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Your introduction to RMIT

In this session from Open Day 2020, you will find everything you need to know about studying at RMIT University, including information about our campuses, course options and global opportunities.

Pathways at RMIT

Learn about Pathways Guaranteed to help you begin your study journey into your dream course at RMIT.

Discuss what's next in industry

Hear from a panel of RMIT staff and recent graduates about the importance of underpinning skills for success as part of RMIT Open Day, 9 August 2020.

Your introduction to RMIT

Find out all you need to know about studying at RMIT University in this session including our campuses, course options and global opportunities.

Transcript

[Start transcript]

Paris:
Welcome, everyone. Good afternoon to this afternoon's Your Introduction to RMIT Session. My name is Paris and I work in the student recruitment team at RMIT. But I'm actually also a current business student as well and I'll tell you a little bit about that throughout the presentation. I've also got Daniel and Kate behind the scenes today. And I've also got Christine, Nathaniel and Christy on chat to answer all your questions throughout the presentation. But excitingly, we also do have two current students Pamela, who is studying a Bachelor of Business Marketing applied, and we also have Samuel who is studying Bachelor of Engineering electronics. So they'll be able to come on board later on in the presentation and tell you a little bit about their student experience.

Paris:
But we will kick off. But before we do, I would firstly just like to say a wominjeka. Welcome to all of you from wherever you are watching today, and we would like to respectfully recognize our elders past, present and emerging and respectfully acknowledge the lens in which our mighty University stands. So, I hope people got a cup of tea ready, hope you're all sitting on the couch somewhere comfy and ready for our presentation.

Paris:
So why do students choose RMIT to study? I guess if you're looking at other institutions, these are probably the things that differentiate RMIT. First of all, we are a dual-sector institution. So this means that we do offer both university courses and also TAFE courses. We are really globally recognized and connected as well. So we have our three campuses here in Melbourne, as well as our two flight training sites in Victoria. And we also have two campuses in Vietnam and a research study center in Barcelona, Spain, which is really awesome as well. But we are really industry connected. So we have a heighth of teachers at RMIT, which are actually still out in the field teaching, still working sorry. So that when they come back in and teach our students it means that they get that really focused, career-ready experience and information that they're learning in the classrooms, which is really, really great.

Paris:
As I mentioned, we have our three Melbourne campuses and also our two flight training sites in Bendigo and Point Cook. So we have our City Campus, our Brunswick campus and our Bundoora campus in Melbourne. And basically, it's really going to depend on what you're studying is going to depend on where you're going to go and study it. So just be aware that if you are looking at a course, the location might not suit you or you might want to study at a different one. So definitely jump online and have a look at what courses are offered at certain campuses.

Paris:
We have our Melbourne City campus here right now, which is our largest RMIT campus. And this houses the majority of our courses at RMIT. Your business, your engineering, architecture, communications, those courses are taught predominantly at our Melbourne City campus. And I guess unlike other institutions, this is quite a cool campus. It's really interlaced throughout the whole city. If you have been into Melbourne Central, which I'm sure a lot of you watching would have, it is really all throughout the city. You can go to really cool cafes and restaurants and bars and that kind of thing during breaks when you're studying at the Melbourne City campus. And it's just a really cool area. Really colorful, really quirky kind of shaped classrooms as you can see on the screen right now, and just, yeah, really awesome different facilities available at our City Campus.

Paris:
But I would definitely have to say that as a current student, my favorite part of this campus is actually the fact that we have a Snooze Lounge. So in our business building, we have a full dedicated Snooze Lounge with themed bags and cushions and all that fun stuff so you can actually pop on over and have a snooze in between classes, which is awesome.

Paris:
So next up is our Bundoora Campus. This is sort of probably what you would think of when a lot of people do think of traditional University institutions. But this houses majority of our health, medical science and also teaching programs, and it is like a really nice, scenic, pretty with wildlife and all that nice stuff out there, really peaceful. And it does have all about sporting facilities out there. So if you're interested in footy or soccer, or net ball or any of that we have that all out there. We actually have a FIFA approved soccer pitch out there as well which is really cool. So lots of facilities out there if you are a sporting person. And we also have our health science teaching clinics out there as well.

Paris:
So if you're doing nursing or something like that or interested in nursing, just know that you will have a full, there's actually a full new nursing area at our Bundoora campus and it really mimics what a hospital will look and feel like, so our students get that realistic exposure really early on in their course. Which is really, really great. We also actually have on campus accommodation out of Bundoora as well.

Paris:
So our last Melbourne Campus is our Brunswick Campus. So this hub is home to our fashion and textile programs and also industrial design. And this campus I guess, is again, quite different. It's quite a little small, quirky campus amongst the really fun eclectic suburb of Brunswick. Again, really cool cafes and shops and restaurants and that kind of thing. Definitely really nice suburb in Melbourne. But yeah, it's really, really creative space and students are really able to suit their creative needs at this campus. So students, if they need to wheel in and out furniture, or put up walls and pull down walls to suit whatever they're doing creatively, they're able to do that, which is really, really awesome. And it is just a short five K's from our CBD if you are interested in being close by.

Paris:
I also mentioned we have our Vietnam campuses overseas. So we have one in Hanoi and one in Ho Chi Minh. And I guess this is an opportunity for you to really immerse yourself in a new culture, new people, new place, and it's an actual RMIT campus. So, unlike other you might go on exchange overseas to other partners, but this is an actual RMIT campus. It's all taught in English as well so no need to do a crash course in Vietnamese or anything like that. But it's a really great experience for students that are chasing a bit of a global experience as part of their course. And some of the things you might be able to study there would be business and merchandising, some engineering, some IT programs, some communications and also digital media as well.

Paris:
But if Vietnam isn't for you, that's totally fine. As I mentioned, we have arbitrary 100 partner institutions in 49 countries. So heaps of opportunity for you to go overseas somewhere that you're interested in. And as part of this, we have two options for you. So you can either go on a study exchange, which I'm sure a lot of you have heard of before. So you've got overseas for six months to a year, and then you are able to complete equivalent subjects and then get credits for that back here for your degree. Which is really great.

Paris:
But if you do get a little bit homesick, we also have study tours available. They can go from anywhere between two weeks and four weeks. I actually had a friend that did a study tour and went to Taiwan for, I think around three weeks and she got to do really fun stuffs. Tai Chi classes, traditional tea drinking ceremonies, and got to go to other cities like Taipei and surrounding places on the weekends and that kind of thing. And all she had to do at the end of it was write an essay on how her experience was and all the cultural experience she got. So really awesome opportunities there for you to go overseas and incorporate that into your studies.

Paris:
Experience work. One of the really awesome things about RMIT is that a lot of our courses produce really work ready graduates. So for myself as an example, I'm currently studying a Bachelor of Business Marketing applied. And so this is a four year degree. And in the third year, I'm required to go out and complete a year long paid placement. And then at the end of that, I'll go back into my final year of uni next year, and then hopefully graduate from there. So basically, it means that you just get that really current information. It means that you get to put your first two years of your course into practice and really see how it's actually going to translate into the real world. So really, really great opportunities there available for you.

Paris:
And also, as I've gotten a position in the student recruitment team for the year, it's really great to be able to work alongside them and pick up a lot of new skills that I wouldn't have otherwise gained. So really, really great experience there. I've also got friends doing it at Renault Cars, I've got another one doing it at the Channel Nine with The Block. So great opportunities available. If you are doing something in clinical that will require clinical practice, or if you're doing austere or health, or nursing or something like that, then you would be required to clinical practice, so you might be able to work at our partner clinics, and then members of the public can actually come in and see you, and they'll get a subsidized rate for that visit. And you get to work on an actual patient, which is really, really great.

Paris:
We also have industry projects or a lot of the time we have partner organizations that will come in with an idea and let RMIT students work on it, work on a project or something like that. So I know as a business student we often work with Grand Prix and get to play with different ideas and stuff like that. So really, really great opportunities. And that is, again, just throughout your studies, it's not a built in work experience component or anything like that, it's just opportunities that come up throughout your course, which is really great. And you can also do internships and that kind of thing overseas if you want to, to get the global experience that way as well.

Paris:
So we have our areas of study up here on the screen. And I guess these are just our umbrella terms for a lot of our programs so within these there'll be a whole heap of programs that fall under these headings. For example, if you are like me, and you're looking at studying business or marketing and you're thinking, "I really just want to do marketing but it's not fair. Where is it?" It'll just fall on to business. Same again, under business besides marketing, there's a whole heap of other ones. So you could do entrepreneurship, you could do IT, you could do business accounting, there's so many different types. But looking at this, you obviously wouldn't know that. So definitely check out this. It's also in our open day platform so you'll be able to browse by these categories. And similarly again, if you're looking at this engineering, I want to do engineering but I want to do mechanical, they will just fall under that. So definitely check these out to make sure you are familiar with the programs.

Paris:
We'll talk a little bit about prerequisites and selection requirements. So prerequisites are basically subjects that you need to be able to gain access into a particular course. So for a lot of our engineering and science courses, you might be required to complete either math methods, physics, chemistry or biology. It's depends course by course so definitely again, jump online, or head on over to the open day platform to see what prerequisites you might need. Definitely important to be aware of that before application time rolls around.

Paris:
But similarly to engineering and science, our creative subjects also may have selection requirements but different types. So you might be required to as part of your application, submit a pre-selection kit, a folio, do an interview or submit a design exercise. Again, this really differs course by course, program by program. So, definitely jump online to make sure you're aware of what you need to submit as part of your application.

Paris:
So at the end of the day, it's really going to be about what's right for you. Of course, you'll have support from family and friends and that kind of thing, but it's really up to what you want to do because it's going to be really hard to motivate yourself if you're not interested and happy with what you're doing. So, as I mentioned, that we are dual-sector institution we offer both higher ed and tech. So, talk about higher education first. So if you are looking online and seeing the terms bachelor and undergraduate degree and getting confused, don't let that confuse you, it just means the exact same thing. And something that really confused me when I was looking to apply to unis, such as the exact same thing. Higher ed also includes double degrees and also our associate degrees.

Paris:
And I guess the structure of higher education is a little bit different from school. So as part of this you'll have lectures, tutorials, labs or studios, depending on the program that you're completing. But you'll have often lectures where you have a few hundred other people in the room with you, you'll have a lecturer standing at the front and they'll be delivering content and it's up to you to write notes and take in the content and that kind of thing. And then as part of that, you'll have tutorials or either labs or studios. Again, depending. And this will be an opportunity where you can sit down in a more classroom setting you're used to at school, and you can discuss examples with your teacher and ask your peers stuff and that kind of thing. But these are quite large classes, and it's very specialized and quite independent as well.

Paris:
So maybe some of you out there watching at the moment are thinking, "Oh, in school when I don't submit something on time or I'm late for school, I get in a bit of trouble for it or I get chased up for my work." When you're in uni, it is quite different and it is quite independent. So it's up to you to really be on top of things. Of course, there's a heap of support available for you if you're struggling with studies, or need help with something, of course there's support. But overall it is really up to you to motivate yourself for your studies. But these can go from anywhere between two to five years.

Paris:
So we also have TAFE courses, as I mentioned. We offer certs one to four. We also offer diplomas and advanced diplomas. And I guess this is just a bit of a different structure to higher education. So these TAFE courses are mostly completed in seminar, labs, workshops and studio settings. And I guess this is a little bit more probably more school like. So you sort of move from class to class with the same people, and you complete most of your work on campus, or during the week, Monday to Friday maybe 9:00 to 3:00 or 9:00 to 5:00, Monday to Thursday or something like that. And it's just a bit more of a supported environment but very hands-on. So you'll do majority of your work that you need to get done while on campus or while at class and that kind of thing so you don't have to do as much outside like higher education. These can go up for anywhere for up to two years as well.

Paris:
We also have apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships as well. And we offer those in cert two and three. And this is really on the job paid work. So if you're wanting to be an electrician or a spa key or a plumber, or something like that this might be a good option for you. But it is quite small classes. Very hands-on. Of course, with anything you'll be required to know some theory, but majority of that is going to be very on the job hands-on kind of learning. And you might be doing this for three months to four years.

Paris:
We'll talk a little bit about pathways now. This is I guess, a typical structure of what a lot of people think of when they think of university, and this is the path I went down, for example. So you might come out of year 12, the students doing the Bachelor of Engineering, for example. So you come into year one, year two, year three, year four, and then straight out of your career, no worries, happy days. But things don't always go to plan as we know, so you may not get the right ATAR that you were hoping for, or you might not meet the pre-requisites that you needed for a particular course. So we have options for you for that. So don't stress at all.

