Throughout my past two years of university, I have participated in tutoring Indigenous youth through the Graham Polly Farmer Foundation.    This has kept me connected to helping my community and has taught me a lot about myself.   When I first left for university I had ambitions to pursue a career in physiotherapy and return to Broome to assist in sporting programs for Indigenous youth.

Entering my second year  of university I became aware of Occupational Therapy (OT) and the extremely low number of Indigenous people in this field of healthcare.    The various pathways of OT aligned with my  personal goals of staying involved in the community and creating a comfortable environment to receive healthcare.   It was the beginning of 2022 when I started this course and so far, I have just become more determined to finishing the degree and begin helping Indigenous people around Australia.

Finishing my degree will be a great personal achievement but it will also provide me with the opportunity to work in rural and remote communities as these are where the barriers of healthcare are most prominent.   My goal in my career is to give back and create the comfortable environment that myself, my mum, my grandmother and her mother never experienced.

I want to dedicate myself to helping Close this Gap between Indigenous people and healthcare and I believe that with my ambitious nature I will make great changes in my time.

At the beginning of this year, I relocated back over to WA to continue studying in Perth. I felt great comfort in being back and the opportunity to go to the beach and feel grounded on the West Coast. Having just completed my first full year of Occupational Therapy studies I was very excited to progress into my second-year studies.

Unfortunately, this was not the case and I had to go back into first year Curtin specific units, which was very mentally challenging for me. Despite this setback I remained driven to progress with my degree and completed the units of Indigenous Cultures and Behaviours, Introduction to Psychology and Allied Health and Research Design.     …      However, having lived in Australian society my whole life, learning from family and now from 3 different university units, I think my basic understandings of my Aboriginal culture and history are sufficient.

The final unit I had to repeat was Allied Health Research and Design, which is content on statistics, data and analysing. I do appreciate being able to interpret and understand information but after writing my third critical appraisal I think I have developed a great dislike for statistics. Following into next semester I have been advised I cannot progress into second year until the beginning of 2025.     I am only allowed to study part-time next semester, partaking in my singular Functional Anatomy unit. I am hoping this delay will move fast and I am able to finally start my second year of Occupational Therapy!