My Academic Lifestyle and History

As a University Student, time priorities and sacrifices are essential for success. My experience in 2024 as a part-time nursing student brought valuable lessons through embarrassing failures. However, while currently taking one subject this third trimester (November 24' - Feburary 25'), those lessons have proved to pay dividends thus far. Allow me to share more about my academic lifestyle, how it fits with the rest of my life, and a brief reflection on how good academic achievement was a strong expectation from my parents...

2024 was my second year enrolled in the Bachelor of Nursing degree at Griffith Uni as a part-time student. This involves a study load of up to 2 subjects per trimester. After adding rugby back onto my roster this year, I encountered various challenges regarding priorities and time allocation, which in turn, affected my university studies.

While adjustments were made in my mentality, I would rather discuss the practical interventions that have made me feel like a completely different person in this third trimester.

Practical Interventions this year:

• Utilise my Google calendar
• Identify the minimum number of hours that must be spent for studies weekly
• Find at least 2 friends for accountability
• Get my butt out of the house and onto the Uni campus
• Invest time meeting with a mentor once a week

While some interventions listed above may be difficult to implement for fellow students seeking to make a change in their own routine, most of them are simple fixes with the power to take your overall productivity to the next level; the question I would ask myself was "how bad do you want it?"

The story behind seeing a mentor in particular was a special blessing. A story for another day...

Although mentorship is an uncommon option, every other intervention mentioned above is quite achievable. If trimesters one and two were represented by ashes from a wildfire, then this third trimester would be the beautiful, majestic phoenix soaring high without looking back. Thanks to these simple things, I finally got the ball rolling and finally experienced the good feeling of actually being on track throughout a trimester.

To be honest, if you're having too much fun in your week-to-week life, then you're probably not studying enough.

This is where understanding what I needed to sacrifice in a given week became a crucial skill. Before knowing what to sacrifice I had to know my priorities, so I would rank them on a piece of paper:

1. God
2. Family
3. Study
4. Rugby
5. Work

While God always stays at number 1, some weeks or months would require sacrifice, meaning my time allocation might look different to the usual allocation catering to the above list of priorities.

Sometimes this process can be stressful, so support systems become imperative.

Remember that the help you need might require a leap out of your circle of familiarity and comfort. I found that help in my mentor, and accountability friends.

It is quite a common narrative now for this generation of pacific islanders in Australia and New Zealand:

Most of us are here because our parents moved away from their homes in the pacific islands to find a better life, with better resources and opportunities.

It is now an era where generations of pacifika people have been living in Australia/New Zealand, however my siblings and I are first-generation Samoan-Australians, born and raised in the land down under.

The dream that my parents (and most pacifika immigrants) had for us, was for us kids to have a shot at life; education that would allow us to have careers in any profession we wanted.

This brought significant weight on the expectation our parents had towards academic achievement, and the non-negotiable that we use what we were given in this country to work towards success.

This journey of mine is on going, and I have faith that greatness is around the corner. Greatness that cannot be possible without God's grace and guidance.