Jizhou Zhang (Michael)

I'm an aviation geek, so calculating payloads is actually very interesting to me!

I've been fascinated with aviation for more than a decade. It's a challenging industry that changes all the time and you need a lot of skills to keep up with it – exactly the sort of work I like!

RMIT’s aviation management program is great because it has excellent facilities and a central location that makes it easy to get to classes.

There are a lot of assignments in my program and it’s important to be able to manage them as well as your lectures and classes, so I’ve developed some very good organisational skills as I've studied. This will be very useful when I'm working in the highly-competitive field of aviation management, where organisation is a priority.

My favourite subject so far has been Air Cargo. It has a lot of fine detail, particularly with payload-range charts and payload balance sheets. I’m an aviation geek, so this sort of this is actually very interesting to me!

As well as the technical work, I’ve also enjoyed increasing my skills in working with teams and have gained a lot of confidence through presentations, both of which are very important in aviation management.

In 2014, I was happy to volunteer for RMIT's Open Day, where I spoke to prospective students about my program and what to expect in it. This was a very positive experience for me and I was happy to see students considering undertaking my program in the future.

I love what I do because I am passionate about learning things that I like while pressuring myself to do my best.