Future aspirations

Sefitia:

Yeah, so Sefita is a big dreamer and I’m working my way to it. What my dream is, to have a cultural exchange program, where we have young people from here, Australia, go to back home, whether it’d be Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, and then vice versa. Having that cultural exchange, but young people being able to go over there and experience their lifestyle. I think a lot of the young people these days and, my cousins are like I’ve seen, have taken things for granted. I was like, “Wait, back in Tonga, this is not accessible to us,” and trying to humble everybody. I think it would be vice versa because the other thing is that it’d be great for the people from Tonga, Samoa to come here and see that we don’t have money trees in our backyard.

Having that cultural exchange program and demystifying all of those stereotypes and stigmas that, we all have of each other and assumptions we have of each other, and humble everybody. That’s what I want to eventually be able to do, and have that cultural exchange program happen.

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Luisa:

In terms of my nursing degree, my end game, I want to work with First Nation communities, or like somewhere in the Torres Strait.

But with that, there’s certain criteria that you need to fill to fit into to work with First Nations communities or within the Torres Strait. A lot of them either have a critical care nursing background. Critical care means like intensive care unit or emergency department, your main two crit cares. So for me is I guess creating that pathway for myself to get that experience, to get, and you need to specialise essentially as well, so do further studies to be your critical care nurse.

Where I’m at at the moment, I’m hoping to eventually specialise. I’ve only just started in ED, literally two weeks ago, so just got to work my way up there, get where I need to be, because honestly, working with First Nations communities, it’s such a dream of mine. I just need to keep forcing that pathway for myself, which means I need to write more essays, which sucks, but you know, got to do what you’ve got to do to get through.

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Christopher:

I guess, that’s where I’m at, at the moment and yeah, living in Mildura now, and I have a little family for myself. And continue to learn in the industry that I’m in, the building industry, and it’s more construction industry and residential. I want to end up being a master builder, that’s what I’m looking towards.

The reason why I want to be a master builder is because when I get older, I won’t be able to hold a tool anymore. I won’t be able to pick up a hammer or even a nail gun, it will be too strong for an old man. So what I want to equip myself with is teaching. With a master builder, I’ll be able to teach. I will be able to teach other people my skills and create or show them pathways that they can take, if they want to.

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Malelega:

Definitely trying to just give back to my community, and then also trying to give back and support my parents as well. Just because of throughout our whole lives they’ve just supported us with no matter what, they’ve guided us as well and they’ve always made sure that we just stuck on our paths or at least made sure that we recognised where we were going and supported that, no matter what our choices were.

Rose:

So, right now I guess I would see myself staying here for a couple of years, because I’ve only been here for a year now. And I’m enjoying what I’m learning about…even though I don’t want to be lawyer, I enjoy being in that industry.  But a long-term goal is I really do want to put my business management degree to use, I’ll put it finally to use. And a big thing is that me and my Dad have discussed owning our own coffee shop. So, that’s definitely a goal that I do want to reach, yeah.

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Ashirah:

I finished Year 12. And I went straight into university doing Bachelor of Arts. And it wasn’t until halfway through the second year, and my teacher came up to me. And she said, “When you share and when you do oral presentations, I hear the justice in your voice. When you speak, you know what you want, and you’re very confident and I feel like you would be good if you did a criminal justice major.”

And I was actually going into the road of doing education. But then I was like, “No, I don’t want to do that. I want to actually do what I want.” And I was praying and praying. And finally, the teacher, God answered my prayers, when she came up to me and told me about that So I started that last year and I love it. And it’s just helping me understand our world, how secular our world is, all the different things that are happening with law and power and justice.

And then I’m also doing victimology as well. It’s just really good to see how our world is working. And it also it’s really great because I want to pursue a career in the police force as well. And by having that knowledge with how our law works, how the law works in the government around the world , it’s helping me gain that knowledge. So when I go to the police force, I know what I’m going to be doing. And with the police force, they’re like, “Oh, can’t you just apply for it anyways, you don’t need to go to uni.” Yeah, but I want to get a degree as well.