September 2019: Elizabeth Cullen – Chemistry Made Clear
I cannot remember a time when I haven’t been curious. One of my earliest memories is from when I was three years old and my mother was in the telephone kiosk (most people didn’t have ‘phones in the house and mobiles didn’t exist) pretending to ‘phone the primary school to ask if I could go to school now instead of waiting until I was five years old. (There were no nursery schools then.) When I was not much older, I apparently dismantled my doll’s pram to find out how it worked!
My first science lesson in secondary school inspired my interest in chemistry. We were given bottles of various chemical solutions and the instructions were to mix some of these in test tubes and note down any observations. I was fascinated to see that mixing solutions resulted in bright yellow, white, pale blue, brown solids forming in the test tubes (sometimes more than one if we added an extra solution) and also sometimes lots of bubbles as a gas was produced. From that lesson I knew that I wanted to study chemistry.
After completing my honours degree in Chemistry at the University of St Andrews, I went on to train as a chemistry teacher at Aberdeen College of Education (now part of Aberdeen University). I then had a teaching career spanning almost 29 years in Fife including nearly 15 years as Principal Teacher of Chemistry. In 2012 I accepted a redundancy offer (Councils want Principal Teachers of Curriculum in charge of several subjects instead of one) and had to consider what to do next.
I did not want to waste my experience and enthusiasm for teaching chemistry so I decided to set up my own business tutoring chemistry on a one to one basis. I called my business Chemistry Made Clear as I thought it described exactly the service I was offering. I am now in my 8th year of business and thoroughly enjoying being able to do what I love to do. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing students growing in confidence and the belief that they can succeed.
