Lexi:
My name is Lexi and my uni is USQ.

When I was in high school, I did not want to do university. I hated the idea of doing further education. So, when I graduated from high school, I spent nine months trying to get a full time job. I ended up getting a traineeship –a certificate three in business administration through a transport company in Carole Park, and I worked there for two years.

In 2009, I had to have an operation and I was in four months of recovery time, and I was lying on the couch for these four months – all I could do was watch movies, play video games. It kind of got boring and I began to wonder what I was going to do next. I felt like... I prefer to do something that I love in the future, and it was then I decided to apply for university.

You know, in high school I did dance, drama, art and I loved performing arts. So, when I decided to look into university, I picked USQ because it was local and I found the Bachelor of Applied Media.

It was about June, I’d seen a lot of ads on TV. I knew that there were some mid-year acceptances going on. A week after I got accepted, I started.

I was really pleased that I got to start straight away. If I had to wait another six months, I’m not sure if I would have stuck the decision to go to university. It was one big whirlwind and suddenly I was a university student. It went from this small idea to part of who I am now. And I got thrown in, straight into the practical subjects. I was a bit unsure where it was going to take me, but I knew it was going to be fun because I do love film.

My mum, while raising us on her own, studied to be a teacher. None of my brothers or sisters have gone to university and obviously she was quite proud of me when I decided to go. She always brags to people that I’m doing the Applied Media and she likes to tell people about all the projects I’m doing and that I’m doing so well.

Because it’s a fairly new university, all of our equipment is brand new, our cameras, our editing equipment, our television studio – it’s all state of the art. We’re learning with the industry standard equipment. Because it is a small university, we have lecturers of about 20 people and we know our lecturers personally. We can talk to them outside of class and we get one-on-one time, which is really important for a hands on course.

Daryl Sparks, our lecturer, he’s a really awesome guy. He kind of, he talks on our level and he jokes back with us – it doesn’t feel like he’s a lecturer at all. We can come up to him for the smallest thing and he’ll help us out no problem.

Daryl:
The Bachelor of Applied Media was always designed to be a very strong practical and hands on sort of course. And it was designed in consultation with the industry - to focus very much on industry standards in media education, so what our real focus was, was to make sure people were job ready by the time they left the university and were very competitive in their fields when they graduated.

Lexi:
We do everything. We do film, TV, radio, we do everything from working behind the camera to editing it. We’re getting all this great experience and we get a lot of work experience too. At USQ Springfield, we have our own radio station – it’s Phoenix radio and it’s broadcast online and as part of our second year broadcast radio subject, we get to run our own shows. We’ve promoted USQ events and we’ve been able to call friends and call interviews up.

In the Bachelor of Applied Media, because we get to do so many different aspects of the behind the scenes stuff, we do sort of get to try out and have a taste of each – that’s how I found out I liked editing.

I really love going to university – and I can’t believe it took me three years after high school to decide to go. I was a bit nervous about starting, but after the first week, I was in love with it. And now I’m third year and I don’t even, I don’t want to graduate ‘cause I’m having too much fun.