Paris:
You could either do an advanced diploma, example engineering, and you can come in after the first year, go year two, year three, year four and then straight out into your career, or you could do an associate degree and come in in year three and complete year four and straight out into your career again. So as you can see here, these students at pathway really don't miss out on any time at all. So you just go straight in, and you actually come out with the two qualifications as well which is really, really valuable as well. But you may not want to bother with an undergraduate degree, which is totally fine as well. These courses are all designed to be career ready. So, you can come straight out of an advanced diploma or an associate degree and then go straight into the workforce, which is really awesome.

Paris:
So, as much as we are about academics, we love to have a lot of fun at RMIT. Obviously a bit difficult when we can't be on campus, but normally it's very, very lively and fun. We have a heap of sporting and recreational clubs. We even have a cheerleading club. And we have a heap of arts and culture clubs as well. And if there isn't a club, you can actually make one if you've got enough people to participate. So definitely a club for everyone. And also really, really a great way to meet people.

Paris:
We also have a really diverse student population at RMIT. We're really proud of that. And it really is a great way to prepare students for the real world in both study and in social. As I mentioned, we have a whole range of clubs. And we also really recognize our role and commitment and motivation. So really, really want to be there to support our students and ensure a diverse population.

Paris:
As things are a bit up in the air at the moment, we have been working really hard to make sure that our students have access to really great resources so they can still complete their studies at home. So all of our lectures are recorded. And you can do it at 12:00 in the middle of the night, or you can do it at 7:00 AM, whichever suits you. And we also have other really great other platforms. We have Collaborate Ultra through our Canvas platform that current students use. So you're able to go into breakout rooms and really interact with your teachers and other students if you need to. We also have Microsoft Teams obviously like we are streaming to you today, which is a really, really great resource. And also, students have access to myDesktop as well. So this is a great resource for students to be able to access certain programs that they would have only been able to access on campus but through myDesktop are able to access at home, which is really awesome.

Paris:
And of course, we are always surveying our students to see what we can do better and how we can make the online learning experience at home a little bit easier.

Paris:
We also have a lot of really great and successful people that have passed through RMIT. So I'll just talk about a couple of these. So we have James Wan. So if any of you are horror movie fans out there, have watched The Saw movies, or The Conjuring, or Aquaman, James Wan actually was studying screenwriting here at RMIT and actually wrote the script for Saw while studying and was supposed to be for a short film festival and of course blew up and is now a really, really, really renowned director of movies. So that's really awesome for James Wan.

Paris:
We also have Jamie Forsyth. So he was an entrepreneur student at RMIT. And him and his wife were really upset by all the wastage of disposable coffee cups. And so he came up with the KeepCup idea to have a recyclable cute little colorful coffee cup that you can take to cafes. And he actually got our RMIT design students on board to help create the prototype for that KeepCup as well and now of course they're all around in different brands as well. So really, really great for Jamie Forsyth there.

Paris:
We also have, as I mentioned, a heap of support available for you at RMIT so if you are doing any courses and you're finding that you're struggling a little bit, that's totally fine. We are here for you and have a heap of support. So I'll just pick out a couple of these to talk to you about. So we have our SLAM mentors and study help. This is basically a free tutoring service. And it is by current students who have done really well in a particular subject. So maybe got a higher distinction in a certain subject, and they actually come in and help tutor students in their younger years. So you might be paying maybe $80 an hour for a private tutor, but this is a completely free resource available. And I find that sometimes as a current student myself, sometimes when a peer explains things to you, it can be a bit more easily to understand. So really great service there available.

Paris:
We also have our work and career. So we have our skills and job shops. They're a really great team to help you if you need to find a job or if you need help finding placement for a course, they can help you with that. And they can help you with anything from writing surveys, and cover letters, to even doing mock interviews with you as well if you do get a little bit nervous before interviews. So, really, really awesome resource there. We also have housing and accommodation. So we have a heap of purpose built accommodation available for our students around all of our campuses. So definitely hop on our open day platform to check out more information about accommodation.

Paris:
But we also have counseling as well. So if you are finding it is a little bit difficult, and you're struggling a little bit with the transition from school to uni, for example, there is counseling available for you across all our campuses. So there's always someone to support you and to talk to as well. And we also have our RMIT Activator. So if you are doing entrepreneurship or have a crazy business idea that you want to bring to life, they might be able to help you and get the project off the ground. So really, really great support available at RMIT.

Paris:
We have our equity categories up here on the board. So if you are an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, are mature age, from a non-English speaking background, have a disability or long term medical condition, have a disadvantaged financial background or are from rural areas, have difficult circumstances, have an underrepresented agenda or are from a SNAP school you may be applicable for these equity categories. So, if you are wanting to make an equity application you can apply through VTAC with a SEAS application. And these have already opened on the third of August and will be closing on Friday the 9th, of October. So definitely if you are wanting to make a SEAS application, look and make sure you have those dates written down somewhere so you don't miss out on that. But if you are applying for RMIT equity access, you can apply online direct to RMIT. And these again have already opened and will shut on Tuesday the 11th, of December. So definitely check what you need to be prepared for that.

Paris:
But this might help you by giving you some additional consideration. So an example is, you might get some bonus aggregate points. So for example, if our bachelor business applied is an 80, for example, and you get a 60, you might be applicable to get 20 points boosted on to get into that course, which would be really, really great. And you really will just have to... might have to write an impact statement. So you might just have to sit down with a teacher, or your career advisor, or your parent, or something like that and they might be able to help you write it and then you submit it as part of your application. And I'm sure anyone watching that is coming up to application time will have teachers or parents that can help along to submit your application for that.

Paris:
We do also have a wide range of scholarships available. And often a lot of people assume that it's just academic scholarships just go to the academic kids and they don't go to anyone else, but we have a heap of scholarships available in different categories at RMIT. We have equity scholarships, academic pathways for vocational and higher ed, and also travel grants as well. So we definitely have a wide range. And this might be available for certificate IV and diploma students, associate and bachelor degree students, post grad students, research students, students studying overseas and also international students. So you might even be able to get a scholarship to pay for some of your cost of going overseas and traveling as part of your degree, which would be really great.

Paris:
If you are wanting to apply for any of these scholarships for VTAC, they've already opened and will shut on the 9th, of October. So definitely be aware of what you need to submit for that. And also, if you are applying directly, they will shut on the 11th, of October. So it's just really important to jump online and make sure that you know what you need to submit, and when you need to submit for these. If you want to find out more about these scholarships, you'll be able to talk to our scholarship team and browse all the information on our open day platform as well. But I think we're now going to hand over to Daniel for some questions to our students.

Daniel:
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Paris, and we know that there's a ton of questions coming through on the Q&A. We have a whole team on board to try to answer as many as we can. But I guess keep them coming and we'll try to get to them as quickly as we can. We have Pamela Stanley and Samuel Murari on board to answer some questions. So Pamela, I'm going to start with you. Why did you choose RMIT?

Pamela Stanley:
Hello, everyone. My name is Pamela. So why did I choose RMIT? It's because RMIT has a really vibrant student life. A lot of clubs, a lot of societies, a lot of people to meet. And it's really wonderful to be able to not just study and do well in academics but also to meet people from various background and there's so much activities and I think it's really wonderful to be there.

Daniel:
Brilliant. Thank you so much. Samuel, what about yourself?

Samuel Murari:
Well, I chose RMIT on one integral aspect and that being experienced in terms of academic and social life. Academically, the courses taught at RMIT are very practical and hands-on, which I found to be the best pathway for me to learn. And socially the RMIT life was very good experience being that I was able to make a lot of new friends. And there's so many areas where I can just talk with people and just hangout in a study environment and in the general hangout and relaxing environment.

Daniel:
Awesome. Thanks so much, Samuel. What's your favorite thing about your RMIT course?

Samuel Murari:
For me, again, as I touched on before, it would just be the practical aspect of it. For my first year, I've been able to construct electronic circuits and with that I can just see in real time how I can test different theories and test different aspects of that circuit. And the labs that we do as well they're very challenging, but they're also constructed in a way to make it interesting and not completely impossible.

Daniel:
Wonderful. What about yourself, Pamela, what is your favorite thing about your course? Oh, you're on mute, Pamela. Perfect.

Pamela Stanley:
Can you hear me?

Daniel:
Yes.

Pamela Stanley:
So, my favorite thing about RMIT course is that a lot of them is not just reading. So a lot of people just study, study, but it's also a lot of practical projects. We work on real clients, solve real problems, not just some sort of paper problems. I think it's really wonderful to be able to know that we are also helping some sort of client or to solve a real problem. So I really like the practical aspect and it's really, really wonderful.

Daniel:
Awesome. Thank you so much. What do you wish you could go back and tell yourself about applying to university? So if you could go back to your high school self, what do you wish you could let them know?

Pamela Stanley:
So for me I think it would be to consider that a degree is definitely a couple of years. So it's going to commit couple of years for you and in your life. So I would say the biggest advice is to follow what you want to study. Because this is you committing yourself to study this degree. So make sure it is something that you really like and you really want to do.

Daniel:
Brilliant. Thank you. And what about yourself, Samuel?

Samuel Murari:
What I'd say is that everything will be okay. Choosing university and degree it's a very stressful thing. And you never really know what the best part is, the best option. Myself, I actually chose computer and network engineering and computer science, [inaudible 00:32:42]. But after one semester, I decided that the course was not really to me, and I switched to electrical and electronics, and I've never been happier. And switching actually didn't lose any time in my degree and I haven't been behind on any subjects either. Because all the credits got transferred. Pathway is everything and the solution is everything.

Daniel:
Awesome. Thank you. And what's next for you after you finish your degree, Samuel?

Samuel Murari:
Personally, I actually really enjoy studying and I'm very passionate about it so I'm thinking of actually doing a postgraduate degree.

Daniel:
Perfect. Awesome. Sounds good. See you there. And, Pamela, what about yourself? What are you hoping to get going to once you finish your degree? What's next for you?

Pamela Stanley:
So after my degree, I hope that I can get a graduate role in a marketing position. And because I've been working to earn my degree as well, I think RMIT is wonderful because it helps you to volunteer opportunities and a lot of different things that can be so effective on campus. So it helps you to build your CV and I think that really help and I hope that [inaudible 00:33:47]

Daniel:
Brilliant. Thank you. Pamela, might stay with you. We've got quite a few questions about contact hours. Can you tell us about some of the like how often you're on campus and studying as part of your course?

Pamela Stanley:
Yeah, so I think in terms of contact hours, you will be able to arrange your own timetable in a way that you'll be given a list of choices of when to go. And you can basically indicate your preference. And in terms of contact hours, I would say, I spent about three days on campus, three to four days. Depends on how well I can arrange a time table. Usually it's about three. And it's a mix of lecture and tutorials and everything. It worked out really well if you remember to put in your preference in the first place.

Daniel:
Perfect. Samuel, what about your contact hours?

Samuel Murari:
My contact hours are pretty similar to Pamela's. As she said, you can actually choose your timetable and base your week around what days you want to free. I personally kept Friday free. So, four days on campus, together in total I have around 20 contact hours. That's just made up of practical tutorials and lectures. Lectures as well if I just put in the time I just watch the recording at home.

Daniel:
Perfect. Samuel, while I've got you can you talk about some of the industry experiences as part of your course or projects that you've been a part of?

Samuel Murari:
Yep. So RMIT has a lot of industry experience in courses available. For me in my second and third years, which I'm currently in now, I've actually been part of engineering design projects. In these projects you work with people from the industry and in working on real life problems, actually design a solution. That actually you get an introduction to it in your first job where you work with Engineers Without Borders. Here, they give you a problem in a third world country and you have to develop a solution for it. And further on from that, you can actually... There's part of courses where you can actually work in the industry as part of your course and get some credit for that as well.

Daniel:
Wonderful. Thank you. Pamela, do you want to talk about industry experience as part of your course and the different opportunities you've had?

Pamela Stanley:
Yes. So I was so blessed that I was able to have a year long experience internship at RMIT Global Experience, and as a marketing assistant, because I'm studying marketing, and it's really, really great. I think everybody needs to have some sort of hands-on industry experience because it's different when you study and when you actually go into the field to be able to practice what you've learned. And you will also learn on the job as well. So I learned a lot of different things, a lot of different programs, and meet a lot of people and I think that was really wonderful. Very valuable experience.

Daniel:
Perfect. Paris, I might throw it over to you if that's okay. I know you're having trouble with your cat. I've got to bear that in mind. Can you speak about selection tasks into design programs and specifically into fashion as well as where students can go to find the selection task information on our website.

