Sophie Allardes, Media

Sophie Allardes is the first in her family to go to university and she has achieved her dream of making them proud as she graduates from RGU with an honours degree.

The 21-year-old collected her honours degree in Media at a ceremony at His Majesty’s Theatre on Wednesday, July 10 at 2.30pm.

Sophie, who lives in Dunphail which is near Forres, commuted for four hours a day for four years to attend college and university but said it has all been worth it to gain her degree.

“I’m the first one to go to university in my family so I wanted them to all be able to say at last that one of us has been to university. It makes my parents so proud to say it and now that I’m graduating, they are even more extremely proud,” she said.

Sophie added that university wasn’t just about making her family happy as she loves learning and described having the opportunity to study media further as an amazing gift and said it has been so incredible.

She commented: “After completing secondary school, I went to North East Scotland College (NESCol) to study Media and Communication for two years. I met one of my best friends called Kirsty whilst completing this course.

“I then moved onto the university for the final two years as a direct entry student through Degree Link. College was a great decision and so was deciding to continue onto university as some of the modules have been fascinating! I love media. I love history. And media and history are mostly combined throughout this course so it was wonderful to know I could learn all about the history of the media in film and television etc. It’s a great course.

“It’s lovely to see lecturers get so passionate during a lecture as it makes it sink in more.”

Sophie said that it’s not just a degree she has taken away from her time as a student as she has become so much more confident and has met such a good friend.

She continued: “When I was in Primary three, the teachers discovered I couldn’t read as I had been memorising the books instead, however I learned to read in no time and now I read one book a week and my Mum always says ‘from the little girl who couldn’t read’ so it is such a great feeling to be graduating and it’s lovely to think I’ve achieved an honours degree.”

Sophie would like to work in history, she has lately been researching her own family background in the whisky industry which has a lot of interesting stories so she would love the opportunity to do something in that industry.

“I’m so happy as at the end of the day, I’ve achieved my goal of making my family proud,” she concluded.