Life after high school

My name is Steph, I’m a 20 year old from Sydney. I was lucky enough to finish my HSC in 2019 before COVID hit and with a lot of hard work, countless hours of studying, I did very well! The next year I enrolled in a Cert III Health Services Assistance course (Assistant in Nursing) at TAFE which also included First Aid and CPR training. COVID was just starting around this time so things were rather stressful.

I finished and passed the course but I decided I wanted to do something else. It took a while but I realised that I wanted to enter the film industry and I enrolled in another TAFE course, a Certificate IV in Screen and Media which ended right before lockdown last year. It was an amazing course and I loved every minute of it. I did cinematography, sound recording, editing, film theory, producing, directing and I even created a title sequence all in six months. I completed the course and received my certificate a few months after finishing.

Right as that course ended we went into another lockdown, where I basically ended up taking the rest of the year off to figure out what was next for me as well as deal with my own personal stuff. Now I am enrolled in Bus Stop Films which is a not for profit organisation that provides an accessible film program as well as job opportunities in the film and television industry.

The past few years haven’t been easy, I’ve dealt with my own mental health struggles but I’ve been doing well, working on myself and going to therapy, participating in hobbies, I have a close friend group that feels like family. Things are great right now.