SMSF Investment StrategiesSharing Simple Strategies for Self Managed Super Funds
Christina’s Life Story Part 2: In Australia as an Overseas Student
To help our readers know us better, we will be writing some posts about our backgrounds. This is Part 2 of 6 of Christina’s life story. For a complete story, please go to the “Our Story” tab on the homepage of our blog.
In 1979, I left Malaysia to study in The University of Melbourne in Australia. This was my first time living overseas and I was very excited to start this new chapter of my life. I remember the first thing I noticed when I landed in Melbourne was just how blue the sky was and that made me feel comfortable and happy as it was rare to see that in Malaysia. I immediately knew I was going to enjoy my stay in Australia.
The first year at Uni was a really tough time for me. I signed up for the same subjects I used to do well in which was Maths, Physics and Chemistry and I found that I could not cope with Maths and Physics and struggled even to get Cs in those subjects. I was very surprised as I normally did not have trouble with these subjects in secondary school but University is where you discover what you are really good at and what you are not. I quickly dropped those subjects but I had to find some replacement subjects. At that time, Computer Science was a popular subject and I heard that there were good job prospects for Computer Science graduates. Even though I had never used a computer before, I decided to sign up for some units in Computer Science to try it out.
I found that I quite enjoyed Computer Science as there was a lot of logic and analysis which I was good at. I was not good at abstract concepts but Computer Science was more practical and that suited me a lot more than Maths and Physics. I thought about switching to a Business degree but did not have the right pre-requisites to do that. I was already too entrenched in the Science pathway. Besides, it was more important that I do something which would help me get a good job (which for most overseas students is the primary reason for going to University) so I decided to stick with Computer Science. I settled for just taking one business subject which was in Organisational Behaviour. I never realised then that 20 years later, this would become an area I would be doing a lot of work in (more in Part 5 about this).
I graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Hons 2A) majoring in Computer Science at the end of 1982 and headed back to Malaysia to start a new chapter of my life.
Print This Post
