A moment in a university corridor that changed everything

I'm walking down a narrow, dusty brick-lined corridor. It's pretty dark, and overhead we've got these fluorescent lights. I'm following a group of about half a dozen university students as we're trotting down through this hallway behind our biology professor. As we go, we're passing these wooden doors where it's got the name of the professor that works in the office just beyond. There are no windows or anything like that.

As we walk down this hallway, suddenly our professor, who's leading us on this tour of the biology lab, stops and turns around. What I don't realise in that moment is that what he's about to say next will fundamentally change, probably, the direction of my entire life. I don't realise that what Professor Dave Briscoe says will end up leading to me sleeping on the ground in about half a dozen train stations across Europe. I don't realise that it's going to lead me on an expedition across the desert in western New South Wales. And I don't realise at that particular moment that because of what he says next, I'm going to end up working from 11:00 PM to 5:00 AM in a music laboratory on the far side of campus, working on projects, taking a couple of hours of sleep underneath one of the desks before getting up and going to class. But all of that's in front of me, and I'll share that story with you in just a moment.

Who is at this event, and what are you here for?

Firstly, we've got a lot of different types of people here at the National Virtual Expo. We have literally fifteen hundred parents who've joined us. So if that's you, thank you for joining us. In the chat, please feel free to tell us where you're from, what you're here for, what are you looking for. Parents, I really empathise with where you are right now. All of us who are parents want one thing for our kids, and that's for our kids to have better opportunities than we had ourselves. And yet, even though we've been through this moment ourselves, when our children arrive here, we suddenly realise that going through it ourselves is hard, but going through it trying to guide someone else is equally hard. So I really feel you. Thank you for joining us, and I've got lots of great content that will help you on this journey.

And if you are a student, thank you also for being here. We have literally thousands and thousands of students who have come to this event. I think that most of you are here for one thing, and that's to remove some sort of doubt about the journey beyond school. You're probably in one of three different situations.

If you already know what you want to do: just pick one

For a very small number of you, based on my experience speaking with thousands and thousands of students, you know exactly what it is that you want to be doing next. Maybe you have always wanted to be a doctor. That's kind of the classic example, isn't it? Or a teacher. Maybe you love healthcare and you've always wanted to be a nurse. Maybe you want to be an engineer, you want to build stuff. If you're one of those people, you're one of the lucky ones, and maybe you're here to reinforce your choice or to choose between university A and university B.

Actually, I'm going to save you a heap of time. If you are one of those lucky few who knows exactly what you want to do and you're trying to choose between uni A and uni B, here is your answer: pick one. Pick any one. And I'll tell you why. The Australian higher education system is literally one of the best in the entire world. Ninety percent of Australia's universities rank in the top thousand globally. Compare that to America, where only around eighteen to twenty percent of universities rank in the top thousand. In the UK it's about forty-five percent. Our system here is extraordinary almost across the board. It basically doesn't matter which institution you go to, you are going to get a good education. We've got frameworks like the Australian Qualifications Framework, we've got validation and oversight. That means it doesn't really matter which degree you get or which uni you go to, it's going to be pretty good.

With one proviso: if you get there and you're not happy with it, you're not enjoying the experience, change. It's literally that simple. Pick one. If you're not happy, change.

Choosing between two very different degree areas: FOMO is the real problem

Now, for those students who are trying to choose between two different degree areas, here's a real example. In the Discord for this event, a student was asking how to choose between going into medicine or going into engineering. Two very, very different degrees. He says, "Yeah, I like the idea of both, I could do either." Great. Pick one. You don't know where life is going to lead you. There are no right or wrong answers. That's just the truth.

What really holds people back in this situation isn't the fact that they're trying to figure out which one is best. If you're really honest about it, what's holding you back from making that decision is FOMO. You're worried about the door that you don't choose. And that's the whole thing about choosing a uni, choosing a career, figuring this stuff out: every time you come to make one of these choices, you literally have these different doors you can potentially walk through, and you don't know exactly what's on the other side. So what you've got to do is open one of those doors and have a look, and give it a try. And if you get through that doorway and you find out it isn't what you expected, that you don't like what's on the other side, great. You've figured something out. Change. You can always change direction.

