A 28-year-old woman is celebrating graduating from Keele with a first-class honours degree - 12 years after her life was turned upside down when problems with mental health forced her to 'drop out' of education.

Giselle Pearson had achieved four A*, three A and two B grades in her GCSEs, but her dream of becoming a doctor was shattered when her sixth form attendance declined, and she only sat one A-Level exam.

However, she refused to give up and Giselle has now been named Keele University’s Student of the Year, after working tirelessly to overcome her challenges, excelling academically to graduate with a Computer Science and Mathematics degree and setting up the Keele Aerial Dance Society, which now has more than 100 members.

Giselle, who is from Colwall, Herefordshire, joined Keele through clearing. She said: "If I could have told myself when I was 16 and 17 that all is going to turn out well for you, and that you’re going to be happy and succeed, I don’t think younger me would have believed it.

"Going from not being able to cope with more than one or two days at sixth form each week and being unable to sit more than one A-Level, to being in this position now is hard to imagine. It’s quite incredible and I feel very happy.

"When I found out I had won Keele's Student of the Year, I cried a lot of happy tears. Graduating was a very emotional experience, and it was special to do it in front of my family. They are all people that I love so much and they know how dark a place I was in when I was younger, so to be able to share my success with them now at 28 years old means a lot to me. My grandparents came to Keele in the very first cohort in the 1950s, where they met, so it’s a special place for our family."

Giselle suffered what she describes as a 'mental breakdown' when she was 16 while studying for her A-Levels in maths, physics and chemistry. Following tests and cognitive behavioral therapy, she was diagnosed as autistic the following year.

She said: "I wanted to be a doctor and I had my whole life planned out. I was very strict with the plans, and I knew what was going to happen, and in what order. I went into a hospital to do work experience with some doctors, and I absolutely hated it, and that’s when things began to change. It was the first time in my life that something hadn’t gone to plan. Around the same time I got my GCSE results which were good, but I'd expected to get an A* in Biology and I got an A, and I got a B in Latin instead of an A.

"I started to think to myself if I didn’t like the work experience as much as I thought I would, and if a couple of my grades were different from what I had expected, then what if everything else in my plan isn’t going to work? I ended up in an existential crisis where I had no idea what I was doing with my life, and it broke me. I felt like I had no idea what I was doing any more and all the certainty I’d built into my life had been taken away and I had a massive mental breakdown. It started when I was 16 and then got to a crisis point just before my 17th birthday.

"I became very depressed and had a severe eating disorder, and I was barely going into sixth form. I took my AS-Levels and then basically dropped out. I just couldn’t get myself to do anything, and I was in a really terrible place."

Giselle later completed a Physics A-Level in her own time, giving her an additional qualification that would open the door to studying at university. She says being diagnosed with autism made a lot of things suddenly make sense in her life.

However, it was being introduced to an aerial dance class in 2019 that truly changed her life. Giselle has since won multiple national and international aerial dance competitions, become a professional instructor and also founded Keele University's Aerial Dance Society, which has now grown to more than 100 members.

She said: "When I started going to aerial dance I was really depressed, and the eating disorder was probably the worst it had been. Aerial meant that I went from being miserable all the time with nothing to enjoy, to loving this one thing, and so it became my obsession. Instead of thinking that I didn't want my body to look a certain way or that I had to get to a particular weight, I started to think more about what my body could do if I looked after it and trained instead.

"Aerial dance became my passion, and it has brought me so much joy, and helped change my mindset on how I feel about my body. It's truly changed my life, and other people have told me it has done similar things for them as well. When I got to Keele and discovered there wasn’t a society for aerial dance, I knew I had to set one up. Both of my grandparents also established societies during their time at Keele, so it was nice to follow in their footsteps."

Giselle will be starting her PhD studying dyslexia in computer interaction design at Keele in September, and hopes to one day own her own aerial dance studio.

She added: "The support I have received from the university has been incredible, from lecturers redesigning notes for me in fonts that I could read to them giving me as much time as I needed to ask questions – nothing was ever too much for them and I am very grateful for it.

"I didn’t know much about computer science, however, I was really surprised how much I enjoyed it, and it's what I’m focusing on in my PhD - looking at improving interaction design for dyslexics – how we interact with computers, which was also the focus of my dissertation. I’m particularly interested in this as I am severely dyslexic myself.  With the world becoming more and more digital, if we can improve the way we present text and the way we design everything from web pages to computer games, that will be hugely beneficial to dyslexics.

"When I have completed the PhD, I’ll see if there is more work I want to do in the area, otherwise I’ll probably pivot more down the maths teaching and coaching route. I’d like to take my PGCE and become a qualified maths teacher.

"With the aerial dance side of things, I’d like to start my own aerial dance studio after I've finished my PhD. I'll keep competing in competitions and I've judged a few now as well, and I'd love to introduce more people to it because it’s had such a big impact on my life."