Honestly, I thought about quitting. The strain of the multitude of assignments. Deadlines. The need to achieve the perfect WAM. It all came crashing down yesterday, to be exact.
I haven’t had a break since, well, starting university. At first it was to finish the Business degree; wait, I want to switch to banking and finance. Banking and finance is too hard; maybe I should underload. Next, I love Business. Ugh! I haven’t done enough banking and finance units, so let’s switch to a double degree. Then catching up with that one failed unit (thanks, microeconomics) and catching up on two semesters of underloading to overload in my last semester. Guess what? I scored an 89 in one of the units, not saying which one 😉
Then, when I finally decided to do law, I started in January 2026. Too bad it wasn’t my final destination. I gave that one summer unit my best, but I should have been used to disappointments by now, honestly. That one unit I did, 62.
Then came the realisation…
Imposter syndrome at its worst. First, it cost a hell of a lot of money. Second, I have the worst memory; yes, if the whole degree was open books, I could maybe do it. I thought doing the double degree had prepared me for law, but it did not! Angry-face emoji.
Hence, the backup plan to the backup plan if I didn’t get a graduate program….drum roll please…Master of Applied AI at Deakin.
The fundamental content was taught very well. I understood all the concepts not at first glance, of course, but through exposure and practice. However, the future job prospects of getting into AI overwhelmed me. As I found out through multiple opinion pieces and some based on experience, yes, AI is taking over the world now, but Australia isn’t integrating the technologies as fast or at a high volume compared to the USA or China, for example (have you seen their martial arts robots?). At this rate, Australia could be entering an AI Winter (yikes?).
Basically, since everyone is obsessed with AI, everyone is jumping onto the bandwagon of LLMs, unsupervised learning and reinforcement learning. Hence, there are so many university graduates who honestly cannot compensate for the impossibly limited job prospects (groan).
Although my interest is in AI, after doing the Database Fundamentals unit, I realised the immense importance of data. DATA is GOLD!
Data is now being produced at an imense amount. This concept is called Big Data. High-Fi social media companies such as Facebook or TikTok (yes, I know Donald Trump pardoned you, but at what cost) are harnessing this data to create the next trend in fashion, calculate with an algorithm what the people actually want or possibly win an election (speaking about the Cambridge Analytica case – please do search it up – very insightful). Once you know what people want, you can create millions and maybe billions of revenue, given that you choose to invest in the areas of popularity rather than keep the knowledge to yourself like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, and what a nasty sight that would be.
First it was agriculture, then it was business, then finance and now data. This is the path of gold or what it represents – Capitalism at its core.
So given my business background and my desire to be an Irish Leprecon, I decided to do Data Science with a specialisation in AI and Computer Vision. This is honestly the most powerful combination, in my opinion, anyone could take. Those who know how to weigh gold know the fake from the real.
So, I began my Data Science journey by doing three AI and one professional unit. I love my subjects but hate them at the same time. I sometimes wonder why university can’t be so that you just read the material and watch the lectures, and that’s it, no more.
But alas, it is so much more (frustrated emoji). Yesterday, I decided I would either take a break from studies (intermission) or underload and do a third trimester next year. At what cost though? I am doing two prerequisite units. Yes, I will have more time to learn Python. Ya, I can have more time to spend on health and well-being, but it would set me back, especially with the need to do a grad program in 2028 looming closer by the minute. So frustrating! But I went to the gym and decided hell ya! I can do this! Nothing gets me powered up like a gym session, even though my anxiety keeps me at the cross-trainer or treadmill rather than hitting the weights.
Finally, hit that Hallelujah note. So I spent the rest of the day listening to sad love song music and the other part catching up on lectures. Today, I finished my most dreaded task (I would like to express my disappoint why it wasn’t split into smaller tasks with some credits and distinctions here and there). Gym is life!
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