Portsmouth Business School
'I became a bus driver: How one student paid her university fees
Tue, Jul 20, 2010
Louisa Burton saw an advert for drivers on the back of a bus and thought it would be the perfect way to spend her summer months saving invaluable funds to help pay for university.
The Accounting and Business student completed the bus driver training in Inverness during her summer holidays before starting university, and at the age of 18 she became the youngest bus driver in Scotland.
Louisa said: “I saw this advert saying ‘Are you 18? Can you drive?’ and I thought ‘yes and yes!’ I really like being busy and I thought this would be a good way of earning some money while doing something completely unique – most of my friends were going travelling or working in restaurants but I thought it would be fun to do something different.
“The summer was a huge success; I really enjoyed the bus driving and decided that it’d be silly not to continue with it once I’d started university.”
Louisa travelled down to Portsmouth two weeks before her course was due to start so she could learn the local bus routes. She did five shifts a week, three from 3.00pm until midnight and then two ‘Guildhall shifts’ where she worked from midnight until 4.00am collecting her fellow students from local pubs and nightclubs.
“The Guildhall shift was always good fun - as you can imagine everyone was usually in quite high spirits but I had two bouncers on the bus and never had any trouble.”
The 22-year-old finished her last bus-driving shift before entering her final year as she decided to focus on getting work experience relevant to her future career.
“I was studying Accounting and Business and was keen to get some job related experience under my belt before hitting the world-of-work. I worked in the finance department for the Highland Council during my summer break while back in Scotland and then in my final year at university got quite heavily involved with work for local charities,” she said.
Louisa worked as an IT Centre Manager for Age Concern and as an advisor for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau. She also designed and set-up a new accounting system for the Portsmouth Autism Support Network (PASN), a local charity supporting the families of autistic children.
Louisa has just started work as a trainee accountant back home in Inverness so doesn’t think she’ll be driving a bus again for a while.
“I’ve been accepted on to a graduate training scheme with Johnston Carmichael Chartered Accountants so expect to be pretty busy over the next few years. I’ll miss the bus driving though; it was a fantastic career to have whilst studying.”