I left school as an abject academic failure and have spent the last 40 years living with the consequences of that situation.  My post-school life is marked by frustration and dissatisfaction, early jobs consisted of limited career and life choices with a plethora of unfulfilling short term employment positions.

A stint in the armed forces provided the opportunity obtain GCSE and O Level qualifications and in 1994 having successfully met the entrance criteria I became a member of Mensa.  However, my previous academic failings continued to haunt me and so in 2000 I decide to leave the armed forces and set out into a career in IT, where I remain to this day.

Mensa membership proved to be a seminal point in my journey to reverse my previous academic failings and shortly afterwards I embarked upon a series of professional, graduate and post graduate qualifications that continues to this day.

If you suffer a failed education that’s not something you recover from in a couple of years; some studies have put the impact at around 30 years, but I don’t think you ever recover and so you live the damaging output of that situation daily for years upon end.  The fact that so many are capable of so much more simply rubs salt into an already open wound.

I am very pleased to work in a voluntary capacity as a trustee for The Potential Trust to help further their aims to provide advocacy and support for high ability individuals in their journey to discover and understand their capabilities and place in the world.

Lee Collins