Paris:
Yeah, of course. For a lot of our creative subjects like fashion, we recognize that an ATAR is probably not going to reflect your creative abilities. So, for courses like fashion, we have selection tasks in place. So I would definitely... These will differ from course to course or fashion and will be different to art, for example. So definitely hop online. So if you do go to the study with us page on our website, and then you click on the program that you're interested in and scroll right to the bottom, and there will be a little tab that says additional requirements for entry. And it'll tell you in that section what pre-requisites and what selection tasks you need to prepare for that certain course and all of that information there.

Daniel:
Wonderful. Thank you. Samuel, I'm going to pass it back over to you. We've had a couple of questions asking, what does a typical day as a uni student look like? Do you want to talk about what it looks like in first year compared to I guess a later year?

Samuel Murari:
Yeah. The typical life of an engineer or a student in RMIT rock up the uni go through lectures, go through tutorials and practicals. Personally, I try to have around one practical a day and try and spread out my coursework. And also tutorials as well. The tutorials would generally connect really both your practical so that you can get a lot of theoretical foundations before you put them into real world application. The lectures go for two hours long, same with the practicals. And these lectures will continue further on with the theoretical and reach out into other aspects of the academic career.

Daniel:
Awesome. Thank you. And what about for yourself, Pamela? Engineering is quite different to business. What does a typical day look like for you?

Pamela Stanley:
A typical day would be, I usually like to arrange my lectures and tutorials like back to back. So to be able to go, for example, from 10:30 to 11:30 I have a marketing lecture and then if it's available, 11:30 to 12:30 I have a tutorial. And I'll usually try to put the classes at the end of the week, because sometimes it gives you an extra time in the beginning of the week to do your assignments. And it's very fun because I'm very close to a lot of different places to eat, and to shop. I'm in the City Campus, so it was really great and be able to go on dancing classes during lunchtime. It was pretty cool.

Daniel:
Perfect. Thank you so much. Can you just tell us a little bit about... Sorry, to, Paris, again having problem with cat so I will just pass it to you. How did you go about applying for your applied program as well as how did you find your placement? I guess, what support did RMIT offer you?

Paris:
Yeah. Sorry, everyone. Probably the cat's over here, but I'm sure everyone can understand working from home arrangements. So, yeah. With my applied year I was a bit worried about it to be honest because you have to sort of have to start looking while you're still studying and I was a bit concerned. But it was quite easy. We have a great resource at RMIT career hub, which you can go through and all our partner organizations with RMIT that offer internships that know RMIT students are looking for internships, they'll all be posted on career hub, and you can apply for all of those. Of course you can go outside of that and apply for any at any agency or anything like that as well. But that's where I started anyway, and obviously RMITs student recruitment assistant position was on there, and I applied for that. So that was my experience with the applied with getting a position from that. I'm sure Pamela's might be similar. With her she was at RMIT as well. I'm not sure hers might be similar.

Daniel:
Yeah, let's pass it over to you, Pamela. Do you want to talk about how you applied for your internship?

Pamela Stanley:
So, RMIT has a wonderful online portal called RMIT Career Hub, is basically a portal for RMIT students for many different job opportunities and voluntary and so on. So I found this internship opportunity on career hub where I was actually just browsing looking for opportunities. I think the reason why I was able to apply and actually get a job is because RMIT has also a facility called RMIT Job Shop, they actually help you to polish your resume and practice interviews and I've had help from them so I really give the credit to them. And also being able to start thinking about how you can get all experience from the beginning of your degree, not just leaving it until the end of the degree and then trying to put together a job experience at the end of it. Because everybody will probably most likely just start from the beginning. So, I think that was the most important thing [inaudible 00:42:22] help there.

Daniel:
Thank you so much. Samuel, do you want to talk about your part of any clubs as part of your engineering program?

Samuel Murari:
Yes. As part of an engineering program you can actually join a club that is related directly to your engineering field. So there are clubs for mechanical engineers, aerospace engineers, electrical engineers. And we generally get together and just talk about our degree, talk about the courses that we're doing, the subjects that we're doing and it's basically a networking area for engineers of your field at that point.

Daniel:
Perfect. Paris, I'm going to pass it over to you, can you talk about some of the facilities available at the City Campus. We've had particular questions about the Snooze Lounge.

Paris:
Of course. Yeah, that would be what I would be very interested about to if I was watching. So yeah, we have really, really great facilities. As a business student I'm predominantly in building 80 and that is where our Snooze Lounge is, I'll talk about that first. So, that was one of those things that RMIT said to students, "What can we do better?" And students came back and were like, "Yeah, we just want to have a nap in between classes. Like we've got cool libraries and stuff, we just want to be able to have a nap somewhere." So when you do have those giant gaps, if you do unfortunately have giant gaps, you can come in and you can just lock all your stuff away so perfectly all safe and everything, and just have an up for a couple of hours.

Paris:
So, that's a Snooze Lounge. That's one built in building 80 on level three so you can go visit that when we are allowed back onto campus. But around campus we have a heap of really, really cool facility. Even now, as a third year student I'm still finding little study nooks and little areas you can go. There's so many huge library area where there's computers and everything you can use. But yeah, really great for... I find the most helpful probably is when you do have, if you've got like a half hour before class or something and you need to finish something off for a class you can just pop into a little study corner or something and just get it done which is really great.

Daniel:
Fantastic. Thanks so much, Paris. Samuel, I might pass it over to you. Can you talk a little bit about, I guess, the difference between year 12 compared to studying in an undergraduate degree, and what you found out that main differences to be?

Samuel Murari:
Yeah, definitely. The main and the outstanding differences was the class size. This happened especially only for the lectures though, lectures can range to around 100 students. But as soon as you get into the tutorials aspect of it the class size goes down to a more private 20 students, and the teacher is able to focus more on it. So, the tutorials are actually quite similar to year 12, and laboratories as well. They are just a bit more practical aspect of it, which are also around 20 students.

Samuel Murari:
The main difference though is that all the education is self-learning. [inaudible 00:45:31] the teachers are very reliant on you to cover the topic aspect yourself. You have to put some effort into it and try and understand and study the topic itself as well. So you get a really good foundation of it. Teachers will give you assistance and they'll teach you the topic but you do have to... you're reliant on yourself to learn again and cover the topics once more.

Daniel:
Perfect. And what about, Pamela, from your point of view? How does university differ from high school?

Samuel Murari:
I think I agree. So at the university, everything is certainly independent. Nobody is there to hold your hand and try and, "Get your assignment done by this date, guys." It's a lot more like the work place. It's you have to do what you can, and be responsible. Set your own deadlines, try and manage everything. And it's very, very individual so it's like it's up to you. So nobody is going to be there and say, "You know you have to do and that." And also be able to work with a lot of people from diverse backgrounds and diverse demographics, it's a very important skill. So it's definitely a very different experience but I'm sure you will love it.

Daniel:
Fantastic. Thanks so much, Pamela. Well, that concludes the session, the Q&A part of the session. I'm going to pass it over to you, Paris, to wrap up the session. Just bear in mind that we do have the live chat team who are still on board answering questions. So they're trying to get to as many of you as possible. And we'll stay on for a little bit after the session to try to get through as many as possible. But, Paris, over to you.

Paris:
Oh, [inaudible 00:47:13] mute. Thank you very much, Daniel, for that. And thank you very much to our student speakers. Today, I'm sure, for a lot of students who are about to come into university, your information would be really, really helpful. So thank you so much for your insights there. But we will now be concluding this session. So if you do have any further questions, you can still pop them in and the team will be replying to the questions we've had coming through. But you can hop on the open day platform and you'll be able to find a whole heap of information relevant to the course you're thinking about or that you're interested in, as well as we have a whole heap of webinars running over today and tomorrow, so definitely be sure to check those out so you do not miss out. But other than that, thank you so much for watching and enjoy the rest of open day.

[End transcript]

Back to Video

Pathways at RMIT

Learn about RMIT's Pathways Guaranteed to help you on your study journey into your dream course at RMIT.

Transcript

[Start transcript]

Christie:
Hi there everybody, and welcome to Open Day. Thank you so much for coming and joining us at this Pathways at RMIT presentation. My name is Christie. I'm part of the RMIT student recruitment team, and we're so excited to have you here at this session. There's so many exciting things that we can talk to you about today, and lots of information that we're going to go through. So before we start, I'd just like to let you know that we have an army of RMIT people in the back supporting me in this presentation. And we've been getting lots and lots of questions in our last webinars, so we'll do our absolute very best to answer them as we go along.

Christie:
You're more than welcome to ask questions. We will be answering them as thick and fast as they come in. So if we get to them, that's awesome. If we aren't able to answer your question in this session, no worries. You can always jump over to the RMIT Open Day website and continue to ask your questions to the team members there, and they'll continue to help you. So this session here will cover content about courses available at RMIT across vocational education, TAFE level, and higher education from undergraduate and beyond. So the aim of this session is for you to come away with options that you can use within your study journey to help you get from where you are now, to where you want to be in your dream course, and then out into your dream career through RMIT.

Christie:
So before we go any further, I would just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I present to you today. And also because of the current circumstances, we'd love to also acknowledge the traditional land owners of the lands and waters from wherever you're tuning in from to this presentation today. And we respectfully acknowledge the elders past, present and emerging, and also say a big wominjeka welcome to any indigenous members of the community who are joining us today. Alrighty. So before we go any further, we're going to just have a little bit of a recap on what we're going to go over today. So there's more than one way to get from where you are now to where you want to be, and RMIT provides many different opportunities for you to start in a particular course and transfer into other courses so that you can navigate a journey through study with us.

Christie:
At RMIT, we are a dual sector institution. So we will unpack what that means. We'll also do a bit of comparison and analysis of vocational education versus higher education to show you the differences. We'll tell you some helpful information about how to leverage your preferences to your advantage using pathways. We'll provide you some opportunities to have a bit of a look at some RMIT tools, and also give you heaps of tips and tricks along the way. And very excitingly, we'll be able to talk to you more about RMIT Pathways Guaranteed. So let's kick it off with a little animated video to tell you all about how pathways work.

Speaker 2:
There it is. You can see it. The degree you're after. But sometimes things happen. You can miss the mark or miss the boat, or drop the ball, or simply fall short. But don't worry, whatever obstacles lie between you and your degree, there are different pathways at RMIT to help you get there. The great thing about these pathways is that they're available across a range of study areas and can provide skills and training to help unlock job opportunity. Many have smaller class sizes and great support from teachers. Others they can allow you to gain credits for better studies, which means you get to your degree sooner than you think. Visit rmit.edu.au/pathways to find the one that's right for you.

Christie:
Awesome. Alrighty. So pathways apply to RMIT across the board. So we've got pathway opportunities that cover all of our areas of study. You may have been in the previous session and heard Theresa talk about all the fantastic different courses that we offer at RMIT. But just take a quick moment to have a little bit of a look at the different study areas that are available at RMIT, just to wet your appetite, and see what you can start researching in different course areas that you can start looking into at RMIT to see which pathways we have.

Christie:
So what do we mean by dual-sector? It sounds like a bit of a fancy term. In education we love fancy terms, but really what it means is that RMIT University as an institution, as both a university qualification provider and a TAFE. So what that means is you can study from vocational education level in your certificates, diplomas, and advanced diplomas, through to undergraduate, associate degrees, bachelor degrees, and doubles, through to postgraduate study, up into some master study there. And then you can even keep going on further to do some research at higher degree level, coming out with a PhD. So if you really wanted, your journey could start right at a certificate and carry you right through to a doctorate level qualification at RMIT because we do it all.

Christie:
At RMIT, one of the big benefits of us being a dual-sector institution is that we get to offer students the ability to seamlessly pathway from course to course. So we allow them to be able to get credit for their prior learning, because we know what they've studied and their prior courses, and there are many recognized pathways with bachelor qualifications that have the study of the vocational education level courses within them. So we can recognize all that hard work and study and time and money that you've put into your study and give you the credit for it.

Christie:
Sure there are lots of different institutions around there, lots of different TAFEs and different places that offer similar courses. They might even be the same name, but what we can't always guarantee is that two courses, one at our institution and one at a different one, are like for like, so we can't always say whether you'll get full credit. But if you came through pathway opportunities internally with RMIT, we know exactly what you've done and what you need to achieve in order to get you from where you need to go.

Christie:
Lastly, the other exciting thing about being a dual-sector institution is that all RMIT students have access to all RMIT facilities, whether they're study spaces, the library, the snooze lounge and the Swanston Academic Building,, the community gaming space, other facilities like our sporting and recreational facilities. We're talking about all of the different clubs and things like that. All students are able to be involved in those kinds of events and be able to use those facilities as all students study in and around the same areas.

