colleague, a woman I have worked with for over a year, and also a regular customer recoiled in horror, following quickly with, " What is that in your nose??", "Does that go all the way through?" and the one we have all grown to know and love "Ooh...didn't that hurt?!" These are people who I see a lot of the time, neither of whom had ever seen me like that. Neither of them look at me in the same way. I am considered the freak, the weird one who works in "that" shop with "those" piercings.
To be honest I find it amusing now. I'm the "crazy" one to all my friends, the "mad" one to all my work colleagues and the "disgusting" one to my parents. But really I'm just me. Emma. 19 years old. An A2 level Biology student. I going to be a midwife. And god help me I'm modified too. Like that's going to stop me!!