I’m Marianne, and I’m a USQ alumni. I did my first degree, a Bachelor of Economics, in Jakarta at a university called the University of Tarumanagara.

I lived there for about 8 years; worked for international companies. Then I decided, yeah, I decided I wanted to do more studies, and so I did a bit of research on which universities to go, which countries to go.

I think because at that stage I felt that my career was not going anywhere. I did very well for my age at the time, but I just feel that there was no satisfaction, so I wanted to have more, and it’s probably too comfortable too, so I quit my job and came to Australia on my own.

I am now working for USQ. I am coordinating events at USQ. So for something like Open Day, and some other marketing activities, I help people to create what they want to do in terms of events.

In my spare time I like to go to the gym, just to keep myself fit and just to help me with life balance. It wasn’t just studying; gaining all the knowledge, we...I made so many good friends with people from all over the world, including the local Australians as well. And we had such a great relationship with the lecturers as well.

So it’s actually not just fully study, coz we have so much fun as well and I still keep in contact with a lot of my classmates, and even the lecturers as well. Every now and then when I bump into them at the uni I will go back to when we were all at the uni and studying and yeah, it was a really great awesome time.

Yeah I think my mum, especially my mum, she was very surprised at how much I have grown since I’ve lived in Australia, so I think they are very very proud.