Christie:
So there will be some facilities that are specialized for particular course areas, but as you navigate your journey through RMIT, you will see that you'll be studying alongside postgraduate students, you'll be able to be in the library talking to students from all different courses and different things like that. So it's really awesome to be able to say to students that you're not just confined to one building if you do a particular course or a particular subject, you get to enjoy the whole range of RMIT's facilities and things.

Christie:
So is vocational study the same as TAFE? At RMIT, it is. So we offer TAFE-level courses across certificates, diplomas, and advanced diploma. So let's go into each of those areas and talk a little bit more about what level of study and what that does for you. So at certificate level, these are six to 12-month qualifications, and they're focused particularly on you being able to gather the right skills to be applied in an industry-specific job role. So you can use these particular certificates to potentially change careers, or you could look to start at the beginning of a career that you might not have had much exposure to and gain some really industry-specific knowledge in sales there.

Christie:
Let's talk about a few different certificates that we offer. At Certificate III level, we've got a Certificate III in Science, and Dental Assisting, and Clothing and Textile Production and Live Production and Technical Services. And Certificate IV level we've got Marketing and Communications, and we've also got a really cool Certificate IV in Tertiary Preparation, which is a fantastic option if you don't meet the ATAR or prerequisite study for other pathways. Because in just six months, you'll be able to effectively replace your ATAR score and there's four different streams at the Certificate IV available. So you've got business, engineering, legal studies and science.

Christie:
Alrighty, onto diplomas and advanced diplomas. These courses are one to two years and provide students with some exposure and opportunities to learn and practice the skills that they're getting taught at RMIT so that they can prepare for paraprofessional careers. Some examples of diplomas are Diploma of Business, a Diploma of Visual Merchandising. We've got a Teacher Education Preparation course, which will help you pathway through to being a teacher. We've got a Diploma of Remedial Massage. And then in advanced diplomas, we've got the Diploma of Myotherapy, of Dental Prosthetics, of Computer Systems Engineering and of Engineering Technology, which you'll hear a little bit more about as we carry through this presentation.

Christie:
And lastly, but definitely not by least, we have apprenticeship and traineeships study that's available at RMIT. And it's a combination of theoretical training at RMIT as well as practical training on site. So RMIT offers Certificate II pre-apprenticeship courses and three different trade areas. So that's electrical and instrumentation, plumbing and gas-fitting, and refrigeration and air conditioning. So students that are allocated to RMIT by their apprenticeship providers could also undertake Certificate III and IV and diploma courses. So study journeys may be up to three to four years within these particular courses, but they're a great way to get to learn on the job and also get some income on the way.

Christie:
RMIT has also been selected by the Victorian government to offer selected free TAFE courses in 2020 as part of the Working For Victoria Initiative. So any Australian citizen or permanent resident or New Zealand citizen, is eligible to do one free TAFE priority course in Victoria if they're under 20 and they're upskilling if they're under 20. If they're older than 20 and they are enrolling in a qualification that is the highest level of qualification, and higher than anything they'd previously attained. So if you're wanting to upskill, change careers, improve your employability prospects, you could look to do a free TAFE option with us at RMII. These courses, you can also undertake them and graduate out of them to seek entry level employment within your industry too. So if you want to have your study journey, just involve vocational education, that's completely fine. You can graduate out of these courses and look to go into your very first role. But Tarika is going to have a little bit of time on the screen in her video, which she's going to show us the difference between vocational education and higher education.

Tarika:
Hi guys. It's Tarika from RMIT University, and today I'll be talking about the differences between higher education and vocational education. Higher education is basically a bachelor degrees and undergraduate degrees. So if someone's referring to one or the other, don't get confused, it literally means the same thing. So that's your type of learning where you have lectures tutorials, labs, and practs. It's a very independent learning style, it's very theory based. And then you have vocational education, so that's pretty much your certificates I to IV, diplomas and advanced diplomas. So it's a lot more practical and a lot more hands on.

Tarika:
Vocational education is very similar to what you'd be used to in high school. You tend to go from class to class as a group. You have about 20 to 25 students, and we all start off apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship. So if you want to become a sparky or a plumber, you can't do that on RMIT as well. Thanks for watching. I hope you found this information helpful and I'll see you in the next video.

Christie:
Fantastic. So look, at RMIT one of our main focus is to find the course that's right for you. So vocational education may be the place that you start, and it may be the place that's right for you. To recap the notes, there's certificates I through IV, diplomas and advanced diplomas. The study method is more like what you're used to at school now. So smaller class sizes, you kind of move from groups, as Tarika said, you move around the place with the same group of people, which means you get to make some really good networks and friendships, and you really do get to know the people within your class. It does also offer you more opportunities to engage with your teaching staff as well. And there's a lot less of the theoretical kind of lecture type scenarios, more in-class discussions, activities and things, which you'll see on the next slide when we show you an example. So these courses really do put together practical opportunities for training, as well as your theory, and these are up to two years.

Christie:
So let's have a look at the example of the Diploma of Business. So there are a couple of really important key things to note about the way that the structure of this course works. So this diploma is a year long, broken into two semesters worth of study. But the the main point I'd like to show you is on the left. You can see that the weeks are broken down into two chunks. So you've got weeks one to eight and weeks nine to 16 within a semester's worth of study. If we look at weeks one to eight for semester one, you can also see that there is one core thing that students are dedicated with these studies to, and there are two kinds of success or objectives that you can see there, which is to manage programs that promote personal effectiveness and to develop and use emotional intelligence.

Christie:
So what this means is that in weeks one through eight, you are solely focused on the success of learning personal effectiveness. So this is a little bit different to higher education, where you will be doing multiple studies and different subjects at the same time. In vocational education, in this particular example in this diploma, you will be solely focused on one thing at a time. You'll also be able to see on the right some really helpful information there about the different nuances of these levels of courses. Classes are face-to-face in a virtual classroom at present. They will usually be on campus. There's a lot of in-class practical workshop formats of activities, discussions, and you do have that personal access to the teacher as we said before.

Christie:
So students have the ability within vocational education to make it flexible and work for them. You'll be doing six hours per day with an hour of lunch, but you can do those on four different rotations or timetables as you can see on the right there. So that really does help you if you're looking to balance out a part-time job, if you have other requirements at home, or there are other things that you are involved in, you can make your study really work for you.

Christie:
But then higher education might be what's right for you as well. So higher education, you'd be starting at your bachelor level, your undergraduate level. As Tarika said, don't get confused. Same thing. You could do a singular bachelor degree, or you could take advantage of the double degree structures that RMIT has put together, and you could do those. You could also do an associate degree, which is a two-year qualification. Often it's the first two years study or a bachelor course. So really good opportunity to pathway through an associate degree and get some credit. And you'll see a bit more about that soon. But these courses are studied more in lectures. So the big lecture halls where you've got an academic down the front, telling you all of the different theory, you're taking notes and they might be recorded so that you can watch them at home, tutorials where you discuss that theory, labs and studios.

Christie:
And these are very large classes. There may even be thousands of students enrolled in the same class as you, on different timetables to go to the lectures at different times. So it's really up to you. It's about being responsible for your learning. So with great power comes great responsibility. So you've got to take responsibility for getting your assessments in on time, the learning all your notes, for seeking out help when you need it, but there is always help available for you. So these courses are anywhere from two to five years. Let's have a little bit of a look at how a timetable plays out. In each semester you could do three to four subjects which would be a full-time study load. In each particular subject you would do anywhere from three to four hours contact time. So that could look like a lecture or a lectorial, which is a cross between a lecture and tutorial, and then you've got your tutorials there.

Christie:
And then for every hour of contact time, you'll also need to supplement that with personal study. As you can see in this timetable, a student might look to spend their Friday night studying, or even sometime on the weekend. You can also say that their Monday, they've done it really well, where they might do a lecture and tutorial and then take advantage of the study facilities and the library and things on campus and then finish off with a lecture. So they're packing their study in there, and the reason why they can do that is they can pop work in between and make sure they're keeping things fresh and balanced by staying fit and healthy and going out and seeing friends and things. So that gives you a really good overview of the bit of the differences between higher education and vocational education.

Christie:
But across all levels, we have online enabled delivery. So we've got recorded lectures that you can view any time. This infrastructure was set up prior to our current circumstances, so students were able to use Canvas, which is their online portal to navigate their study journey, submit assignments, interact with their lecturers in different things. But some changes have been made to make sure that we're enabling the online learning of our current students within these circumstances. So exams have been replaced with case studies or reports, or timed online assessments where it's appropriate. All of the software that students usually get access to within specialized courses such as the design courses, engineering and different things like that, you do still have the availability to use My Desktop, which is a platform that can help pop that software onto your computer as well.

Christie:
We do have Collaborate Ultra, which allows you to break out into little breakout rooms and have some interactive tutorials there. But at RMIT the main thing that we'd love to say here is that we are continuously improving our platforms. We love student feedback so that we can action it and make it a better and supportive experience, and we're really committed to doing that. So we conduct surveys to students, little poll surveys to see where they're at and see what they need at the time. And then as government advice changes, we may return to on-campus facilities and things like that, but we will keep you abreast of that as that comes along, and we are sticking within the government guidelines for that.

Christie:
And lastly apprenticeship or pre-apprenticeship training might be right for you. So we've talked about this, so you might want to go and get that ability to start out your theory and then go and seek an apprenticeship to come back and do some more study with us for a three to four-year journey. You get to go out on site and you get paid if you're in an apprenticeship to do that. Brilliant. So this is what we're here for. Let's talk about some pathways and how to get from A to B. So in this particular scenario, a year 12 student may have got the ATAR they require, they've done the prerequisite study they're required. That was all hunky-dory, everything's good. They popped this course on their preferences and they started in year one, went through two, three and four years of study in the engineering, civil and infrastructure course, and then graduated out and went straight into career.

Christie:
But there's lots of different ways that we can do this. You can see that we've used a particular example of engineering here. So what I'd love to do, is give Charith who is one of our current engineering students in telecommunications, the opportunity in his [inaudible 00:22:03] video to tell you a little bit more about the pathways coming up in engineering.

Charith:
Hi, my name is Charith and I study engineering at RMIT. I'm here to tell you about some of the pathways at RMIT in case you didn't receive the ATAR requirement for the engineering streams at RMIT. So there's the associate degree and there's the advanced diploma. So these programs are here. So they're about two years of duration, and if you complete them, you'd pretty much join the engineering bachelor degree after this requirement, or you can choose to work in the industry straight away, depending on your preference.

Charith:
So the associate degree have multiple streams in mechanical, civil, structural, electrical, and even telecoms as well. So depending on what kind of stream you want to specialize in, the programs are built for your passion as well. So the first year would be more broad, you'll learn a bit from different areas. And then in the second year, you'd start specializing in the area that you would like to. And once you finish these pathway programs, whether it's the associate or the advanced diploma, you can choose to work straight into the industry or move on to a bachelor degree. If you missed any information and you want to know more, feel free to check the link that we will be providing you on the RMIT website, and I hope you enjoyed this video. See you next time.

Christie:
Fantastic. So good to hear from current students. All right. So Charith, one of the courses that he mentioned was our Bachelor of Engineering (Honors), which is a non-specialized first year of engineering. Students within who wants to study engineering, usually they would have had to have done maths methods or higher as a prerequisite to coming into engineering. But if you hadn't done that math, or you just weren't sure exactly which specialization of engineering you wanted to go into, this might be the course for you. Because within this particular course, you get exposed to five core subjects. You've got professional engineering practice, digital fundamentals, engineering science, creative engineering and engineering mathematics. And if you didn't do maths methods, you'd also do an introduction to engineering mathematics course

Christie:
So it prepares you in that first year to get all of the core study that you need to have done as well as an engineering maths course to help you transition into engineering. And also exposure to up to three specializations of engineering. So students that might be still on the fence as to what to specialize in can take three different options and really solidify their choices and then credit into the second year of their bachelor course and their specialization. And it's still a four-year program. So even if you had started on your specialization on day one, if you came through this particular course, you'd still graduate out at the same time. So let's keep going with pathways.

Christie:
You might be in the situation where in year 12, you don't receive the ATAR that you dreamed off, or you didn't do the prerequisite study, or you went on school VCE, or did VCAA. Well, these are the two other options that Charith talked about, which are the associate degree in engineering technology and the advanced diploma in engineering technology. And as you can see, the arrows go into the core structure of the bachelor. They don't tell you to go back and start again. So with the advanced diploma, you get a year and a half worth of credit. So you'll only do an extra semester more than students who started the bachelor from day one. And with the associate degree, you actually start year three. So it's still a four-year pathway.

Christie:
So you would graduate out at the exact same time as someone who started the specialization from day one. But we mentioned this earlier too, our vocational education level courses and pathways can be used to graduate out as they are industry recognized and career ready. So you may want to go into an associate degree and study for two years and then get out and get into your industry and get your experience and exposure there. That's definitely a valid pathway and you can do that with us at RMIT.

