Hi there, I’m Lily.
I know! You’re here to learn about maths, not about me. But before we start this journey together, I think that it is important to to give you some backstory below first…
I have always loved maths. When I was younger, I am not embarrassed to say that when I got home from school, I would always do extra maths problems. I even used to spend my pocket money on exercise books.
In saying this, there was one year at school that I remember really hating maths – Year 8. Well, I don’t think I hated maths itself, but I just didn’t get along with the teacher – this can be an issue for a lot of people. In hindsight, I was probably a nightmare to deal with and never paid any attention! I ended up getting a Level 3 in my end of year assessment, which was a lower grade than I’d got when I was in Year 4 – not ideal. The following year I had a new teacher, who I still think very fondly of. She really believed in me and that helped me to fall back in love with the subject. At the end of the year, I got a Level 9.
I ended up moving to a new school at the start of my GCSE’s. On my first day there, I had to sit a test which decided the set I would be in. I was told that I should have been put in the top set, but there was no space for me, so they put me in the second set. I was pretty upset about this at first, because the top set got to do an extra GCSE, but my teacher (thank you Mr Street) was a massive football fan and always had a great story to tell – he was a legend!
When it came around to choosing my A-levels, I wanted to do maths, but wasn’t sure whether I would be good enough. This was until parents evening, where Mr Street told my mum that I should take both maths and further maths A-levels. I still wasn’t confident about this, but changed my choices based on his advice.
A-levels began and I was still unsure whether I’d do very well at further maths. I was sat next to the cleverest guy in my year, who I was very intimidated by and didn’t say a word to for weeks – shout out to Gabe, who turned out to be a great friend to me. It wasn’t until after discussing my first terms exam results that I realised maybe I could do this after all. My A-level teacher, Dr Kirby was (and still is) amazing and I’m not sure I would have gone on to study maths at University College London without his support.
When I was doing my own GCSE’s I started helping out and tutoring students in younger years. This is something I have carried on throughout my degree and now alongside my day job as a Business Intelligence Analyst. The feedback I’ve always been given is that I’m approachable and that kids can relate to me. The idea then came to me, to set up Maths with Lily, an online resource providing tips, tutorials and tuition for as many students as possible. I want to use this to widen my reach by helping more people with their maths education while hopefully inspiring confidence, in the way that others did with me.
Credentials
GCSE Mathematics (A*)
A-level Mathematics (A*)
A-level Further Mathematics (A*)
BSc Mathematics (2:1)
Drop me a line!
Please send me a message, I’d love to see if I can be of help.