Paula Ayres of Oxford Brookes's winning quiz team

I’ve never done a skydive as I’m terrified of flying and of heights but I’d imagine that looking out of the plane before jumping is a bit like how it felt to be sitting in the University Challenge studio ready to begin filming.

I’ve been on a couple of TV quizzes so when all students at Brookes got an email back in the autumn about University Challenge auditions organised by Brookes computing lecturer Ian Bayley, I thought I’d give it a go.

The audition consisted of an excruciatingly difficult 100-question test and as one of the top four scorers I was in the team alongside Steven Mayes, David Ballard, Simon Joyce and Matt Boxell as our reserve team member.

We were then entered into competitions against other universities and, to be frank, we were like rabbits caught in headlights at our first competition.

We were up against a team which included one of last year’s finalists as well as two members of this year’s Magdalen College team and we were beaten 600-15 — not the best start to our quizzing career!

I found the level of knowledge, the lack of other women, and the experience of the other teams very intimidating, and we actually came last, which didn’t help our confidence levels at all.

Nevertheless, we were invited to audition for the show, and found out that there were over 130 teams chasing 28 places, not great odds so we decided to do our best and enjoy the experience.

Two Oxford colleges auditioned with us, and we all had to do another seemingly impossible test and chat with the production team who tried to make us feel comfortable, even though the whole thing was being filmed for a documentary.

We continued our weekly practice sessions and a few weeks later we were asked to get together so the documentary crew could film our reaction to finding out whether we had got on the show or not.

To our surprise, we were offered a place on the programme, for just the third time in Oxford Brookes’s history, and the first time since the Brookes team narrowly missed out on a semi-final place in 2011.

It took a while for the shock to sink in and we ramped up our team practice sessions to four hours a week.

Lives were put on hold, practising buzzer techniques and learning obscure facts became part of our daily routines, and more competitions were entered.

By the time the first filming dates in Manchester came round we had already been on camera several times but this didn’t help our nerves, especially as we still hadn’t won a single quiz match!

Despite the wonderful production team, including the researchers, crew, make-up etc, doing their best to calm us, nothing had prepared me for sitting in the chair opposite Jeremy Paxman and hearing the iconic theme music start up.

The pressure of representing my university on such a popular programme felt immense, not only that, but we were facing Jesus College, Oxford, in our first match.

A combination of a little bit of luck, and a lot of training meant we won our first match, which felt incredible, I was so proud of the team who’d all worked so hard, and had so much fun in the process.

With the first match over, I could reflect on the experience and prepare for the second round in a few weeks.

I knew it would be equally nerve wracking but I was finally starting to believe we could do well.

Of course I can’t give any hints of how we got on but we will be able to relive the nerves and excitement when it’s on TV in the autumn.