‘Have I made a terrible mistake?’ Well-known Aussies on life after year 12

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Exams are finally done for Year 12 students across the country, and there’s a sprawling, relaxing summer ahead – marred only by the release of ATAR scores in December.

As results loom, some may be feeling like they should have their future all figured out. So we asked famous Australians to share with us how they made the leap out of school.

Scientist Matt Agnew

“You can change and go back to study more”

Matt Agnew at his graduation from Sweden’s Lund University.

When science communicator Matt Agnew became the Bachelor in 2019, he had just wrapped up his PhD in astrophysics. It was then the latest in a line of degrees, starting fresh out of high school with a double degree in science and engineering from the University of Western Australia.

At UWA, Agnew soaked up the social side of things. “I spent a lot of time at the tav,” he says with a laugh. That relatively carefree attitude was in contrast to how Agnew felt while studying for his final high school exams: “I used to have the worst nausea. I felt sick with how much pressure there was.”

After spending a couple of years working as an engineer in the resource sector, Agnew became disenchanted with his career. To reset, he went travelling and resolved to go back to university. Having been fascinated by space as a child, he chose astrophysics.

But he was rejected from all but one master’s in the field because he didn’t have enough undergraduate-level physics under his belt. That’s how he ended up at Lund University in Sweden.

There he learned to be resilient. “Living abroad removes any kind of family and friend safety nets, and there was a bit of financial stress,” he says. “I was trying something new without knowing whether it was going to click.”

Post-Bachelor, Agnew did another masters, this time in artificial intelligence, to extend upon his day job as a data scientist. While it’s clear that Agnew loves learning, higher education hasn’t always been easy. He recalls working for a year on a project as part of his PhD, only for his research paper to be rejected – complete with scathing criticism. “That was a big slap in the face,” he says.

“You can go a year slugging away at this hypothesis and none of the tests have yielded any results of interest. You’re like, ‘have I made a terrible mistake?’ Then suddenly you have two brilliant results in a week. Occasionally, you have a wobble, and you can restabilise quickly.”

Agnew wants to remind school-leavers that they can always go back to study again – like he did: “It’s not your one shot to pick what you’re going to do. You can change and go back to study more.”

Influencer Flex Mami

“I thought I’d be better off learning hands-on”

Flex Mami decided to intern instead of finishing tertiary study.

Radio host, author and influencer Lillian Ahenkan, aka Flex Mami, decided against going to university and instead went straight into the workforce. After about a year working two jobs – in hospitality and in retail – Ahenkan felt the urge to study again.

First, she tried doing a fashion business course, then she went to a private college to study public relations – a choice inspired by watching 2000s MTV reality series The Hills.

She describes how watching publicist Lauren Conrad and her friends on screen inspired her to try working in that the field too: “I was like, ‘hold on a second, all these girls work in this environment, for a woman, doing things that I find interesting, why would I not go and seek out that kind of experience?’”

The course required getting an internship in the second semester, but Ahenkan decided to do one straight away “to get a better idea of whether I wanted to do that job or not”, she explains.

She soon realised there was a disconnect between what she was studying and what she was learning on the job, so she left the private college too. “I thought I’d be better off learning hands-on as opposed to being at an institution,” she says.

She juggled the internship with her two jobs. Then, when the internship became a full-time role, she picked up a side hustle DJing, and once she’d built up a financial safety net quit the PR gig altogether.

“While others looked to trying and failing as an indication that they would never get to where they wanted to go, I thought, ‘it’s just information’,” she says.

She credits her “adolescent hubris” for giving her the courage to leave tertiary study and then her PR job behind.

“There’s something really beautiful about not having any experience and not having the burdens of the real world to force you to make decisions that are in opposition to what you really want,” she says. “You can really do what you want when you’re younger.”

And the risk paid off. Now Flex Mami is the host of Love Island’s debrief show, which earned her a Logie nomination this year for Most Popular New Talent.

Her advice to school leavers? “Whatever you decide on, you have to back yourself.”

Showpo CEO Jane Lu

“I saw the world in a different way when I came back”

Jane Lu says doing a student exchange to Sweden changed her life.

Jane Lu, founder of online fashion retailer Showpo and one of the investors on Shark Tank, always knew she wanted to go to university but didn’t know what to study.

When she was accepted into a KPMG accounting cadetship while she was still in Year 12, the decision was made for her: she’d study commerce part-time at the University of New South Wales, taking night classes around her job.

“When I got the job, I didn’t realise it meant that you had to do an accounting degree,” she says. “I learnt that during the interview process.”

Lu’s workload didn’t leave much time for socialising. Instead, it was a six-month exchange trip to Lund in Sweden that shaped her life. It’s where she met her future husband, fellow Australian James Waldie, with whom she now has two children, and where she started to feel more like herself.

“Every point when you’re taken out of your comfort zone and you’re thrown into a new environment, you get to reinvent yourself,” she says. “I became more loud and more myself, more outspoken, more confident [on exchange].”

The experience also changed her perspective on her career back home. “I saw the world in a different way when I came back,” she says. “Instead of looking at my job as financial security, I saw it as a prison sentence.”

