Late career graduates seize their day

WHEN VCE results and ATAR scores come out implacable hours are spent dissecting and discussing top scores of both students and schools while universities actively pursue high scoring achievers with offers of scholarships and words of praise.

However annual university intake does not consist of only 17 and 18-year olds fresh from Year 12 or their ubiquitous gap year.

Forty per cent of enrolments at Australian universities are mature age students – 25 years of age and older.

Blake Paget grew up in a household where a university education was not an expectation or encouraged.

He left high school before completing Year 12.

Mr Paget joined the navy aged 25 and was discharged six years later a qualified electronics technician. He had always considered university unreachable.

However, with a seven-month old baby, a mortgage, a need for stability and the availability of mid-year entry to a Bachelor of Commerce degree, Mr Paget found himself enrolling at Ballarat’s Federation University.

Part of the deal was his wife went back to work and he took on the role of a student and house husband who looked after their daughter during the day, attended class and nightly studied on campus.

“Although I wasn’t holding down a traditional job earning a salary, I considered my grades were my wages, this is what pushed me,” Mr Paget said.

In the two and half years it took him to complete his degree, studying 24 units, he achieved 18 high distinctions and 6 distinctions.

“That was my currency, that was my reward.”

Mr Paget is now an auditor with a second-tier accounting firm in Ballarat.

“Accounting really speaks to me, this is my bag, I’ve never loved a job more than I love this one.”

Mr Paget enthusiastically admits that university was a life changer for him.

“I am not the person now that I was before I started university, for the first time in my life I can say I’m educated and I know how to think.”

Becoming familiar with the different spheres within accounting, both during his degree and for the past two years as an auditor, has enabled him to recognise opportunities and to plan his career path.

Anni Jennings, a mature aged student then aged 29, graduated with a Bachelor of Welfare from Fed Uni in 2001.

Ms Jennings returned to Fed Uni in 2015 to undertake a Master of Social Work after realising in her field as a community service counsellor her welfare degree was obsolete and needed strengthening.

At the time, as a 43-year-old single working mum, Ms Jennings said, “I am someone who likes a challenge and likes to learn, I felt like I wanted to do something then.

“It was very difficult going back to do a Masters, as the level is really difficult but rewarding.”

She vacillated between wanting to quit and persevering with the degree.

“One day I would think what have I got myself into, I can’t do this and then [the next day thinking] this is a really good challenge, I am learning a lot about myself,” Ms Jennings said.

“I struggle to adapt to new things as I have dyslexia which gives me a whole other level of difficulty. Now I have graduated my post graduate degree will give me more opportunity to advance in my career.”

She considers her invitation to join the Golden Key International Honour Society one of her highest accomplishments.

Membership is by invitation only and applies to the top 15 per cent of graduate students based solely on academic achievements.

Bonnie Palmer had worked in supermarkets for ever and hated it.

“It was a job I’d had since I was 15, not challenging or rewarding and I realised I didn’t want to do it for the next 30 years of my life,” she said.

At 32 years of age with a 7-month-old son, Mrs Palmer commenced a Bachelor of Commerce degree at Fed Uni part time, setting the bar high, juggling family and study.

“Get the tea done and get the kids into bed as quickly as I can because I have an assignment due at midnight,” she said.

Apart from getting out of retail she chose university to make a better life for herself and her kids.

“I came from a family where we have never had professional jobs and I wanted to set an example for my kids, to show them that I could break that cycle.”

Completing her degree had a profound impact on not just Mrs Palmers professional career but also her personal development.

“It’s not only building a professional career it’s the confidence it has given me in life. I feel more confident in my ability to take on things, confident to put myself out there which I wasn’t before.

“I was unafraid to ask questions, it helped build better relationships with my lecturers, which made me realise coming to university at the age I did was perfect for me.”

Mrs Palmer was the graduate speaker at her graduation ceremony.

“I was very hesitant when I was asked to make the speech as I had never spoken in public before however I decided I am just going to accept that it was the last challenge that university was going to throw me.”

She wrote the speech, practiced it over and over again, stepped up to the podium and delivered it, very proud to have achieved something she had avoided her whole life.