Bernie O’Reilly Hook had four children under the age of six when she went off to university.

Friends and family questioned her sanity. But she was 31 and had dreamed of becoming a pharmacist since she was a teenager.

“Everybody said it was physically impossible — you can’t go to university with four children,” said the now 55-year-old, a pharmacist in Bermuda’s various Phoenix Stores. “But I’d always had a great love for science and I wanted to become a pharmacist.”

She proposed university to her parents at 18 but they insisted she “get a job and earn some money”, she said.

Before she knew it she was working at a local bank and had a serious boyfriend.

“I gave up my dream of going to university,” she said. “We got married and had four children.”

The family had moved to Glasgow, Scotland by the time she was 31.

The University of Strathclyde accepted her into its science programme. Mrs O’Reilly Hook had the added stress of caring for her four children.

“You had to pass all your exams with 75 per cent or more before you could move on,” she said. “It was quite challenging for me because I’d not been in school since 18. But I did it. By then, my two eldest were six and four and in school. The baby, I would drop off at nursery, and the third child I would bring to the free nursery at the university. I would [get them all sorted] and sit at the lecture by 9am.”

And then, her husband accepted a job in Ireland.

“I stayed on with the children,” said Mrs O’Reilly Hook. “Somehow I managed to get through the year but there was one exam in maths that I didn’t quite meet the grade.”

She was able to later resit it — and passed with flying colours — but conceded she needed her husband’s support.

“I realised I couldn’t stay on alone with my children,” she said. “Trinity College, Dublin was the only university in Ireland at that time that [offered a degree in pharmacy]. It had 50 places and only one for mature students. That year they didn’t take on any mature students at all.”

She applied to Aston University in Birmingham however the school “wasn’t receptive” when she talked about transferring her course work.

“They felt [theirs] was a more prestigious university and weren’t prepared to take a mature student on.”

They “reluctantly” accepted her as a student in 1993 and agreed to defer her placement for a year as she was still living in Ireland.

“In the meantime, back in Ireland, I said just in case it doesn’t work out I’d better do something.”

She enrolled at Cork University, where she studied microbiology. To get to the school, she and her two-year-old son had to endure a 50-mile drive on country roads every day. The efforts paid off in 1995 when she earned her degree. Meanwhile, Aston University insisted it was time she began her studies there or give up her place.

“For the next four years I flew, every week, from Cork to Birmingham airports until I got my degree,” she said.

She held down three jobs to pay her way and then came a monkey wrench — she and her husband split up and he sold their home.

It meant an 80-mile drive at either end of her plane rides to and from Cork for Mrs O’Reilly Hook. She’d collect the children from her former husband’s home, drive the distance to her own and return them once the weekend was over.

At 39, she graduated with a degree in pharmacy from Aston University. By 2000, she was a fully qualified pharmacist and a member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland. She and her children celebrated with a trip to Disneyland Paris.

“It was the most amazing feeling,” she said. “It’d taken me seven years to get to where I wanted to be. It was phenomenal.”

She did it all with her children in mind, the pharmacist said.

“I wanted to be an example of what they can do if they put their mind to it. [Once I graduated], I had income, which made me independent and I was able to support my kids financially. It changed my life.

I gave them education, which gives them the opportunity to do anything they want with their lives.

“Over the next few years I was establishing myself in pharmacies. I worked 13-hour days, six days a week for four years, to put all my kids through college. My youngest son graduated in May.”

Her daughter Roisin Donnelly signed with Gersh Agency and is now an actress and a writer in New York; her son Ciaran Donnelly is an investment banker in London, England; daughter Sinead Donnelly is a radiographer in the West Midlands in the UK and has done postgraduate work in nuclear medicine, her son Nicholas Donnelly works for a wine emporium.

Mrs O’Reilly Hook married twice more — one marriage ended in divorce, the other left her a widow.

Just as she was wondering what to do next, she found an e-mail from the Phoenix Stores in her junk mail.

“I completely forgot I’d randomly sent my CV off to them [in response to an ad],” she said. “Here they were, a year later, asking if I was still interested in a job.”

She worried about the life-changing move but her children encouraged her to give it a shot.

She arrived in Bermuda in October 2011.

“My kids are all so proud of me that I’m living the life that I am,” said the newly wed.

She married Bermudian Clive Hook a year ago.

“I’m now having an absolutely wonderful time working in the Phoenix Stores. I’ve met the most amazing people, colleagues. We have staff from New Zealand, Ghana, Ireland, France, Poland, England, Wales and Scotland. It’s just phenomenal. And we all have a common interest in people’s health.”