Uni
Hitting my early 40s, I started questioning my career choices, asking myself if I really wanted to continue to show rentals to prospective tenants, carry out open, routine, and final inspections, chase rent arrears, attend Tribunal hearings, and solve any possible problem that can arise under the sun when you are jammed in between a landlord-tenant relationship - until I hit my retirement age. I decided that I don’t see that playing out in my life, as much as I did play that role to the best of my professional confidence ability that I could master. At around the same time, I started making better diet choices, choosing everyday household products that better served the newfound awareness that our shopping choices affect the industry decision makers, and in general, I became more environmentally conscious. This naturally led to re-examining my value as an individual and how I can contribute to society, which, after having a prophetic dream of sitting in the theatre classroom and enjoying the lecture, inched me closer to considering further study.
Not really knowing the difference between environmentalist and ecologist, I decided to apply for the Life Science course majoring in Ecology at - what was then - the University of Adelaide, and after passing an entry skills prerequisite test, I enrolled and started my uni life as a mature student. I wanted to change the world, and to do that, I needed to be equipped with any knowledge I could get. My first year at the Uni felt like an overload to my sluggish brain, which struggled to process why I needed to know what protein binding sites are or what eukaryotes, ATP, mitochondria, monocots, and dicots have to do with what I wanted to achieve from my studies. Never great with math, I failed statistics miserably and had to do the extra this core subject the following year. The graduation day saw many last-year students parading through the university in their graduation gowns, having their photographs taken, and I knew that will be me at the end of my study. In the 2nd year, I was at home - studying was no longer a struggle, and I really enjoyed chemistry, which was one of my favourite subjects in high school too. Just somehow counting the number of those carbon atoms making up LCFAs made perfect sense to me.
For many electives, I would choose any subject that dealt with plants; however, for my last year, botany was not an option. Regardless, even nowadays I am still excited by knowing of the existence of the Wollemi Pine and how evolution shaped life on the planet. I still treasure my Campbell’s Biology, which sits next to the Bible on my bookshelf. This degree did not convince me that mapping the human genome is a solution for humanity, nor that plants will thrive in saline soils if their DNA is altered by scientists. I do accept the precautionary principle to be as important as the Hippocratic Oath to future doctors or as the Holy Communion to believers. I align with the quote attributed to A. Einstein, “The more I learn about science, the more I believe in God.” One of the lasting messages that I got from my last ecology lecture was from one of my favourite professors, who interestingly bore the most suitable last name, Goodfellow, in his farewell greeting: “And remember to walk this Earth lightly!” This simple message will stay stuck with me for the rest of my life. I am grateful for achieving this major milestone in my life, as I have evolved into a more refined version of myself, and I simply would not have the same outlook without completing this education. Interestingly enough, I never worked as a scientist; however, I went to university to learn to be able to change the world, only to graduate to become the changed person myself and better educated, more spiritual one appreciating how God created all life.