Thansu Jesudas

Sports Coaching and Physical Education with Foundation Year - BSc (Hons)

Thansu has always excelled in sports and didn’t want her grades to hold her back. After completing a foundation year, she’s now taking every opportunity available to her, including volunteering at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. 

“I came to England when I was five and struggled to grasp the education system here. I’ve always found it really hard to get good grades, I always felt like I was working hard but it never showed on paper. Sport was the one thing I was good at and made me feel inspired. Firstly, I got into netball through a friend and found I was really good at it. At school, teachers began to notice I was talented in sports and I was put on school teams and even competed in some of the top teams at a children’s national level. I tried football, hockey, rounders and I enjoyed them all! It finally felt like I had something I was good at and that my talent was being recognised.

Being part of school sports teams inspired me to go into PE teaching, I knew I wanted to inspire kids and give them the support they needed to thrive in the world of sport. I want to encourage people to have the confidence to get involved in sports. I personally feel it is important for us to encourage children to be active throughout their school life, even if it’s just a little bit.

I heard that the BCU sports facilities were fantastic which is what encouraged me to apply. I was still struggling with exams and the academic side of things, so I had to do a foundation year to boost my grades. At first, I really didn’t want to do a foundation year. I wanted to just get started on my degree and get stuck in but the foundation year really helped to improve my academic skills. I really needed that year to reflect and develop my skills, instead of being thrown into the deep end and struggling with my academic work.

Since joining BCU, I’ve found that everything is amazing! My lecturers are really supportive of me. I sometimes still struggle with my coursework and exams but my tutors are always there when I need help. My course is quite small which is great, it means I can get more one-on-one support from my tutors and course mates. Everyone on my course is really close and I like the fact that we can work together and bounce off each other.

My tutors also give us lots of guidance on future careers and employability, they tell us how to get into the world of sports and send us jobs and placements in the industry and at university every week. The opportunities are endless and I’m glad I’ve been able to make the most of them. I was lucky enough to go to Canada with my course, it was really interesting to experience sport in another country and get an insight to physical education there.

I’ve also been able to volunteer at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games. It was great to see the players and to meet loads of people in and around the UK who work in sports. This was a completely different experience for me as it was such a huge sporting event. It helped me consider what other careers there are within sport if I ever decided to move away from teaching, so it really broadened my horizons and boosted my confidence in areas that aren’t sports coaching.

Being in the heart of Birmingham and studying at BCU really offers unique opportunities. Being a student at BCU is not like just going to university where you’re learning from lecturers and assignments, you’re also learning from the real world and external opportunities that are available.

To me, ‘I am BCU’ means opportunity. A chance to explore university life and all the experiences on offer.”