26/01/10 Zoah Hedges - Stocks comes from a travelling community; based in Suffolk during the winter, they spent the summer months on the road, going from fair to fair. As a result, she missed every summer term of school growing up - but she still made it
The first traveller to win a place at Cambridge University after growing up working on a fair has amazed her family by gaining a first-class degree in her final exams.
Zoah Hedges-Stocks - who was born into a family of travelling showmen who have been working the fairgrounds since the early 1800s - is graduating from the prestigious university this week.
The 23-year-old, who never completed a full school year and grew up in a caravan, spent every summer term working on her mum’s food van selling burgers, toffee apples and candy floss to fairgoers.
She would also work at Cambridge University’s prestigious May Balls and dream of one day studying there.
Now amazingly she will be graduating from the world-renowned university on Saturday with a first in History, after studying for three years at Murray Edwards College.
She said: “I still can’t quite believe I have got a first, it has been a lot of hours and a lot of essays.
“I’ve never experienced any snobbery about my background at Cambridge and everyone has been really welcoming.
“It has been the most amazing four years, hard work, but great fun.”
Zoah is the only member of her community to have gone to university and just a few generations ago her ancestors couldn’t even read or write.
During her time at the university she was chosen twice to be editor of the student newspaper The Cambridge Student.
But at the beginning of her third year in January 2012 she started suffering from chronic fatigue and had to go home and recover.
“I was really ill and at the time I wondered if I would manage to go back, but thankfully I did,” said Zoah.
She returned to complete her final year in September 2012 and excelled in her course.
Her mum, Bernice and her grandparents will be at her graduation ceremony on Saturday.
Bernice said: “I am so proud of Zoah and just couldn’t take it in when she said she had a First. I cried for two days.
“No one else in our community has ever been to university and I think she has done amazingly well.
“I’ve got my outfit ready for Saturday, it will be so exciting, I know I’ll be in tears.”
Zoah’s mother’s family have been travelling showmen since 1821 and when they are not on the road they live on a plot in Suffolk.
Zoah lived in a caravan until she was 14 when her mum, Bernice, bought a trailer.
She went to her local school but missed the summer term each year to travel with her family to fairs.
She helped her mum run the burger van, while her uncle had a set of dodgems, inherited from her grandfather.
She said: “The reason I wanted to go to Cambridge University in the first place was because it was the only university I knew.”
“When I went to the open day at Cambridge with my mum I didn’t even know what a university would look like.”
Although Zoah missed a lot of school she excelled academically, passing her GCSE’s and getting top grades at A-level.
She was then accepted onto a summer school at Eton for potential Oxbridge students, which made her more determined than ever to get to Cambridge.
Zoah was given a straight-As offer and got two A’s, but then, after a teacher had to leave suddenly, she missed out on an A in Philosophy and Ethics by just 11 marks.
“It was the most nerve-racking 24 hours of my life. When they called to say I got a place I cried.”
Zoah has been offered a place on the Press Association journalism training course, which starts in January.
