A total of 160 very special students will be honoured at an awards ceremony tonight. Huddersfield Technical College is staging the event, Celebrating Student Success, at the Lawrence Batley Theatre. JENNY PARKIN talked to two of the winners.
AISHA Ventura suffers medical conditions that often cause her intense pain and exhaustion.
The 27-year-old from Milnsbridge has rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia.
Yet she's working her way towards a City and Guilds qualification in fashion.
The former Honley High School pupil says: "I've always been into fashion and clothes. I had my first sewing machine when I was 10.
"When I left school I worked in fashion shops in Leeds. But I found I just couldn't stand for eight or nine hours a day, so I had to give up."
Aisha, who lives with partner Dax Hallas, a hairdresser, first started having problems with aches and pains and swelling in her hands and feet at the age of 10.
But it wasn't until she was 15 that she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia, which makes her tired and low in energy.
Aisha says: "A lot of people don't know much about arthritis and think it's something that older people get.
"It's hard, because people think I look all right, although my hands are a bit of a giveaway."
Aisha spent a year out of work, ill and at a very low ebb, before she turned to the Tech.
"You feel brain dead if you spend too much time at home," she says.
Now she's in the second year of a three-year course. "It's three days a week," says Aisha, who likes to wear the clothes she creates. "It's just right. I can rest on the other days of the week."
Her tutor is Linda Savage and the college has been helpful and flexible from the start, making sure Aisha has the higher chair she needs to support her spine and a modified sewing machine.
Aisha says: "A lot of sewing is handwork, but I just go at my own pace. I can sit and watch TV and sew on beads. It suits me."
