"I was going to be a maths teacher. In London I became camp leader to 21 students."

The hardest part was walking through the door

Everyone has something they keep putting off; mine was English. It came up in high school and again at university, and every time I said "not this term, later." Then the placement exams at university turned it into something I could no longer postpone.

While looking at language schools, my biggest fear was walking into a classroom and finding myself behind everyone else. I said exactly that on my first visit to Power Akademi. They put me through a placement test and measured precisely where I stood before I said another word. That day I learned the first real lesson: it isn't a low level that stops you — it's not knowing your level.

I was still hesitant when I signed up for the summer school. "What can one summer change?" I thought. But being handed an actual plan — knowing what I would study each week and when we would measure it — cleared that hesitation in the first week.

English wasn't a subject for me. It was a fear I had been postponing for years.

A rhythm set down in the middle of a holiday

The summer school was a structure planted in the middle of my holiday. Certain days, certain hours, with homework, vocabulary work and listening in between. What I liked most was how small the classes were: in a crowded room you can hide at the back — there, you can't. Every lesson forces you to speak at least a few times.

The first three weeks were hard. By the time I had built a sentence in my head, the topic had moved on. What put me at ease was that the teachers didn't cut me off mid-sentence to correct me; I finished first, the correction came after. That small detail is what gave me the courage to speak.

That summer I also saw that grammar and speaking don't advance separately — they advance inside each other. I had to use a structure in conversation the same week I learned it. Patterns I had memorised for years without ever using started coming out of my mouth on their own.

My English wasn't perfect at the end of the summer. But when a tourist asked for directions, I no longer froze — which was exactly what I had wanted from that summer.

Carrying two goals at the same time

I arrived at the summer school carrying a second weight: the placement exams at university. I had to study general English and prepare for an exam format at the same time, and at first the two looked like they would cancel each other out.

They didn't. Exam preparation sat on top of the foundation I had built over the summer. Most of what made the exam hard wasn't missing knowledge — it was technique and timing: the order in which you read a question, eliminating options, going into a reading passage knowing what you're looking for. Nobody had told me before that those are separate skills you can train.

That's why mock exams mattered. After every mock we went through my mistakes one by one: is this a knowledge error, an attention error, or time pressure? Three different problems, three different fixes. For the first time, I walked into an exam knowing what I was going to do.

When the placement exams were behind me, one sentence stayed in my head: "So it can be done."

The thin line between staying silent and speaking

Here is the strangest thing about learning English: most of the progress is invisible. You know the word, you know the structure — but looking a person in the eye and producing the first sentence is a completely different muscle.

For me that line was crossed in the speaking classes. You're given a topic and you have to talk with no preparation. The first few times I ran out after three sentences. A few weeks later I caught myself talking without thinking about it — making mistakes, but not stopping.

Looking back, the reason I could hold a group of 21 together in London was built in those lessons. What I really learned there wasn't English; it was how not to go quiet when I get stuck.

If you wait until you can speak without mistakes, you'll never speak.

"Would you come to London as a leader?"

When I heard about Power Akademi's London Summer School project in 2026, my first thought was to join as a participant. When they offered me the camp leader role, my first reaction was hesitation: 21 students, abroad, in English, on my shoulders.

Then I realised the offer wasn't a favour. I had been at the same school for three years; they knew my level and they knew how I talk to a student. Studying maths education wasn't a coincidence either — managing a group, staying patient, explaining something one more time to whoever didn't get it, that was already my field.

The preparation before we flew taught me as much as the trip itself. Programme plans, student lists, meetings with parents, travel and accommodation arrangements — that's when I first saw how much work runs in the background to get a group abroad. I packed my own suitcase last.

Twenty-one students, one city, one responsibility

The day we landed in London, everything became real at once. I wasn't a student studying anymore; I was the camp leader who got up first, went to bed last and counted heads constantly. Twenty-one people. I learned to count to twenty-one before every move, and the habit is still with me.

The days settled into a pattern: breakfast and roll call, the day's programme, an evening gathering and a briefing for tomorrow. In every gap between them, someone had a question, someone had lost something, someone was missing home. That's where I used my English most — not in a classroom but in real life: at a ticket office, in a restaurant, giving directions, explaining a problem to a member of staff.

The first thing I taught the students in London wasn't English; it was how to cross the road. On day one I pointed at the "LOOK RIGHT" painted on the tarmac: in a city where the traffic comes from the other side, the reflex you have trusted for years betrays you. A foreign language is a little like that — you let go of what you thought you knew and learn to look again.

Standing in front of Big Ben on Westminster Bridge is where the story tied itself together for me. The person who couldn't give a tourist directions three years earlier was giving directions to 21 students that day. The lanyard around my neck wasn't an accessory; it meant I was responsible.

Watching the students stop treating English as a subject and start using it was something else entirely. One ordering for herself, another giving a tourist directions — as a future teacher, that was the best feedback I could get.

The person who couldn't ask for directions three years earlier was giving directions to 21 people.

What I thought about on the flight home

On the flight home I wasn't thinking about London. I was thinking about that first day in 2023 — me, walking through the door, thinking "I've probably left this too late."

I'm going to be a maths teacher. But now I have one more thing to tell my students: at the point where you think something has stopped you, you have usually just not started yet. I started English late, and that late start took me to London.

To anyone thinking about starting, I have one thing to say: a low level isn't the problem — not knowing your level is. Go, get measured, begin. The rest is a matter of planning.