After graduating SHC in 2009, I pursued Commerce at Deakin University, majoring in Economics, but found after 4 and a half years that I was not suited to a university setting and was not enjoying Commerce. 

As a kid I always liked Mathematics and found that I excelled at it. Having Jess as an older sister was a huge advantage to my learning. I have memories of her teaching me how to spell ‘adventure’ from her favourite book about the solar system when I was still in my early primary school years, and when she started learning algebra at high school she would come home and explain it to Grade 3 me while we were lying in our bunk beds – supposed to be asleep, or write equations from her text book on to my little blackboard for me to solve. I enjoyed Mathematics a lot at Sacred Heart. There’s something so satisfying about coming to an answer, especially if it’s taken some extra critical thinking and problem solving to get there
Enjoying Mathematics is part of why after graduating SHC in 2009, I pursued Commerce at Deakin University. I thought that going into something like accounting would suit me and my strengths. I decided to major in Economics but found after 4 and a half years that I was not suited to a university setting and was not enjoying Commerce. However, I really enjoyed a unit I took as part of my degree called “Business on the Internet” where one of the assignments was to design a website using HTML and CSS. Coding provided the same sort of structured workflow with an opportunity for problem solving that I liked when doing maths. So when I left Deakin, I started a course at The Gordon in ICT Web Design. In my final semester of that two-year course, I was offered a job by my current employer at Gieman IT Solution and started working there in January 2017.

As a Web Application Developer at Gieman IT Solutions, I have worked on and now provide technical support for a product called EMS360 (Education Management Solutions). Educational Management Solutions is a product that is used by schools for the teachers to keep track of their professional learning, camps, excursions, absences and leaves for their daily organisers to see if their classes need to be covered. In the past 2 years EMS have also developed a Health & Safety module that was requested by Mercy Education, and is now used by 13 Mercy schools across Australia along with our other 180ish schools. I also help collate enhancement requests and liaise with the development team to prioritise the viable enhancements for release.

Through Gieman IT Solutions I also work as an external consultant on an invoice processing web application for Sony Music Entertainment. My work for Sony allowed me to go to Germany in September 2019 for two weeks to work in the Munich Sony Office with some of the other members of the Global Technology team. It was my first time overseas.

At my job, I do everything from designing database structures and configuring servers, to putting together user interfaces, and writing the code for all of the business logic checks and balances that go on in the middle when retrieving, processing and storing data. My favourite part is writing Java functions, because they vary from being a few simple lines to taking hundreds of lines of code where you challenge yourself to find the most efficient and precise way to manipulate and compare variables to enact the requirements of the function.

I’ve been finding fulfilment recently in being able to help a few of the newer employees in how to approach some of their implementations. Sharing knowledge and ideas is crucial to growth in my field, and something I learned from Jess teaching me algebra (and lots of her other schoolwork) when we were young is that teaching is a great way to consolidate and expand your own understanding of a subject. Helping my colleagues allows me to build my own critical thinking in a collaborative way while exposing them to new ways of looking at a problem and processes they may not have seen or used before.

My personal advice is that everyone’s path is different and valid, and it’s okay to find your passion a bit later on. I didn’t know that coding was interesting to me when I was still at high school because I hadn’t been exposed to it yet, and it was hard for me to admit that studying commerce in a university setting wasn’t working out for me. Walking away from my almost finished degree and doing my course at TAFE in a subject that I was interested in has led me to a career that gives me satisfaction and has constant opportunities for growth and learning as new tools emerge. Jess and I had different paths to our careers in STEM, and while my journey was less direct, I’m happy for the lessons it taught me, and I’m glad Jess was always there as a role model and supporter for me.