One day, after she’d spent the morning trying to fix a broken spreadsheet, Lu realised she needed to resign to focus on the pop-up store side hustle she shared with a friend. “I was like, ‘Oh my God. What’s the point? I’m three hours closer to death’,” she says.

Despite stepping off the corporate ladder, Lu is now worth $73 million, according to AFR’s 2023 Young Rich List, having used what she learned from her failed pop-up venture to create Showpo.

Lu’s advice to school leavers is to always try your hardest – because you never know what useful skills and contacts you’re building: “Give it your best and try to make the most out of every situation.”

Matildas midfielder Clare Wheeler

“I always wanted to go to university”

Clare Wheeler was part of Sydney University’s elite sports program.

The final years of high school were tough for Matildas midfielder Clare Wheeler. Her mother was battling a serious illness (she died just before Wheeler started uni) and Wheeler was juggling her education with playing in an under-20s A-League soccer team and the Young Matildas.

“I always wanted to go to university,” she says. “When I was in Year 12, the A-League was only four months, so I knew I obviously had to have something else. But I didn’t know – and I still don’t know – the exact role that I want.”

Wheeler completed Year 12 in Newcastle over two years, before she moved to Sydney to take up a scholarship to study commerce, majoring in human relations and accounting, at the University of Sydney.

She chose USyd as she wanted to have an American college-style experience, living on campus, and juggling elite sport, study, work and internships: “You had your education, your football, your gym, tuition help, all of that … I was really busy, but I also had a lot of support.”

It’s not surprising that Wheeler was too busy for the annual Uni Games competition, or to have much of a social life, outside of her college. “Football comes first, study comes second, and then social comes last,” she says with a shrug.

Wheeler finished her degree just in time for the pandemic to force a move to online learning and scarper her graduation ceremony. COVID also put on hold her plan to move overseas to play soccer full-time. It was the first time Wheeler had found herself without a plan. So she applied for a job at Macquarie Bank in the financial assistance team and loved it so much she left her Newcastle team to join Sydney FC, where she balanced 5am training with full-time work. “It was challenging, but it was also super rewarding,” she says.

Wheeler did finally get to move overseas to pursue sport full-time in mid-2021. Now living in Manchester, not far from her team Everton’s home base in Liverpool, she plans to go back to university next year to study a graduate diploma in mental health.

Wheeler wants to encourage young people to stress less about the future. “Don’t put too much pressure on yourself,” she says. “If you don’t know what you want to do, take the time to figure that out. It’s not a race.”

Comedian Wil Anderson

“I don’t feel like this is for me”

Comedian Wil Anderson studied a journalism degree in Canberra.Credit: Daniel Boud

Growing up in regional Victoria, Wil Anderson dreamed of being a stand-up comedian. But he didn’t know it could be a viable career.

“I was a 15-year-old kid from a dairy farm who, for some reason, thought he might want to be a stand-up comedian, but I wasn’t really ready to announce that to the world,” he says.

What he knew for sure was that he didn’t want to be a dairy farmer. So he decided to study journalism in Canberra, taking advantage of his curiosity, creativity and English skills. In doing so, he became the first person from his family to go to university.

It was an opportunity to make a new start, away from his family and friends, many of whom were moving to Melbourne to study. “I think going to Melbourne or Sydney might have been too much for this little farm boy,” he says. “I needed to ease myself in.”

Anderson admits he wasn’t the most involved university student. While he performed in school musicals and wrote plays in high school, he didn’t participate in extracurricular activities at university. Instead, he spent most of his degree working in the office of the Australian Financial Review.

His AFR boss encouraged him to pursue what he really loved. “I’d graduated first in my course and I had all this work experience and I had a few job offers,” Anderson explains. “And I said to him, ‘I don’t feel like this is for me’.

“He said, ‘you’ve done well at something that your heart’s not in – imagine if you are this dedicated to something that you’re really passionate about’.”

So Anderson moved to Melbourne at 21 years old and started performing stand-up comedy. He hasn’t stopped since (global pandemic aside).

But he uses his degree every day to analyse the news and the advertising industry on Gruen and Question Everything.

“You can see a pretty consistent line from what I studied to what I’ve ended up doing. My university degree is a reminder that, at some stage, I set myself on a path to achieve something and then achieved it.”

Anderson’s advice to school-leavers is to ignore the pressure to decide about the future, and focus instead on nurturing a sense of curiosity: “The capacity to learn and a love of learning is the most incredible skill.”

More from Campus, a new student hub

Give it a break: Comedian Lizzy Hoo says a commerce degree can wait. In her gap year she mastered snowboarding, living off obscenely small amounts of cash and bailing friends out of jail. Valuable life skills, she argues.

Result driven: From a hands-on paid gap year in the defence forces to scaling the tech world, get a pay packet sooner with these fast-track career qualifications – no university required.

A matter of degrees: Not sure what to study and need some course inspiration? Think being a lawyer for outer space territories sounds good? Check out these degrees you probably have never heard of.

Enjoy the benefits: Cayla may have moved away from home to study hard and earn a degree, but she also left university with lifelong friendships and an ability to belt out Mariah Carey songs like nobody else on long road trips. Win. Win.

The intern: If you want to get the job of your dreams Laura Chung says it’s not just study that matters – maybe sacrifice a few parties and swap with some internships. Your graduate job searching will thank you.

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