My dream growing up was to be a captain on a cruise ship.

I wanted to go beyond my hometown and explore the world, meeting new people and learning new things. There aren’t many opportunities for people my age in St Helens. It used to be a big manufacturing and mining town, but by the 1990s, a lot of the traditional industries had dried up.

Although I loved my comprehensive school in Liverpool, I had no plans to go to university.

I thought only a certain type of person goes to university and I’m not like that. And then my secondary school was invited to an Open Day at Magdalene College in Cambridge. I remember thinking: this is just world’s away from anything that I could achieve, but wouldn't it be amazing if I could go there?

An initiative called Aspire put me in touch with a student mentor in Cambridge.

He was really helpful. I could ask what his day-to-day life looked like and get advice on applying. When I got a place at Selwyn College to study History and Politics, I told myself: “you’ve come from St Helens – now you need to take every opportunity and talk to everybody!”

In fact, that was really easy to do.

When you’re surrounded by people who are passionate about what they're doing, doors keep opening. You know when you come up with a ridiculous idea and people go “what on Earth are you talking about?” Well, that doesn’t happen in Cambridge. I'd say to a friend, “I want to write an opera and he'd go, okay, cool, when? What's it about? Let's do it!” That attitude was all around me and it definitely got me places.

I became very friendly with the College choir and the Selwyn music scene – I can't sing myself, but they were still welcoming.

I'm big into jazz cocktail piano, so I started playing jazz sets in the College bar. And as Publicity Officer for the Music Society, I’d introduce concerts, maybe tell a couple of jokes, and interact with the audience.

Then in my final year, I did a ridiculous thing – I entered the student opera competition with my friend Magnus.

He’s from Sheffield and we’d bonded over both being from post-industrial northern towns. Magnus wrote the dialogue and I wrote the music, and then we put on an opera in Christ’s College. Lots of students from my College and my Director of Studies came to watch. I was so pleased. I thought if I can put on an opera in my final year when I've got final exams, I can do a job.

The Master of Selwyn College at the time was Roger Mosey who’d worked at the BBC.

I asked if he’d give me some careers advice. He said to me, “well, I've watched how you present at music concerts and I think you need to go into radio”. Then he put me in touch with Cambridge Radio.

I started volunteering as an assistant producer at Cambridge Radio in the final year of my degree.

I’d walk down to the Gwydir Street studios on a Tuesday afternoon after I'd finished my lectures to help with the show. When I finished my degree, they offered me a job as a presenter! And so I'm in Cambridge half the week doing the prime-time home show. And I’m like a chief filler-in if anyone’s off.

I got in touch with a Cheshire radio station called MIX 56 to say I'd studied history and politics and would love to gather stories from local people for the radio.

So now I’m back in St Helens the other half of the week as a roving reporter. I’ve got my own microphone, and I just go around interviewing people. I spoke to the Mayor of Warrington the other day and I’ve interviewed people on market stalls, the stars of theatre productions, the staff at the local police museum – it’s a lot of fun. I feel privileged to be able to tell local people’s stories.

My degree gave me a deeper appreciation for the place where I grew up.

I did my final year dissertation on the politics of St Helens and Merseyside. My research was set against the shocking backdrop of the Southport riots, and looked at why the town votes the way it does and why there is so little opportunity for young people. It was one of those moments where you go, yeah, the politics of today is entirely contingent on the history of the past.

That feeling of ‘get involved with everything’ has never left me.

I’m also a piano teacher and organist, and I do outreach at a comprehensive school in Blackpool. You could say my LinkedIn profile looks a bit of a mess – I've done so much since graduating last year it looks like I’m doing ‘everything, everywhere, all at once’. But that’s good – I was given a piece of advice at a Careers event during my degree: if you want to work in media or the music industry, you need to be open to doing loads of different jobs at the same time. I think that’s what I’ve enjoyed most about Cambridge – throwing myself into every opportunity that comes my way.