Christie:
But now, this is the really exciting part for year 12s in 2020. RMIT is so excited to be able to tell you about Pathways Guaranteed. So in 2019, we trialed six Pathway Guaranteed options across courses and business, and I can tell you they were super, super popular. And so what that meant was there were six particular VTAC codes for these Pathways Guaranteed in business that students could put on their preferences and lots of students did.

Christie:
So we're excited to announce this year that not only are we opening up Pathways Guaranteed across the whole institution at RMIT, with packaged options available in VTAC with specific codes, but we have a whopping 85 different versions of them, which is incredible. And we are the first university in Victoria to be able to give you this option in VTAC. So Australian citizens and permanent residents or New Zealand citizens can put these Pathways Guaranteed package pathways on your preferences. They guarantee you a place in the bachelor. So upon successful completion of the pathway course, you then go straight into the bachelor as a place is already there for you. So you get to study in the field of your choice, you get to graduate with those two qualifications, and in some cases you're not extending the minimum study time, which is fantastic.

Christie:
Let's have a look at a a visual representation all the Pathways Guaranteed options. As you can see, there's only one step here. So you're going into your guaranteed option of doing a diploma of business and a bachelor of business and human resource management. And so what that means is when you complete your diploma of business, you'll then go straight into your bachelor as you have an offer for that. And so you'll complete your course, you'll go out with your HRM qualification and go into your career, which is awesome. So let's have a look. These are some examples of the packaged pathways, pathways guaranteed options and VTAC. So they have their own unique codes, and you can put these in your preferences to go through our Pathways Guaranteed program.

Christie:
If you're wondering, how do you find these pathways at RMIT? How do you know where they exist? We have a dedicated tool to help you navigate that journey. So it's pathways.rmit.edu.au, and you can go through and find pathways in the interest area that you're interested in. So I've done a walk-through for you, and let me narrate that for you. So you type in the URL, pathways.rmit.edu.au, press search and the interactive tool pops up. Now you can click explore searches or use the core search button at the top. And it will [inaudible 00:29:03] all the different interest areas available at RMIT. So lots of different ones available. We're going to probably have a look at engineering. Here we go. So this pops out all of the different courses that have pathways at RMIT. You'll see some related fields there. And if you want to go back and have a look at an area that's a bit different, you can.

Christie:
For the aerospace engineering course, there were two pathways, so let's have a look at what they are. We've got an associate degree here, which we can see on the right, and then on the left, we can go back and see other courses that may have pathways too. But you can see the associate degree and the advanced diploma, you can go and have a look at the pathways details there, you'll see the duration for those courses. So pathway A is four years to intern, and pathway B is a four and a half, two years in the advanced diploma and two and a half and the bachelor. So four and a half years in total.

Christie:
So let's go have a look at how this pathway unfolds for us. Here we are, a bit more information still that you can see the four and a half years there, and we can come down under the advanced diploma and see what the duration is and the campus that you'd be studying at. Different details in the basic entry requirements. But you can also go out to our course page at RMIT to have a little bit more look of the information there.

Christie:
Here some more examples of pathways, and now look, can you believe that for the Bachelor of Business and Human Resource Management RMIT offers 19 different pathway options. Too many options for your preference list, but let's have a look at four here. Now, to note, all four of these pathways are three-year pathways, the same duration as if you did the Bachelor of Business HRM from the beginning. So pathway A, you looked at doing an associate degree. That's a two-year course. You'd do a year of study in the bachelor qualification, and then you'd come out. Pathway B uses the diploma of financial planning there, and that's a year long course. And then you'd be able to go into second year of the bachelor course and graduate still within three years.

Christie:
Pathway C is actually a triple barreled pathway opportunity. So yes, it's possible that you can go through multiple pathway courses into the bachelor. So this particular student wanted to do a Certificate IV in Accounting and Bookkeeping, into the Diploma of Accounting, and then onto the Bachelor of Business for the final two years. Three years still. And then pathway D is an example of our Pathways Guaranteed option. So the Diploma of Business and the Bachelor of Business Human Resource Management is a Pathways Guaranteed option, so it's there for you to put on your preferences.

Christie:
Now, international students, there are pathways available for you and we can tell you all about them. In terms of pre-university study, we can offer English study through RMIT English Worldwide. We'll show you a little bit more about how that breaks down and how many weeks of study you'd need to do depending on some equivalent study and VCE. So we'll show you a bit about that in a minute. If you needed to bridge some secondary school results, we do also offer guaranteed pathways within our foundation studies. And there are three streams for that. So there's art design architecture, business, or science engineering and health. So those students who study foundations, it's a guaranteed pathway into a program at RMIT for our international students. And then you'll see the journey is the same through vocational education, higher education, postgraduate for our students there as well for international students.

Christie:
But in terms of English, if we're looking at the equivalent score with [inaudible 00:32:52] EAL, and the intended program that a student would look to go into if they were an international student and needed English, these are the weeks of English that we can offer you. So depending on which course you want to go into, we can apply a packaged offer that includes these weeks of English. And when you go and you complete these, and then you'll get your offer to keep going into your bachelor course.

Christie:
How do you apply? We were just talking about international students, so we'll talk about your first. International students can apply through VTAC for higher education programs. Those are your associate degrees and bachelor degrees. The academic requirements are the same as domestic students with English requirements also, and if you're looking at doing courses that require additional application requirements, such as a portfolio, an interview, a design task, you'd also need to submit them. International students need to apply directly to RMIT if you're looking at vocational education programs, or if you're looking at those packaged offers. So your English, your foundation studies, all those recognized pathways.

Christie:
Now year 12, you'll be applying through VTAC. So for all courses, vocational education and higher education, 100% of our courses of those levels are offered in VTAC. So you can apply through VTAC to RMIT in semester one or semester two, but you can also apply directly to RMIT in semester two if that's what you'd like to do.

Christie:
But do you want to know more? You've got the rest of the day today up until 3:00 to keep checking out the Open Day platform. There's so much to see. You can go and have a look now in the particular study areas and have a bit of a play around and see which vocational education and higher education courses are available in an area you're interested in. You could have a bit of a look at that pathways tool, and you can jump on our website at any time to see more information about courses.

Christie:
When you're on a course page, if you've got a question, there is a yellow bar at the bottom that will follow you. And there is a function there to live chat ourstudy@rmitteam. So definitely give them a chat if you've got a quick question. But if you've got a question that's a bit lengthier and you want some comprehensive answers to a longer question, you can email them at study@rmit.edu.au, but from here, our advice would be, have a chat to your relatives and your career advisors about what you've seen. Tell them what your intentions are for what's next for you, so that they can advise you on how best to use your preferences where you can seek pathway opportunities in any RMIT courses that you like the look of. And you're more than welcome to get in touch with us at RMIT with any further questions, but we do definitely hope you enjoy the rest of Open Day. But now is the time that we can go live for some questions. So thank you so much for your attention thus far.

Theresa:
Amazing. Thank you, Christie for that insightful presentation. Now we do have a lot of chats coming through, so thank you to all of those questions. We are getting through them all right now, and our team are on the back end, who will be answering them privately, or we have published a few of those. So Christie, we do have some really great questions, especially around what is an associate degree?

Christie:
Fantastic. An associate degree, in its essence, is a two-year qualification at undergraduate level. So the study that you do within those courses, often are the same subjects that's offered in the first two years of a bachelor qualification, but the learning environment is a bit more like the vocational education courses. So you've got a smaller group of people, the assignments might be slightly different, but it's a two year course that's recognized at RMIT that you can use. And then it's a really good pathway to springboard you into further study at bachelor level, if that's what you'd like to do.

Christie:
But we have associate degrees across the board in business and engineering and science. We've got them all over the show. They're really good courses if you want to try and see if tertiary education at undergraduate level is right for you, because they are recognized into pathway options. So you might say, "Let's give two years of study a go, let me see how I enjoy it." And if you're coming out the second year going, "Let's go on to the third year of study." Then you've got that option. But like we see it, you can actually graduate out with that recognized qualification at associate degree level and seek employment with those. So they're amazing courses, they're really nurturing and supportive, but often the same study subjects as the first two years for bachelor.

Theresa:
Amazing. Thank you for that example. While we're on that topic, do you mind explaining what an honors degree is, please?

Christie:
Sure. So honors talks about a final year within a particular qualification that gives students the ability to undertake an extended research opportunity or to go into a lengthy project. And the reason why honors degrees are offered is because those particular industries often encourage postgraduate study. And then that way you can go straight from a bachelor course with honors and to a postgraduate level study. So you could look at a postgraduate diploma or even start straight in a masters.

Christie:
A really good example is that our bachelor of engineering courses have honors attached to them, and that gives our students the example to undertake a year long project, that at the end of the year, they get to show at our showcase ingenious at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Center. And that honors year gives them the opportunity to speak to lecturers about their research. They really get to tailor the journey that they want to go on with developing this research, but also see it through over a full semester or a full year. So you'll see different particular courses around and study areas that offer that honors study to give students who might think about going to postgraduate that opportunity for that exposure for research and theoretical study.

Theresa:
Incredible. Thanks, Christie. So with selection tasks, do students in deployments and associate degree events, diplomas, do they have selection task as well?

Christie:
It's a really good question and something that I would definitely encourage you, for any course that you're interested in to jump on our website and check. So there are some courses at RMIT that are ATAR only, and we can consider you eligible from just popping it on your VA type preference. But there are some courses that may require additional requirements for admission. And when you jump onto an RMIT course page, you'll see up the top a nice, big, bold blue bar, and where it says the ATAR school there, if it says a range of criteria or other, I would be clicking straight on that admissions tab and going down and having a little bit more of a look.

Christie:
So the classic ones would be on our creative subjects. So if you're thinking fashion, architecture, textiles, some of our communication courses, game design, animation, those kinds of courses, it's very hard to see if a student has the creative aptitude or see what their thought processes and their creativity are just from an ATAR alone. So what RMIT has now, the 2021 semester one information went live on August 2nd on all of our course pages that require selection tasks. So if you had a look before that, definitely go back to that course page and see the updated information. But you'll see exactly what you need to do there and how you create a profile with RMIT to be able to submit it. But it could look like a folio or a folio presentation submission. It could be a design task. For architecture, there's one where they say, "Hey, go out and find a site and tell us how you would better utilize that site with some infrastructure there."

Christie:
So it's a bit of a design exercise, but they love to see in-progress work, even work that you've decided not to continue to pursue, as well as finished projects. So you can get those from your study at school, also from study at home as well. So any works that you've created at home, you could also look to submit those. But coming back to the main point, go onto the RMIT course page you're interested in and have a look under the admissions section, especially if it says range of criteria, because there'll be additional requirements that you'll need to do to apply for that course.

Theresa:
Amazing. Thanks Christie. So we have some other questions about students not knowing what type of business or what type of engineering they want to do. Do you just want to elaborate how pathways really encourage students on how to choose their majoring area at RMIT please?

Christie:
Absolutely. There are so many things I could say to that. So I'll try and get through as much as I could say. For business, for example, you saw for human resource management that there's 19 different ways to get through into a bachelor of business and human resource management with different pathways. Now, depending on where you're at, if you really wanted to take the journey nice and slow and start with something that you might be interested in, say in a certificate IV level, it's a six month qualification. So you can commit to that six months and see how you enjoy... There was an example of accounting, so see how you enjoy accounting. And then once you finish that course, you could look to go enter the diploma. If you're loving accounting, keep going and that's brilliant.

Christie:
But if you are in that course and you're having those conversations with your peers and with your teaching staff about where you want to end up, and you're finding that your journey is navigating, you can also create it into other courses, into other pathways as well and navigate your journey through. So in business, for example, we've got a stack of different specializations. We've got entrepreneurship, finance, we've got marketing. There is a whole bunch of different ones, we've got blockchain enabled business, a stack of different ways that you can go with business. So you can always credit through into different core structures to get where you want to go. Very excitingly, we just recently also announced the Bachelor of Business Innovation and Enterprise course, which is a build-your-own business course.

Christie:
I was speaking to a career advisor from our school the other day, who said, "Christie, can you tell me what kind of student would be best to try and apply for this course?" So if a student is interested in business, but you just don't quite know where you want it to take you, I definitely recommend that innovation and enterprise bachelor of business. Because you do get to build your subjects into the degree. It's very, very flexible. But as a bonus, there are up to eight different opportunities for work integrated learning where you can put those subjects that you put into practice, and you can really give it a go while you're studying and see how you go from there. And that's a really awesome way to go through a business pathway.

