By Jayde Down.
My dad served in Iraq, left my mum who was newly pregnant with me and came back two weeks before I was born. Growing up my younger brother and I spent a lot of time at our grandparent’s house while Mum drove Dad down to his ‘head doctor’. That being said mental health issues weren’t shied away from in our house, well they really can’t be when your dad has PTSD.
I’ve had a few people who have inspired me to become a teacher; an awesome history teacher, my Nonna who was a teacher, and a really great maths tutor in my last year of high school. Most out of the blue though, was my dad becoming an inspiration for the teaching field. In recent years, my dad has been invited to our local primary school to talk to the grade 5-6 boys about life. He doesn’t really tell us much about what they talk about in their sessions we just know that it can range from talking about suicide to talking about how to better get along with your mum.
From this, I decided to study a Bachelor of Education (P-12) at Victoria University, majoring in History and minoring in Student Welfare. My scholarship from Bravery Trust through AVCAT has helped me so much this first year of uni and I am eternally grateful that they are helping me out for uni. I travel to Footscray for my on-campus learning, Bravery Trust has made it so much easier to ensure I have enough money on my myki, or when the trains are down, enough money for fuel to get down to Melbourne when I drive. This scholarship also allows me to start paying my uni fees upfront rather than accruing a HECS debt so that I can start my teaching career debt-free.
My scholarship from Bravery Trust through AVCAT has helped me so much this first year of uni and I am eternally grateful.
Beginning at uni was such an interesting experience, especially with the block model that Victoria University has rather than traditional uni classes. The block model is where you do 3-hour classes, 3 days a week for four weeks focusing on one subject at a time rather than doing all four units at the same time during the semester. I’ve made great friends during uni who were even happy enough to celebrate my birthday a month earlier before they went back to their corners of the world. The classes at uni are fun. Teaching-based classes tend to be, because most of the time you’re pretending to be young students doing fun activities like colouring in or designing clothes to fit on a paper gingerbread man. Other than just pretending to be students I also pretend to be a teacher which is also really fun considering it almost feels like the real deal.
My scholarship from Bravery Trust through AVCAT has helped my first year of university to be amazing.