About Us

The only thing I hated about school was the social part! The academic part… a piece of cake!. I was the shy person in my friend group, which dwindled from a group of six to just one person by year 10. Then she started making new friends. I hated the person I was when I was with them, laughing at jokes, but not contributing to any conversation. Recess and lunch became the bane of my existence. I couldn't take it anymore, so I would walk around the block during recess and go home for lunch. There was a Ghanian girl that had come to our school the year before. She was quiet but I would start spending recess with her but still go home at lunch.

College was a hoot! I had made a great friend who I could be my quirky self with. She even picked up my behaviours and sayings, a true friend. But by the time it came to applying for University, she had received a letter saying she had to go back to Zambia. I was distraught! She tried to appeal but she did indeed end up going back.

University, the beginning of the end?

I had made just one friend in university due to my severe social anxiety. On the inside I was a riot but outside I was an awkward, shy mess (and I can say shy now despite despising that word growing up!).

By the third year, I would miss many days of lectures, sleeping all day and staying up all night.

My world, once full of potential and academic promise, began to fracture under the weight of my undiagnosed depression and possibly Asperger's Syndrome. The illness didn’t come all at once, it was subtle, like the creeping of a shadow. I studied depression in my course but could barely recognise it in myself or at least, I didn’t want to admit to it.

I found myself slipping into a cycle of isolation. I’d lost friendships due to my knowledge that by the age of 25 I wouldn't be here. I even slept through an exam thinking, who cares, what use is a degree to a dead person?

One night, I spent literally ten hours crafting an email to my personal tutor trying to get out of doing a presentation. Like I said I thought I had Aspergers Syndrome and that this disability could get me out of doing it. Many coincidental events took place and I ended up in A&E. From that day my life was never the same.

I'd suffer from psychosis and delusions that to me made all the sense in the world and was a scary, magical experience, but when I was 'well' realised just how out of touch with reality I was. But this wouldn’t stop it happening in the future. I went to hospital seven times.

The medications I was prescribed were meant to control the symptoms, but they left me feeling numb, detached from the world, tired and restless at the same time, and I felt like my creativity vanished. Not to mention the weight gain that they would cause. So I didn't take them.

My first hospitalisation happened at age 22 during my third year of uni just before exams. But I still managed to pass that year. Now onto year four! By November, just months after starting, I had lost contact with reality once again for the second time. I had emailed part of my dissertation to my tutor, something about the meaning of life, completely irrelevant to the topic, though he would call me 'erudite' for what I had written. He did suggest for me to take some time off. I interrupted my course for a year which turned into two years as I was hospitalised for the third time.

I would get two dogs within the space of a year and return to university but the isolation got to me, not to mention I had fallen out with my mum. I would try to revise but all I wanted to do was sleep. I lost contact with reality once again and after the fourth hospitalisation I dropped out of my Masters of Pharmacy course leaving with a three year Bachelor's degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences.

So now I had lost my vocation; what would I do with my life now?

The Turning Point

I would go to hospital two more times by 2016, when I volunteered as a maths tutor to disadvantaged students. I felt a sense of pride as things clicked within the students I taught.

I'm an avid learner having completed countless courses from 2012-2025. When I'm learning, things just fall into place and I feel a sense of home. I love to give this feeling to others.

 I've been an entrepreneur at heart since 2012, wanting to start my own business. The first from 2012-2015 was an affiliate business selling floral, feminine fashion. That didn't work. The second from 2015-2017 was a creative community based on Dance, wRiting, Amateur Performance, Music and Acting (DRAMA!), that didn't work either. My third from 2017 was a mental health community; did that work out? No!

From Struggles to Strength

The path wasn’t easy. There were many, many days when I couldn’t get out of bed, at times feeling a sense of déjà vu to my psychotic days.

It took years to find the right medication that would offer some control over my psychosis but after my seventh and last hospitalisation in 2017, I found it.

A New Beginning

I haven't been to hospital in coming to eight years. Those few weeks of volunteering, I realised that tutoring didn’t just help me, naturally it helped the students too.

I started seeing my illness not as a curse, but as something that had taught me resilience, patience, and empathy, qualities that make me a better teacher.

In 2022, I started creating materials that would aid in KS3/ GCSE Science & Maths students' revision.

In 2023, I began dreaming of something bigger. I wanted to create a space where students, no matter their background or academic ability, could receive the help they needed in a safe, understanding environment. But more than that, I wanted to build something that could offer opportunities to others who, like me, struggled with mental health or other challenges but had academic skills to share.

The Birth of 'To the Tutors'

In January 2024, Caroline founded her own tutoring business, "Online Class Tuition" later renamed to "My Education Centre", later renamed to “To the Tutors.”

More than just a business, “To the Tutors” is a symbol of resilience, a place where people can learn from others who understand struggle. It offers me not just a career, but a place where I can reconnect with the world. I am turning my greatest challenge into my greatest gift, helping countless students find their own path, one lesson at a time.

To the Tutors is dedicated to students with SEMH difficulties. The last coming to 20 years of my life have been tumultuous to say the least, and I can say I have a true understanding of just how much mental health can affect education. I want to catch students with SEMH early and steer them onto the right path so they can achieve all the success their hearts desire.