Christie:
That's a really awesome course. That's a pathway within its own course, really. But I would definitely encourage you to keep having a look in that pathways tool, and see just how many different options are available to you. Then jump onto those courses, have a look at the course plans, see what's offered as the subjects and see if you want to pop it on your preferences.

Christie:
In terms of engineering, we saw that there were a few different levels of VA study that you can experience engineering, and those pathways are really good for developing your engineering aptitudes and the maths and the technical stuff as you go through into bachelor level. So you can get some exposure to very general engineering through the vocational education courses. You'll do all of the core work and make sure you get that all underway. But because we've got so many different specializations within engineering too, you can always transfer from one to the other with some credit and get into this specialization of engineering that you wish to go into.

Theresa:
Amazing. Thank you for that overview. What about people who may not be in year 11 or year 12, or they're returning to study, or they may have prior learning as well, or come from another provider? How do people take access into pathways at RMIT that way?

Christie:
Absolutely. There's a few different ones there and we'll take them one by one as well. Say you wanted to change career or there may have been some impacts with our current circumstances. That means that you're thinking about pivoting into a different industry. That's where vocational education courses can be really, really useful because you can start and get the knowledge of the basics of the particular industry and scaffold your learning through as you go. We saw too that sometimes you can take a diploma or even an associate degree and go out into entry level jobs. And those are shorter. Those are either one to two-year courses depending on which one you choose.

Christie:
So it's a smaller investment of time that you can use to go and upskill in a different area, try something new. It's not a full bachelor qualification of commitment in terms of pivoting into a new industry. When we were talking about the selection tasks too, if you were thinking about pivoting into a creative course at RMIT, go for it. You can submit work that is done by your hobbies from at home. So if you were a mature aged student and you haven't been through VCA and studio arts in recent times, and you don't have a portfolio, that's totally fine. You can create works from home. And I would encourage you, we've got a new series about Discover What's Next webinar series that are coming up, and there were two sessions there facilitation tasks. So if that was the boat that you're in, definitely sign up for those selection task webinars, as we'll have academics and current students from within those courses to give you tips and tricks about how to do your selection tasks.

Christie:
So with the VCA students, I'd recommend you come to those ones as well. But then the third one, if you were studying in another institution and you decided that RMIT was the better fit for you, well welcome too. We love to have you. What you will do is you'll apply to your course at RMIT and then you can provide us transcripts so that we can see if we can recognize your prior learning into the core structure you want to go into.

Christie:
So there may be circumstances where you have only done a couple of courses because it's been one semester and we might be able to give you the full credit for that, but it is a case-by-case basis thing, and the early you come over, the more likely it is that you'll be able to receive a higher amount of credit. So you can transfer internally, externally, get recognition, pivot into a different career at RMIT, and that's the real benefit of being able to offer type qualifications and higher level study. We can help you get from where you are now to that dream that you want to attain in the way that's best for you.

Theresa:
Amazing. Thank you, Christie. We do have a number of chats coming through. We're about to close off chat and we'll reply to those chats privately. So if you have not received your reply yet, just down the line and we will definitely reply to those very shortly. But Christie, over to you to finish off today's session.

Christie:
Well, thank you so much, Theresa, and look, they're fantastic questions. And this is exactly what Open Day is all about. So I would recommend you just keep going away and researching. Now's a really good time to do that, so that you can be really well-informed when you start going through your application processes. And no question is a stupid question. We love to hear from you at RMIT. So enjoy the rest of your time on the Open Day platform. Definitely keep your ear to the ground about different events and competitions and things that come up at RMIT, have a checkout of our Discover What's Next series that's coming up. Enjoy the rest of the sessions that are coming this afternoon and tomorrow, and I really do hope we see you around very soon. So I'd just like to say noon gudgin, and thank you so much for coming.

[End transcript]

Back to Video

Discuss what's next in Industry

RMIT Pro-Vice Chancellor for Vocational Education, Mish Eastman asks a panel of recent graduates about the underpinning skills for success as part of RMIT Open Day, 9 August 2020.

Transcript

[Start transcript]

Mish Eastman:
Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to today's RMIT talk. I'm Mish Eastman, the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Vocational Education here at RMIT. Before we start today's session, I'd like to acknowledge the people of the Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung language groups of the Eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the university. RMIT respectfully acknowledges their ancestors and elders past, present and emerging. And while we conduct our work remotely, I want to pay my respect to the wider unceded lands of this nation.

Mish Eastman:
So, RMIT started its life as the Working Men's College, back in 1887. And back then it adopted the Latin motto, which I can't say, but which meant a skilled hand and a cultivated mind. A lot has changed in the last 133 years, but this motto continues to be used by the university today. And our vocational education sector has had a long and proud history of learning through doing. Hands-on learning that prepares our students for the real world of work.

Mish Eastman:
Our graduates are well equipped to become the next generation of capable employees, employers, entrepreneurs, and leaders. And today we're going to be talking to two RMIT graduates and one existing student who are all doing some amazing things. So, firstly, I'd like to welcome Jonathan [McCury 00:01:42], who is a graduate at the Diploma of Advertising, the Advanced Diploma of Marketing and Communications and the Bachelor of Advertising. Welcome, Jonathan.

Jonathan McCury:
Hi, thanks for having me.

Mish Eastman:
Next, I'd like to welcome Natalie [Strunak 00:01:58], who is an alumnus of the Diploma of Financial Planning as well as the Bachelor of Business Accountancy. Welcome, Natalie.

Natalie Strunak:
Thank you for having me.

Mish Eastman:
And certainly, by no means least I'd like to welcome Sebastian Mollison. Who's a graduate of the Advanced Diploma of Engineering Technology Electrical. And is now studying the Bachelor of Engineering Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Welcome, Sebastian.

Sebastian Mollison:
Thanks for having me.

Mish Eastman:
So, just some housekeeping before we get started, I wanted to iterate that we will have 15 to 20 minutes at the end of our panel discussion to go over any questions from the audience. So, we really look forward to receiving those questions from you. And if you could submit them in the Q&A tool on the right hand side of your screen at any time, we'll do our best to answer as many questions as we can.

Mish Eastman:
If we do run out of time, remember our LiveChat is currently open and can be joined as well. So we'll start off with you. Jonathan, you covered a lot of bases as well at RMIT studying advertising, marketing and communications. Could you tell us a little bit about what attracted you to your area of study and how did you land your current job, which is at roadshow films?

Jonathan McCury:
Sure. I always knew I wanted to do something creative. The idea of studying creative thinking for three years sounded too good to be true. And I knew that RMIT was one of the key universities when it came to creative thinking and just creative subjects in general. So, I decided to choose advertising because I liked the idea of studying big ideas and how to come up with those big ideas.

Jonathan McCury:
And in terms of how I came to be at Roadshow Films after I graduated the advanced diploma and then pathwayed into the degree, once I finished the degree, I quickly learned that finding the perfect job is harder than it looks. And I sat down and really just aligned what I learnt at RMIT and what I'm passionate about to define where I would be best suited and the opportunity at roadshow films came up and I reached out directly and then was able to land a job.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. And Natalie, you completed a Diploma of Financial Planning with us after you'd done your Bachelor of Business at [crosstalk 00:04:36]. Could you tell us a little bit about what drew you to this area and also how you've now secured work in the current industry that you're in?

Natalie Strunak:
I mean, I started off finishing high school thinking I was going to be an accountant. Which is laughable now. So, I went on to do my, my Bachelor in Accountancy. And I landed a job after doing that. I was an accounts officer and it was a very bland job. Which is suited to some people, but it wasn't so much for me. And I found that I've always loved talking to people. I've always loved helping people. So, I kind of sat back and thought, how can I combine, that love for numbers and data as well as helping people, which is why I kind of looked into financial planning.

Natalie Strunak:
And that's how my story is. I absolutely love what I do now. I did the Diploma of Financial Planning and I learnt so much and knew that it was for me pretty much from there. And then I met a few amazing people along the way I actually met, Liz [MedMwin 00:05:37], who is the recruitment officer for IMP, and we hit it off from the beginning and she pretty much said, "We want you, so that's all right."

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. Thank you. And Sebastian, you finished studying the Advanced Diploma of Engineering and now you've pathwayed into the Bachelor of Electrical and Engineering. What was behind your choice of starting with the advanced diploma?

Sebastian Mollison:
So, it was two main reasons. So, back when I was in my last year of high school, I had definitely no idea where I want to go. I knew I really enjoyed engineering and particularly sort of working with technology and electrical. And I also didn't think I'd have the aid to get into higher ed, which I eventually wanted to get to higher ed. And so, my careers counselor just recommended me to the advanced diploma and it worked out perfectly because RMIT did both the higher ed courses, as well advanced diplomas.

Sebastian Mollison:
And it's it just sort of a good pathway and it fit my interests perfectly and it also was a good test bed to know, I could spend two years doing the advanced diploma and then I'd know if I'm in the right path I want to be in. And also cut. I'd get one year of that back if I went a bit, when I went to go into higher ed. So yeah, it turned out perfectly and just was exactly what I needed.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. Sebastian, I might stick with you for a minute because I hear you've had some amazing success in a national skills competition. Could you tell us a bit about that and share what you think this experience has taught you?

Sebastian Mollison:
Sure. So, the competition I took part in was called, the WorldSkills National Competition. WorldSkills is a big sort of company that runs competitions all around the world, ranging from regionals to internationals for a wide variety of different skills, not just the skill I picked, which was mechatronics. So, in my first year of my advanced diploma, I was doing really well in a class I really liked called PLCs. And so, my teacher tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hey, got this competition coming up, do you wanna be involved?"

Sebastian Mollison:
And all I heard was, "There's this competition since you'll be stuck doing the class that I love for an entire day." So yeah, I'm definitely in. And so, I went along to that and I really enjoyed it. And this was the regional competition and I ended up coming second and I was like, "Oh, sweet, good [inaudible 00:08:00]." Then he tapped me on the shoulder again saying, "Hey, guess what? You're going to nationals." I was like, "Oh, okay." So, things got a bit serious there.

Sebastian Mollison:
I sort of, having to train and stuff and went to nationals and took out the gold medal. So, it went really well. And, I think it was just, I really enjoyed it. And it gave me some lots of experience working under sort of pressure. Because, you have to complete a task under a time pressure. So, competition working under that pressure. And then just the people that you meet well, as you're doing that, you're meeting some of the best skilled people in the country. It's incredible. So, that's the thing I really enjoyed and I did really well at.

Mish Eastman:
You certainly did. Congratulations, sir. That's a really magnificent story. And then subject to travel allowances post-COVID. There then will be World Competitions as well, yes?

Sebastian Mollison:
Yeah. So, after that, I sort of went on to a sort of semi-final area and we sort of realized, me and my trainers realized that once I went up against the top teams from both China and India who had about two years of experience and training on me. So, it's probably not the best pathway to go straight to Russia, which would have been that same year in a couple months. And so, I started working and apparently still doing training and preparing for another Nationals coming up next year and then hopefully Internationals in China.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. Natalie, I might come back to you, and ask you, could you tell our audience what a day looks like for you as a trainee associate at IMP. And what kind of skills that you learn along the way of your study with us, do you use in your day-to-day work?

Natalie Strunak:
So, I guess a day is very busy in finance. As everyone would probably imagine, I normally start the day, and I'm very structured in the way I do things. So, I'll pretty much sit down at my desk, and write a big list. That's how I even do things outside of work as well. Write a big to-do list for my day. And that will just involve things like, going to client meetings, helping the advisors create [file 00:10:19] notes and all that fun stuff. But there were so many things that I learnt within my diploma, which do help me today.

Natalie Strunak:
Whether it be technical knowledge, there is a lot of things I know now, which I didn't know before doing the diploma, which have helped me every single day. As well as just the engagement with clients. That's something that was focused on a lot during the diploma and it's something that has helped me every single day, because I pretty much talk to people every day.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. Thank you. And back to you, Jonathan, could you tell us a bit about, I think you told us a little bit before, how you got your job at road show films? And again, if you could take us through what a day in your work life looks like or maybe a week, because I think every day is different, and some of the experiences from your time with RMIT that you use in your day-to-day work.

Jonathan McCury:
Sure. You're very correct. Every day is extremely different. We work across so many different films and so many different genres that, a day could start with a screening for a film that is to be released later in the year, then we could go into a brainstorm session about a horror movie that's going to come up. Then we might be briefing in an events agency for a big action thriller movie. And then I could be dealing with media or film critics. So, there's a lot that we do and it's all very fast-paced. But it's lots of fun.

