Marissa Hammond, 18, who achieved an A* and three A grades today, said her experience as a carer, and seeing first-hand the challenges that some people face every day, helped her to put her exam results into perspective.
Marissa is a registered Young Adult Carer, supporting her father and her grandmother at the family home. Her father lives with bladder cancer and a degenerative muscular condition, while her grandmother has dementia.
For the past five years Marissa has cared for her relatives through everyday tasks such as cooking and helping them to dress. Marissa – a boarder at Benenden – always returned to this role at Exeats and school holidays, sometimes acting as sole carer to give her mother and brother respite.
Marissa said: “It didn’t feel like caring to me, but I was registered as a carer because of the situation.
“I’m so used to it nothing feels hard or difficult about it which might sound a bit odd, but it also means you don’t worry so much about the smaller things, like exams.
“For example, I was in clearing this morning and was quite relaxed about it because in the context of other things people are facing in life, it doesn’t matter so much to be spending a couple of hours on hold in clearing.”
Marissa was today offered places by four universities and is now going to Bristol to read Physics. “I’m really happy that all the universities I rang up wanted me,” she said.
Marissa, who is currently reading a book about Quantum Theory, is unsure which branch of Physics to pursue in the longer-term, with Nuclear, Medical and Materials Physics also all of interest.
She applied to Benenden after advice from a Science lecturer on a summer school and joined the School at the start of Sixth Form.
Highlights of her two years at Benenden included being Head of the student Charity Committee, founding the Staff v Student Fencing Tournament and qualifying for the British Youth Fencing Championships.
“It’s been great,” she said. “If I’d have stayed where I was, I wouldn’t have had the opportunities and the support I’ve had at Benenden. I have done a lot of things that I wouldn’t have otherwise done.”
Join us for our Sixth Form Open Event on Thursday 11 September. Book at www.benenden.school/opendays