We had the pleasure of catching up with alumna Elizabeth McVeigh, who attended Norwich High School for Girls from 1960 to 1971. Liz’s journey post-Norwich High is a testament to embracing opportunities and pursuing passions, from studying physical geography to a fulfilling career in entomology and even competing in the Olympics!

It was great! I felt there was no external pressure from boys to avoid certain subjects. I understood that we had a greater proportion of students studying sciences than girls at co-ed schools, though I never checked those statistics myself. Plus, there were no distractions from studies!

I particularly enjoyed geography, but honestly, I enjoyed most of the subjects on offer. Most of the staff were really good at engaging you, even if it wasn’t your specialist subject.

I didn’t do many after-school activities because the bus service to my home in Caistor St. Edmund was a bit limited. So my main interests, like horse riding and Young Farmers, were more related to what was available outside school. Having said that, I did both with friends from Norwich High, so the school was important in that respect.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Sixth Form field trips, both for geography and biology, to Field Study Centres in Suffolk and Pembrokeshire. I also appreciated occasionally (when they were desperate!) being part of the lacrosse team visits to other schools and seeing life around Norfolk and Suffolk. I recall all our rivals being at boarding schools.

The field trips definitely fed my desire to pursue a degree in physical geography and also to take up a Sixth Form holiday job with the Coastal Ecology Research Station on Colney Lane. This was facilitated by a near neighbour in Stoke Holy Cross who worked there and understood my interests. I helped with providing ground truth for an aerial survey of the southern English coastline over the summer of 1970 that included a visit to the University of Bristol and was important in the selection of Bristol for my degree. Luck or fate?

Luck and fate continued to play a very important part. While studying for my BSc Hons in Physical Geography from Bristol (1971–74), we had an external lecture from a member of the locust biogeography team at the Centre for Overseas Pest Research (COPR, at that time part of the Ministry of Overseas Development) based in Kensington, London, and I was fascinated.

Following graduation, I spent a year doing odd jobs and travelling, and then went to the UEA careers department and asked if they could help with job opportunities – they pointed me in the direction of a newly advertised vacancy for a locust biogeographer at COPR! Remember, this was way before the internet helped with job vacancies, and it was purely that the people at UEA were linked into all the right places, at least as far as I was concerned! With great delight, I passed the interview and joined COPR in November 1975 and left 37 years later upon retirement in 2012. By that time, we had undergone a number of name changes, were no longer Civil Servants, and had left Kensington for Chatham where the Natural Resources Institute was, and remains, part of the University of Greenwich.

During my early time with this organisation, I gained an MSc in Applied Entomology from Imperial College at Silwood Park and extended my remit beyond locusts to other insect crop pests. I enjoyed a most fulfilling career, travelling widely and being involved in so many fascinating projects, increasingly in the role of administrative/management support, covering a wide range of topics. I also met the lovely young man who was to become my husband and who pointed me in the direction of the Thames.

This provides another glimpse of the luck/fate I have experienced, as I don’t think any of my contemporaries at school would have anticipated me competing at an Olympic Games. And I was also very fortunate that my colleagues at COPR were so supportive, including allowing me the odd 10-minute lunchtime snooze at my desk, as all that training often required. That the High School now offers rowing, as well as other sports that do not involve hitting, throwing, and catching, is a great bonus to folk like me. And the good news about discovering rowing is that I am still able to participate in my 70s, regularly rowing with those in their 80s, and, now equipped with a new hip, racing with others of any age, from around the country, who are up for it! Although getting an older average age into the crew definitely helps with winning races, we have been known to win in the past couple of years against the youngest of adult crews!

Making life-long friends.