Jonathan McCury:
And some of the key things that I learned at RMIT was really all about time management is a big part about what we do. We work with a lot of the international studios like Warner Brothers. So, having a good grasp on time is really important, because they're obviously in the US. So, having a good idea of how the different time zones work and prioritizing what needs to be done first, and then obviously creative thinking, which I've touched on a bit. We need to be able to create really unique ideas to stand out.

Jonathan McCury:
And yeah, I think attention to detail too, because a lot of my job involves booking things like a talent to us, so accommodation and flight. So, if I were to get, international superstar actors flights wrong, that could be a pretty big deal. So, attention to detail is really important as well.

Mish Eastman:
Excellent. Thank you. So, you've touched on some of those Jonathan, because my next question is a little bit about some of the underpinning skills for success in your industry. And I'll circle back to you in a moment, Jonathan, to see if there's some extras you'd like to add on to that. So, Natalie, I might come to you first. What are some of those, really practical and important skills for success in your industry that you've picked up that have helped you in your career so far?

Natalie Strunak:
Well, there's a few different areas, I guess you can go to. To being technical knowledge. So, you need to know what you're talking about. It's definitely important. You don't want to go to an advisor who doesn't know much about money. So, you do need to have that technical knowledge. And that's something that I did get a lot of in the diploma that I did. And as well as that you need to be able to communicate very well. Because what's the point of advice if you can't communicate it with your clients.

Natalie Strunak:
So, communication is a very big part of what I do. And just being able to make things understandable. There's no point getting too technical with clients as well, because at the end of the day, they need to understand what you're talking about. But that communication is absolutely huge and was a massive part of the diploma that I did.

Mish Eastman:
So, the diploma gave you that opportunity to explore both those technical skills and also those really critical human and employability skills?

Natalie Strunak:
Correct. Yes.

Mish Eastman:
So, in practical day-to-day student experience, what were some of the ways you'd built on those human skills would you say?

Natalie Strunak:
Well, our assignments were kind of done in various ways. So, of course, you would do your paper-based assignments where you would just, type it up and submit it. But on top of that, we also did, role-playing, which was a big part of what we did. And you'd be confident before doing a role play, but then you sit there in front of someone and that's how you really know, what you need to work on and then looking back at yourself, because it's all being recorded, you can actually see, how I need to work on that. I need to stop saying, "Um." Which I still need to work on, but just looking at yourself back. And then of course, now that I'm in the workforce and I really am talking to real people every day, I'm definitely using a lot of those skills.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. Thanks, Natalie. Now, Sebastian, you're in an interesting position because you're continuing study, but also I think working on those skills around technical capability, which you've been able to really harness in with that world skills approach as well as then, what would you see as some of the other core important skills for success in the industries that you're going into?

Sebastian Mollison:
Well it's quite a few. So, WorldSkills has taught because it's [inaudible 00:15:57] you're given a task and you're given a really tight time constraint to do it. You sort of got to be really quick. So, you got to have to think on your feet. So, given a problem, you may not have time to sit down for hours or get advice from other people. Well, you can't do that in the competition, and you've got to find solutions quickly. And you've also got to be careful because sometimes you might hit a brick wall, so to speak, something you might seem impossible to you.

Sebastian Mollison:
Your client might give you a task in class or you got given an assignment in higher ed. It just seems impossible to either because of time or just, you can't do it or a bit of both often. And so, it's important to sort of not stop moving when you hit that point I found, and sort of maybe break down those tasks into smaller bits and just keep going one after another, until either you finish it and you get in my case, a working program, a working piece of code or a sign that doesn't work.

Sebastian Mollison:
And when it doesn't work, you've got to then use that sort of thinking on your feet. That even when you fail, you got to make sure you don't stop. I had a project in one of my classes where, I was testing it and about a day before I had to demonstrate it and write a report in it. It stopped working. It just broke. It didn't work. And so, I had to then go into that demonstration, knowing I had a broken piece of work, I have to write a report and saying that didn't work.

Sebastian Mollison:
And so, that's what I did. I said, "This didn't work. This is how it didn't work. And I had to sort of figure out a way to then make a report of saying that it didn't work." And it actually worked out pretty well. And I got my marks. And so, it was important. I didn't just stop and just give up. And it's like, "Oh, it's broken. I'm just going to lose my marks. I'm done." Anyway, it's the same thing. I encountered at WorldSkills. So, in the Global Skills challenge which was a semi-finals after the national competition, it's a three-day competition.

Sebastian Mollison:
And the first few days where we, me and my team, because it's a team-based competition, had lost. And on the third day we just said, we're going to work our asses off. We really just want to get this just a bit of lime. We just really want to show off a bit and know that we belong here. And so, we did that and it worked out really well. And the day went perfectly, we got everything we need to get done. And then, came to the demonstration and one of the other teams, their machine failed, it's like going great now.

Sebastian Mollison:
And then they came to our machine and they're about to hit stop button and get it running. And the axle broke and on the motors. And so, we lost all the marks. There's nothing you can do about that. And so, it was that point it's like, "Okay, I'll keep going. I won't go to Internationals this time, but I'll keep on working. I'll do another two years of training. I'll get better and I'll go next time." And it's just those things you don't stop. You got to keep on moving and think on your feet when you hit those problems.

Mish Eastman:
Great examples. Thanks Sebastian. So, really about that persistence, breaking things down, working your way through it and not being disheartened. Because things do go wrong in the world of work all the time it's then about how you navigate through. Really strong examples. Thank you so much. Now, Jonathan, I'm going to circle back to you now that you've heard your colleagues talk, but I'm really interested from your perspective about what are some of those underpinning skills for success that are so important in your industry? I think you told us some about the technical skills, but tell us a little bit about some of those human skills as well and how important they are in the industry that you work within.

Jonathan McCury:
Sure. A lot of what I do is obviously communications, whether it be with key media outlets or film critics, and often we might have to introduce a film at a media screening. So, being able to present, being confident in front of people is really important. And RMIT gave me so many opportunities to do that during the calls with many real life client presentations that we had to do. So, I think that in addition to the other ones, that was a key one, for sure.

Mish Eastman:
So, that concept of case studies and being able to work on real-world tasks, I think I've heard that theme come through from all of you as being really important to building that kind of confidence repertoire as you go through that application of your knowledge to what you're doing.

Jonathan McCury:
And it also gives you an authentic example to bring into a job interview. Here's a real company and here's a real project that I worked on for that company.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. Thank you. I've got another question for three of you and then we'll probably go do some free questions from our audience, which is always fun. So, you all seem to go straight from high school into vocational studies. Well, Natalie, you had a slightly different approach. You had a reverse. So, I'm really intrigued in that. I might start with you, Natalie. And think about for you, what were some of the challenges or the advantages that you saw having transitioned from doing a higher education model that set you up for initial employment and then coming into a vocational education model?

Natalie Strunak:
Well, I guess in my bachelor degree, there's definitely a massive difference in the way you are taught things. Bachelor degree is not so practical, you'll find, although it was great and I learned some amazing knowledge, which I do still use today. So, I did get the technical knowledge from doing that, but then moving into, vocational ed and doing my diploma, that's where it really all solidified and bringing it all together, all that knowledge and being able to use it for something. So, that's a massive part of what I did.

Mish Eastman:
Sebastian, for you doing this pathway through the vocational studies first and then moving into your bachelor degree, tell us about what some of the benefits have been that you've seen along the way and how that probably given you and the age that some of your other colleagues in a strike degree might not have.

Sebastian Mollison:
Well, I think first thing, probably, in my personal case, the transition between Year 12 to the advanced diploma was exceptionally smooth. It was easy and then going say from year 10 to year 11 or year 11 to Year 12. And I think that's mainly because the difficulty doesn't spike up as that much, but it slowly increases to sort of gradually get you to the level you need to be at for the bachelor.

Sebastian Mollison:
Although I will say that there is a bit of a jump between the advanced diploma to the bachelor. In regards to sort of how I would prepare for that, in some areas I found that, say, for example, programming, or, as Natalie said, there's not much hands-on experience, you get in the bachelor. So, I had that experience from the advanced diploma going in. And so, in those areas that did pretty well, but there was a couple of theory areas I struggled in and you gotta work at it.

Sebastian Mollison:
And the lecturers are pretty forgiving they've understand and they've seen it before. Because I'm not the first one to do this. Many people take that pathway. So, there are some things I found I was being prepared for and it gave me a bit of a good advantage for, in some areas. It wasn't. But I think, in the end I was very happy of the pathway that I took.

Mish Eastman:
Excellent. Thanks, Sebastian. And Jonathan, round to you, tell us about the two methods of learning and you've had a really broad experience as well. So, tell us about the differences that you've experienced in the how, probably both of those have complimented you being able to be really successful in the career that you've moved into.

Jonathan McCury:
Like the other sort of said, I think vocational education is very much how base versus higher ed being a why. Vocational education was much more practical, I found, whereas when it came to higher ed, we were forced to go to the academic resources and backing up our assessments with academic resources versus just having a real life project. I think that was one of the main differences that I found during my time at RMIT.

Mish Eastman:
Excellent. So, we're going to go to some questions from the audience and, Jonathan, I'll come straight back to you. So, someone in the audience was wondering, what subjects did you undertake in Year 12 and probably were they connected with where you've headed up now?

Jonathan McCury:
Sure, I did English. I graduated 2015. So, it's been a while. And to think about... I did English, I did [viscom 00:25:05] to get that creative design sort of, element in there. I did theater studies, so that links to the entertainment industry that I'm still in. IT, I can't really remember all of them, but they were the main electives that I did.

Mish Eastman:
That's an interesting question. Because sometimes, here you are a few years down the track now and [inaudible 00:25:32] seems such a long time ago and I think that's really important for many of our audience to know is that while they're really deep in it at the moment, actually all the other experiences you get along the way really surpass that as you go through [crosstalk 00:25:45]. Natalie, a question from the audience, you need to be good at maths to get into finance.

Natalie Strunak:
You'd think, right? Well, it's always good to have that basic math. But I think at the end of the day, what's more important than I guess, being able to add up big numbers and multiply numbers. It's more important to be able to analyze and to be able to make projections. Those are key, rather than just... Because we do have Excel at the end of the day. But being able to look at numbers and draw a painting that is key.

Mish Eastman:
And I think I heard you say that people skills were almost as important as well in your [crosstalk 00:26:31].

Natalie Strunak:
Very much. Yes. No point knowing the answer and not being able to communicate it.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. Sebastian, I think you touched on this a little bit. So, did you feel like you needed to catch up when you pathwayed into the bachelor degree? Or was it a bit of a... I think you sort of described some areas you might have been in front, whereas others, you needed to understand the methodology of learning a bit more.

Sebastian Mollison:
So, some areas, I want to say for example, there some cases where a teacher said use this equation to solve this problem and it's an equation I've never seen before because it was covered in a class that I got a credit for. And so, there's some areas where someone's just like, "Okay, build this thing." It's like, "Oh, I've done that before. I know how to do that." It's really good. But, I think the biggest thing I encountered when going between the advanced diploma and the bachelor is that you skip most of your first year classes, which are group-based where you get to learn the people in your course.

Sebastian Mollison:
So, it's often really good to make sure if you have a group of you going from the advanced diploma to the bachelor, stick with that group because it's just handy to know people and it'll take you longer to get to know people in your course. Because you've missed those first few classes.

Mish Eastman:
So, keeping that network community, it's important for the study as well as for work. I've got to say. Jonathan, a question for you [crosstalk 00:27:58].

Jonathan McCury:
Could I just touch on that for a second?

Mish Eastman:
Of course.

Jonathan McCury:
I don't know if it was the same for you guys, but I know for when I did the vocational education course, our class remained the same through all the different subjects. We were with the same people for every subject. And I feel like that really helps build those connections as you were saying. And I still talk to my friends from that course to this day and a lot of us pathwayed together. So, we went on that big journey. And I think it's much more impactful than just having a higher education class where every subject is different. You have different people in every subject, you can't really build as good and as authentic relationships than you do in the educational space.

Mish Eastman:
[crosstalk 00:28:50]. Natalie, was that your experience as well?

Natalie Strunak:
Yeah. Very much so. That's a really good point. You are with the same people every day. So, you really do get to know people a little bit better than when you're in a bachelor and you're kind of separated in one class and you see the same person, every now and again, but you do build those relationships which is really important down the track.

Sebastian Mollison:
It's one of the biggest things I miss from the advanced diploma, now in the bachelor. That always seeing the same person, getting those good connections.

Mish Eastman:
Having that sense of community and kind of understanding each other's strengths across that a bit more. Excellent. Now, Jonathan, there's a question for you about the fact that your job would be the envy of a lot of people who've studied advertising and communications, how did you land the position and was there anything special that attracted Roadshow to you?

