ALUMNAE PROFILE: CHARLOTTE WILLIAMS Cléo Duterte-Delaunay (LVI

It is always great to hear that old Downe House traditions continue to be followed. Miss Williams expressed, “…good memories of Wacky-Bs.” A concept that the current Downe House pupils are familiar with. Miss Williams explained how, “…in Lower School for birthdays there was a container wrapped in wrapping paper with ribbons on it and the girls would put presents in it so that the day of your birthday it would be outside your door filled with little gifts”.

“Those who were in AGS and AGN, where Lower School is now, they would cycle up to their lessons with their books under one arm and then cycle back down and we used to cycle in the woods. Apart from Mr Riddle’s cycling sessions with pupils around the campus, I have to say we no longer have the luxury of seeing girls cycling to lessons.”

“I started off with five A Levels including General Studies,” said Miss Williams. Her other classes included Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Physics. Miss Williams eventually dropped Physics to focus on sport, photography and cookery, but it is safe to say that she was very much a STEM student through and through.

“I always intended to study Medicine, so I did a lot of work experience,” explained Miss Williams. She acknowledged that back then it was a lot easier to get work experience and you could do a lot more. She remembers “going to operations” and “shadowing a junior Doctor” where she was able to “draw blood from real patients as [she] was introduced as a trainee” and, reflecting on it now, she acknowledges that the Doctors were a lot more lenient in the past.

Before attending Leeds University to study Medicine, Miss Williams went on a gap year: “I went travelling for eight months by myself, the first three months I was in China, and I did a placement in Shang Hai where I did two months in a hospital and a month in a school. Then from there I went to Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.” It does not stop there, she also travelled to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Haiti before going to America, where she went to Los Angeles and San Francisco. After travelling across the globe Miss Williams described: “I did a year and a bit of Medicine, I did well in my exams got a few awards along the way, but I just wasn’t sure, I was not 100% certain and I suppose no one really is at that age. I decided that it was not for me.”

As a result, she decided to do a degree in primary school teaching instead. However, after her first placement, Miss Williams decided to change her whole trajectory and picked a degree that incorporated all her interests. She wanted a degree that combined “sports, science and caring for people”, an element of Medicine that she particularly appreciated. This led her to Sports Therapy. Miss Williams acknowledges that she “probably should have done something sportsbased initially” and highlights how we should study what we are passionate about: “Be confident in what you really want to do.”

“When you make a big decision like that you can’t look back and think ‘what if I had carried on?’. It would just drive you mad. It is challenging to make a decision like that because at the time everyone goes to school, you either take a gap year or you don’t, you go to university, and you finish your three years, you get a job or maybe get into a graduate training scheme. A lot of people take a linear path, and it takes guts to break the mould and not follow this perfect straight line.”

As a result, Miss Williams started working as a teaching assistant and that same year she went to the Athens Olympics for six weeks and worked in the press centre: “I was going to press conferences and asking questions, I got to interview Haile Gebrselassie and all these famous athletes one-on-one. I would not have the opportunity to do this if I had still been at university.”