Written by Emma Hayes
It was coming up to the end of my high school years and I, like most of my cohort, were feeling the pressure to enrol in university. My last two years of high school were a bit of a blur – I had low attendance, minimal engagement and poor grades. I ended up enrolling in a nursing degree at a campus where I didn’t make any friends and lacked enthusiasm for. I felt overwhelmed, uninspired and constantly behind – leading me to withdraw from the course with a $10k debt and a bad taste in my mouth.
I spent the next few years studying a Cert III in Horticulture, supported as a traineeship by my local council. I fell in love with TAFE – how intimate the classes were, how the teachers really took the time to understand everyone’s individual learning style and how practical it was. This was the perfect ‘foot in door’ to the environmental sector and really helped shape ideas on future career paths and what I wanted to pursue academically.
A few more years and I ended up moving to Wollongong and working as a bush regenerator for an environmental restoration company. A few of my colleagues had mentioned their academic journey and recommended Charles Sturt to me, if I wanted to pursue a long-term career in soil science, climate studies and more broadly environmental management. I got to work researching degrees, diplomas and universities.
So that is my very brief background on how I got to where I am now. I’ve currently only completed two units (SCI101 and GEO164) and I can confidently say (to my great surprise) that I have had a change of tune. I’m actually excited to get home from working in the bush, walk the dog, and sit down in my study space to work on a report or an essay for a unit, (nerd alert). Never thought I’d be saying that out loud!
Since my fist ‘failure’ at university, I’ve strongly believed that university just wasn’t for me. Whenever the topic of careers and academic backgrounds came up in conversation, I’d share the same sentiment: I don’t fit the mould of a university student, and I’ve been out of the game too long now to start from scratch. The prospect of starting a diploma or a degree at the age of 25 whilst my best friend was already a junior doctor seemed to legitimise the sense of failure I’d felt for a long time.
But with the encouragement from my colleagues in the environmental community, I dove in mid-year 2025. Orientation and my first units were equal parts exciting and terrifying – it still is most days. But feeling study stress, (mostly), is because I really do care about what I’m studying and that’s what I remind myself when I feel overwhelmed by course content, assessments or exams. Actively engaging with online lectures and meeting my fellow peers of all ages, backgrounds and career trajectories, has also helped ease my anxieties of being ‘too late to the party’ to go to university.
Charlie blog is a SSAF funded initiative.