Jonathan McCury:
Well, as I mentioned briefly earlier, I thought I knew what I wanted to do when I was job searching. But then quickly found out that it's actually a bit harder than you'd think. So, in terms of landing my position, instead of just applying for the role by the Roadshow website, I saw that the role was available and then I reached out directly to the HR team. So, I got in front of all the other applicants by reaching out and saying, "Hi, I'm interested. This is what I'm good at. This is what I studied." And I think that really helped to skip past all the applicant tracking systems that they have in place. And I got in front of the line. I think that really helped.

Mish Eastman:
That's really great advice. Thank you. Now, a question for you, Natalie, from the audience. So, someone in the audience feels like they have similar interests to you. They're attracted to data analysis and investing but have found accounting to be a bit dry. What have you found the key skills you've learned through your time at RMIT to be, because they would want to start their own business one day, would finance help them reach that goal? A bit of a multilayered question.

Natalie Strunak:
No, it's a really good one though. Because it's definitely something I relate to. So, I definitely did find accounting a bit dry not to say that it's not for everyone. Some of my closest friends are now working in accounting. [crosstalk 00:31:13], I'm not myself, but it can be a bit dry. Which is why I feel someone like me then applied learning maybe a little bit more interesting. And it's definitely more stimulating. So, I mean, applying that knowledge to a real life scenario is much more interesting than just doing maths.

Natalie Strunak:
So, that's why the diploma of financial planning was so interesting for me because you really do get practical examples. So, for example, there's a 50 year old client comes to you saying that they want to retire in 10 years time. How can you make that happen? It's really interesting. And it's something that I still do today. So, I think you'd find that definitely interesting. And the diploma would probably be more appropriate for you if you are that kind of learner who does that stimulation and applied learning.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. Thank you, Sebastian, a question for you. Are you interested in research after you complete your studies or are you really looking forward to joining the workforce or both?

Sebastian Mollison:
I'm not a hundred percent sure where I am going to be going after this, obviously sticking with engineering and programming and stuff, but I do know that I really dislike writing research papers. So, probably the workforce is where I'll end up. So, I think I'm aiming for the workforce rather than the research.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. And I might come back to you and then go around the entire panel with this question. What's one of your favorite assignments or tasks or case studies that you've used through your experience with RMIT?

Sebastian Mollison:
Oh, I think, I'm a bit of a glutton for punishment. So, I think the hardest assignments that really made me think I've enjoyed the most. So, I recently had an assignment where I had to program an HDMI port, and then put video through, which is significantly more complicated than anybody gives it credit for. And it ended up taking me something ridiculous, over a hundred hours of programming to figure this out. And it didn't work in the end, but I can't understand why I loved it so much, but I really did enjoy doing it. But sort of that stuff, a lot of the time it's great because it's just problem-solving and I'm addicted to problem solving.

Mish Eastman:
I'm pushing you to the boundaries by the sound of it? [crosstalk 00:33:48] really stretching you beyond where you thought you could, Natalie, I might circle over to you. What was one of the assignments or tasks or case studies that was one of your favorites during your time?

Natalie Strunak:
I remember one which is jumping to mind. It was actually a task that we all had, my class, where we actually sat down with a real life client. And we did, if anyone knows financial planning, we did a fact find meeting, which is where you sit down with a client and you kind of gather, what their goals are, what they want to achieve, and their current situation. So, you learn about their assets and liabilities and whatnot. And this is a real life person that was sitting in front of me and we were sitting there taking notes.

Natalie Strunak:
And then as you would, as a financial planner, we then took those notes away, and worked with those numbers to try and meet the client's goals. And then we got to have a second meeting with that client and sit down and deliver all that we gathered and all our advice. And that was the most practical, that was the most useful task that I've ever done because that's what I do everyday now. [crosstalk 00:34:56].

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic, I love it. And Jonathan, what about for you?

Jonathan McCury:
I think the standout assessment would probably have to be when I did the Global Wheel class or I did the Global Wheel class meant that we worked with the RMIT Vietnam University as well as university in the US. So, from Australia, Vietnam and US, we were all divided into different teams to work on a global brief for a Vietnamese luxury handbag brand. And that so much fun because we got to go to the Vietnam Campus at RMIT and just being able to engage with people of different cultures or working together on the same thing and having the opportunity to present in front of the client in Vietnam was something I'll never forget. It was so much fun.

Mish Eastman:
Awesome. What an amazing experience. And I think that that answers another question that was there was whether any of you had any experiences studying overseas. So, that was really practical-based example, Jonathan, that you were able to bring to life for us. Sebastian and Natalie, did you guys have anything to add to that one?

Natalie Strunak:
Just being domestic, so far.

Sebastian Mollison:
Domestic, so far.

Natalie Strunak:
Unfortunately. I think it'll stay that way for now.

Mish Eastman:
That's another question from the audience for you, Jonathan, is, how is your industry going, navigating the effect of COVID? How has it adapted so far?

Jonathan McCury:
Well, obviously it's been quite a big thing as it is across so many industries. A lot of our theatrical releases have been postponed obviously as the cinemas aren't open here in Melbourne anyway. But that just means that the content that we've got banked up for those releases that would have happened in May and June and July, they're going to just release later in the year.

Jonathan McCury:
So, in terms of having content to release, we're fine on that stretch. I think the company identified that this was an opportunity to, fast-track some content to our consumers, particularly in the PVOD, Premium Video on Demand space. So, we were able to fast-track, big titles, like Birds of Prey and The Gentleman to consumers to be able to rent digitally during this time while they are all in lock down.

Mish Eastman:
Excellent. Thank you. And for each of you, could you tell us about what might be the biggest misconception that people have about studying vocational studies here?

Sebastian Mollison:
I think one of the biggest things is that people sort of see TAFE and vocational education is a lesser option for people who aren't as intellectually capable and it's completely not true. By a large margin, particularly in what I've experienced in my case with WorldSkills is, WorldSkills is primarily a TAFE-based competition. There are people who did WorldSkills with me who are far smarter than anybody I've met. They are incredible people. And even some people in my course, I know for a fact are better than me at stuff than other people I meet in higher ed. Also a lot of people you'll find in higher ed have come from advanced diplomas. So, I think it's just another option. It's the best way to see it. And it's a pathway option as well.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic, Sebastian. Thank you. Natalie or Jonathan, have you got anything to add to that?

Natalie Strunak:
I completely agree with that. I know that, especially coming out of Year 12, if you were to talk to any of your teachers, they would always say go straight into a bachelor's, but knowing what I know now having done both, that is definitely, not always the way to go depending on what kind of person you are and what kind of learning suits you. There's so much value when doing vocational ed that I can't stress that enough. And like you said, Sebastian, some of the smartest people I've known in that class that I had with me for a year and yeah, I value it more than anything.

Mish Eastman:
Jonathan, anything else to add?

Jonathan McCury:
Yeah. I'd echo exactly what they said. I think there's a stigma when it comes to TAFE that doesn't have any merit whatsoever. And I think that people should really consider doing vocational education, especially if they're really more of a hands-on learner. It's so much more practical and a lot of the times it's a lot shorter as well. So you can get into industry, way quicker than you than you would if you went straight into higher ed. So, it's definitely something that you guys should consider. And I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. Thanks Jonathan. A couple of short, sharp ones. Natalie, for you. Did the classes you chose in Year 12 really matter when you got into your course?

Natalie Strunak:
Well, I guess they definitely helped, three classes that I did that I think even helped me today. I did Economics, I did Accounting and I did Business Management. And they kind of give you a foundation in terms of business. If you don't do them, there's definitely a chance to catch up, especially because when you do the bachelor degree or if you do a diploma, they do start from scratch again. So, don't be stressed and think that you have to have all the knowledge in the world before you go into it, you will learn the basics again, but you're going into it with that background knowledge doing those subjects definitely helped me. [crosstalk 00:41:03].

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. And, Sebastian, one for you [crosstalk 00:41:06].

Sebastian Mollison:
I just want to add on to that. I would agree with that completely because I didn't do anything engineering related in Year 12. The closest thing I did was further mathematics. Which I was told if I want to do engineering, you can't do further mathematics. You need to do the higher level mathematics. It didn't really make much of a difference at all and when I went to the university master, they'll have to catch me up from further mathematics level anyway, they based it on the fact that some people have done further mathematics. So, it wasn't a big deal for me what my [inaudible 00:41:37].

Natalie Strunak:
And I'm in finance too, and I didn't do methods so, I'm getting by.

Mish Eastman:
Excellent, great answers from all of you. Now, there's a question for each of you, from someone in the audience who wanted to know what is your dream job? So, if you could look maybe five, let's say 10 years ahead, what would your dream job be? So, Natalie, I might start with you and then I'll go Jonathan and Sebastian.

Natalie Strunak:
Well a senior financial advisor, of course. But I guess the end goal would be to work for myself. So, obviously now I'm working within a practice, but I'm doing my own thing eventually. It would be incredible.

Mish Eastman:
So, we need to look out for Strunak Finance [crosstalk 00:42:30]?

Natalie Strunak:
Please do. I'll make the business cards very soon. Yes.

Mish Eastman:
Excellent. I love it. Fantastic. And Jonathan, in a future state, what would be your dream job?

Jonathan McCury:
I find this question really hard to answer, but I guess it comes down to what I'm doing in the job, as long as I'm having fun, as long as I get to be creative. And as long as I'm working with people that are fun and make me happy. That's what matters to me. So, as long as I hit that criteria, I'm good. And right now where I am, I've got all three of those. So, I'm really happy with it.

Mish Eastman:
That's magnificent. I love it. And, Sebastian?

Sebastian Mollison:
I'm sort of in the same boat as that. I don't have a specific goal in mind, you'd probably be sending down the embedded system sort of side of engineering. Because that's what I've done really well in. But as long as it's something I'm enjoying, I love the problem-solving aspect of stuff. So, as long as I'm constantly facing these problems and working stuff out and just building things up, I'd love it. So, that's really what matters to me.

Mish Eastman:
So, about finding that match of a job that makes you personally satisfied and stretched, but also knowing that you are happy and surrounded by people that push you to be happy and content and creative and all of those important things. Before I wrap up... Oh, we've got a one for all. It says, "Help. I'm in, Year 12 and I still don't know what to do." Did you guys know exactly what you wanted to do when you were in high school or has it actually [inaudible 00:44:06], or it doesn't always fall into place, but you make some purposeful decisions that help you along that way. Jonathan, I might start with you because I think your expectation versus where you are now that's a really great example for that individual to think through.

Jonathan McCury:
Sure. I didn't even know the job I have now existed when I was in Year 12. So, you're fine. Don't worry. I think what you'll find when you go into university is that this is your opportunity to try things. Enroll in a course. And if you find that it doesn't work, you can change course. RMIT are so good at that. I know so many people who enrolled in something figured out that's not for them. And then that RMIT guided them into where to go next and what to do. So, don't be afraid. Try things, have fun.

Mish Eastman:
Excellent. Sebastian?

Sebastian Mollison:
I had absolutely no clue. I just said, "These are the three things that I like." To my careers counselor and she just pointed me towards the advanced diploma and even when I got to the bachelor, I knew I wanted to do engineering, I wanted to do some programming, so I just tried a bunch of different courses. Obviously a lot of them, of course, I had to try them and I was like, "Signal systems? Definitely don't want to do that. Embedded systems? Oh, I love that." And now I've just gone down every embedded system class I can. And I'm really enjoying it. I guess I'd say I fell into it. I didn't actively decide. It was just, "I love this. I'm going to pick more courses like this and it's just turned into that."

Mish Eastman:
And Natalie, your experience from Year 12 through?

Natalie Strunak:
I completely agree. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an accountant so that goes to show. I mean, do what you love, that would be the key point. Do what you love. Don't be attracted to, the highest salary that you can find on SEEK because if you do what you love and even if you don't pick the right subjects that first year or you don't pick the right course, things will fall into place. If you just follow what you want to do.

Mish Eastman:
Fantastic. We're out of time. That's flown by and I'd really like to thank all the panel members for just being so open and sharing about your experiences. And hopefully that answered quite a few questions that people might have percolating who've been in our audience. So, thank you everyone for participating. If you do have any more questions, please send them through to LiveChat. The LiveChat link, which is the small red tab to the right of your screen when you're on their Open Day live website. And thank you everybody for joining us for RMIT Talks as part of our virtual Open Days. And we do hope to see so many of you on our campuses soon, but particularly, thank you, Natalie. Thank you, Sebastian. Thank you Jonathan, for having this conversation with me today, it's been really excellent. Thank you.

Natalie Strunak:
It was a pleasure. Thank you.

Sebastian Mollison:
It was a pleasure. Thank you.

[End transcript]

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