Study Story 1: Learning From the Bush, Studying Beyond It
Q & A with Jess Armstrong, Centre Manager CUC Hay.
Tell us a bit about yourself!
I’m Jess, I’m 24-years old and I am currently the Centre Manager for CUC Hay and the owner of my own agribusiness out here in the western Riverina called Agrishift.
I was born and raised on our family-owned sheep at cattle station about 130km north-west of Hay. I was a Hay School of the Air Student before I went to boarding school for years 7-12 and got stuck into plenty of extracurricular such as music, league tag and touch footy while still loving studying.
Since graduating in 2019 from high school, I’ve moved around the state and even spent some time in the Northern Territory, and everywhere I’ve been I’ve had the opportunity to work in a wide variety of roles. I’ve worked across Landcare, Pest and Disease monitoring in horticulture, fertiliser imports and rural merchandise, hospitality, and agricultural extension.
Where did you journey with higher education begin and has it looked like for you?
I was always academically inclined for all my high school years and up until around year 11. I had always put a lot of pressure on myself to do well but eventually this pressure got to me. Thankfully I realised that for what I wanted to do post-school I didn’t need to get a 99 plus ATAR. For my HSC I studied, Advanced English, Biology, Standard Math, Music and Drama. I graduated with a 77.74 ATAR and despite putting Early Entry in for a few Agricultural Science and Business-related courses I initially planned to take a gap year in 2020 to complete a Cert III in Business Traineeship in Wagga.
While that was a great start, I completed that course extremely quickly and decided that a gap year wasn’t going to be for me. I applied and enrolled in a Bachelor of Environmental Science with Charles Sturt University, Online and Part-Time because at the time it was one of the few fully online courses I could find that I was interested in and it was the best decision given the impact that the pandemic had on students and study.
What have been the highlights of studying Higher Education by distance?
The highlights of studying by distance and the flexibility of being part-time have been being able to travel, live and work in different states of Australia. I spent 14-months in the Northern Territory working in hospitality and rural merchandise before moving back to NSW. It was a great chance to experience a different lifestyle, make friends and broaden my horizons.
Another has been the chance to balance working in the field I’m studying. Taking the opportunity to build relevant industry experience in agriculture and natural resource management while studying has gotten me into many jobs I wouldn’t have been able to get a foot into the door of, and it has added a layer of practicality to what you learn in theory.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone on the fence about studying higher education?
I think too many people write off higher education for themselves because they think they have to be academic, have to move away from home, live on campus, that they’re too old or wouldn’t use it. I can’t say it’s easy, but it is extremely rewarding and opens the door to new opportunities.