THEY graduated 30 years ago as nurses, but their lives have taken them in as diverse directions as the courtroom and American academia.

Tonight, the graduates from the class of 1988 at what was then known as Glasgow Polytechnic - now Glasgow Caledonian University - will be reunited to pass the lessons of their own career to today’s nursing students.

For many, it is the first time they will have seen each other since completing their nursing degrees three decades ago at a time when university-educated nurses were still considered an oddity. It is also believed to be the largest class reunion organised at the university since it launched first the four-year BA (Hons) course in 1977.

Catherine Stock, from Bridge of Weir in Renfrewshire, has undergone one of the most radical career trajectories since her first job as a general surgical nurse at the now-demolished Western Infirmary in Glasgow. After periods in Nottingham and as a ward Sister in the neurosurgery department at the old Southern General in Glasgow, she left the NHS in 2000 for a new career as a barrister.

“I was able to do a conversion law degree in a year - which was hell - and then I went to Bar School, and then I ended up obtaining Pupillage,” said Ms Stock, now 52. “It’s really difficult to get pupillage - only something like 30% of people get it - but I ended up in a large criminal chambers so I did criminal prosecution and defence for about 10 years. Then in the last four-five years I’ve diversified a little bit into mainly defending healthcare professionals before their regulator.”

The class of 1988 had around 20 graduates. Also among them was Jane Houston, whose subsequent career in midwifery has seen her deliver thousands of babies not only in Scotland but in Zimbabwe, New Zealand, North America and Haiti.

Originally from Jordanhill in Glasgow, Dr Houston’s first job was as a staff nurse in ward 8C at Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow before going on to study midwifery at the city’s Eastern College. With a shortage of midwife jobs available in Scotland in when she completed her training 1992, she headed first to Zimbabwe and then New Zealand, where she went on to become the lead midwife for labour and delivery at Wellington Hospital.

In 1996 she moved to Gainsville, Florida where - due to a bizarre historical legacy - she had to revert from midwifery back to nursing.

“I didn’t realise that midwives really are not very common in the United States,” said Dr Houston. “Only about 15% of births are with a midwife. Midwifery was made illegal about 100 years ago. Doctors took over all the births because they said the standards were so low that midwives shouldn’t exist, so we’re still recovering from that.”

Although the first nursing degree in Scotland launched at Edinburgh University in 1960, a university education did not become a requirement for another 50 years and was still unusual in 1988.