The Blog of Steve

When co-operation ends

Well I have finally come to the end of my period of work for the Environmental Protection Agency. I have to say that getting ~18 months of work out of what was originally a 10 month QUT industry co-operative placement is not bad at all. Furthermore, due to my working full time for this period, I can now be deemed financially independent through Centrelink. (which can be handy)

Overall though I think that I have learned a lot during my time with the EPA, the sorts of things that you can’t really learn in lectures, but that all students should really know before they graduate and move into full time work. One concern that I do have is going back into full time study. The biggest advantage that I saw with full time work was that you didn’t really need to take your work home with you, very much unlike uni, and you were then free to do things in your space time. This was extremely useful for the voluntary youth work that I am involved in as I could easily commit to things well in advance and not have to worry about an assignment or exam popping up.

Despite this, I still really need to get around to finishing my course. I found that attempting to do full time study + army reserve + Youth Work + EPA part time didn’t really work very well. Hopefully this semester will be a bit less crazy. Either way I am still on track to start a ministry traineeship next year out here, which should be interesting. I just need to get as much of my degree out of the way as quickly as possible. (4/5 years through it would be a bit foolish to simply not finish it)

Oh yea and the other advantage of working full time for 12 months while still living at home is that it makes larger purchases, like a car, much more feasible.