I was certainly not the model student, I didn’t do homework, skipped a lot of school, didn’t hand in assessment and was pretty much constantly in trouble. Needless to say I didn’t do too well in most of my subjects, with the exceptions of science and history. I guess I just didn’t take stuff seriously back then. It all caught up with me eventually when I was unable to enrol in the subjects that I wished to do in senior school, and because of this I opted to commence fulltime work.

After spending a year working, I enrolled at the Hervey Bay Senior College, in a fulltime music course, which exposed me to a wide variety of different people, and gave me a chance to indulge myself in something that I truly love. When the course was over, I had few options open to me, so I returned to schooling in 2001, and as I was turning 18 at the time, the school let me enrol in the subjects of my choosing. I enrolled in the science and maths courses, as well as ancient history and did well enough to be accepted into the Advanced Studies Program at UQ. Initially I was planning on studying developmental biology, and took some mathematics courses for interest’s sake, but I enjoyed them so much that from my second semester onwards I am majoring in mathematics.

Maths can be challenging at times, but it is highly rewarding, and the ASP has allowed me to experience research first hand. This has hands down been the most enjoyable aspect of my degree so far, and I hope to pursue research activities in the future. While the path I took to get to where I am today wasn’t exactly well structured, it was a lot of fun getting here, and even though I’m being more productive these days, I find I still don’t have to take things too seriously – just seriously enough.