Biloela teens get their day in the SUN
Published on 17 September, 2008
Biloela High's Jordan Hoyland and Nikki Kitching are among early adopters of a CQUniversity program enabling secondary students to gain credit for tertiary study before leaving school.
In fact Jordan was such an early adopter that the program had not even been fully developed (it's now known as SUN - Start Uni Now) when she started in Term 1 of 2007.
"I was a guinea pig for the project, particularly for the Education Faculty who had never had a school student want to study teaching.
"I was happy to get the opportunity to get a head start on my university studies," she said.
Jordan said that one of her 'school' subjects is 'university', where she goes to a school computer to study.
"I have 3 lessons a week of this, 70 minutes each. Otherwise I work on Uni at home whenever I get the chance!"
Jordan is not all work and no play though. She is vice sports captain and has taken part in charity events such as Relay for Life.
"I play guitar and paint when I have spare time, but I haven't had much of that lately! Otherwise I have part-time work as a pharmacy assistant and tutor primary students for 2 hours, 3 days a week. I had to give up soccer for the latter, but its practice for my career.
"I haven't had much time for hobbies lately; I've been training for the Noosa triathlon in November. I am also a Jehovah's Witness and dedicate time for that. Otherwise nothing more, I don't have any more time for anything else!"
Jordan said she enjoyed the flexibility of SUN study and noted she could study at 2am if she wanted to.
However, one challenge of solo study was missing the ability to bouce ideas off other people.
So far Jordan has completed a range of learning management courses and aims to specialise in Early Childhood.
"I want to be a teacher and hopefully add on with something like speech pathology so I can help children with learning disabilities," she said.
Meanwhile, Nikki Kitching started a similar program at USQ (gaining distinctions for Psychology) but switched to CQUniversity to improve her course options.
Nikki said the SUN program seemed to blend in with her lifestyle, enabling her to broaden her interests.
"I'm the chairperson of Biloela State High School Student Council so a lot of my time is spent with activities such as fundraising, organizing activities and partaking in workshops. I also play touch football once a week and school girl's soccer," she said.
"During holidays before starting year 12 I went on student exchange to Canada for 2 months. There I learnt the rules of hockey and studied at a Canadian high school.
"So far via SUN I have studied Introduction to Bioscience and am currently studying Contemporary Communication. I am hoping to go to medical school next year and become a doctor. A career in health is definitely for me."