And parents, if we've been pressuring our kids, saying "you need to be a doctor or a lawyer" without necessarily paying attention to what our child actually wants, that can be a real problem. Kids, think about that too. If you're thinking about choosing between subject A and subject B, think about where that has come from. Is it because you're genuinely good with your hands, you've always liked Lego or solving problems and engineering seems like the right thing? Or is it something from your parents' story, or the pressure that's been put on you? Because when it comes to choosing between A and B, those things count, and you should do what you know in your heart to be the right direction for you.

One in seven first-year students will end up dropping out of university. That's fifteen percent across the country. And a large number of people who do drop out of their degrees do so because they essentially got their choice wrong. If that is because of somebody else's priorities, you are making the wrong call. One way or another, that is going to come to a head. Either you get partway through that degree and you realise you hate it and you end up in a big fight because parents want you to do this and you want to do that, and you never had the guts to have that honest conversation. Or, worst case scenario, you get into that career, forty years down the track, and you realise that it has made you miserable. That is not a winning scenario.

If you have no idea what you want to do: this is completely normal

Now let me take a moment to talk to those of you who have absolutely no idea what you want to do next. This is incredibly common. What you have to remember is that getting things wrong, failing, and having to try again is actually a big part of the journey.

It doesn't matter if you choose a Bachelor of Arts and it was the wrong thing for you and you have to go back and start again after six months. Let me tell you something. Six months is such a myth. Let's say you start university without any real idea of what you want to do, and maybe you start in a Bachelor of Communications. After a year you're like, "This is crap. I really don't enjoy this. I want to change. Oh my God, I've just wasted a year." No. You've actually figured something out, and this is valuable. Think about that person who in their fifties or sixties is working a job they hate because they never figured out what actually mattered to them. If you spent a year and you figured that out, that's probably saved you twenty or thirty years working in a job you hate. It's not time wasted.

Back in that corridor: the volunteering opportunity that opened everything

Now let me take you back to that moment in the hallway with Professor Dave Briscoe, pointing to the door of the Key Centre for Biodiversity and Bioresources. Professor Briscoe turned to our group and said, "This is the Key Centre for Biodiversity and Bioresources. You could volunteer here as a student." And I was literally standing there going, "Oh, I could volunteer in a real-life biology laboratory. That's kind of cool."

And I did. A couple of weeks later, I went up to the professor after one of the biology lectures and said, "Hey Dave, that thing you were talking about, volunteering in the biology lab, I think I'd like to give it a try." He said, "Fantastic. Come down and I'll introduce you to the head of the laboratory." He did. I ended up getting along with Andy Beatty pretty well, I ended up doing volunteering work there, and what that led to was a realisation of just how many opportunities you discover once you are into university.

I didn't know that this biology lab even existed, and yet there was an opportunity for me to not only get involved there, but for that to give me opportunities I never even dreamed I would have. At some point, some of the scientists said, "Hey Rob, we're going on a field trip out to Tibooburra, to Sturt National Park, which is right up in the far northwest corner of New South Wales. We're going up there to do some field work for a week or ten days. Do you want to come?" Yes, I do. An all-expenses-paid trip to the Outback, where I got to hang out with real scientists, walking around the desert, doing field work. It was incredible.

What I then realised as part of that experience was that I could try other things at university. If I could just go and volunteer in a biology laboratory, which mind you ended up leading to paid work, a paid role that paid really well, what else could I try? Get a job on campus if you absolutely can, by the way, because the pay is phenomenal.

I'd always played and enjoyed a bit of music, enjoyed composing. I thought, "My Bachelor of Science degree is pretty flexible. Why don't I just enrol in some music composition classes?" And so I did. And of course, what that led to was me working in those laboratories overnight because that was when I could get access to the computers. I had, like, seven jobs at university at one point, I was always trying to earn money because I was saving up for something. I'll get to that in a moment. I would work an evening shift, finish at about eleven o'clock, go straight back to uni to do my work overnight in the music laboratory with my headphones on, work through the night, take a couple of hours of sleep under the desk, and then literally get up and go to class.

Now, you could say, "What a waste of time. You did six months of music and you've never worked in music." In fact, it's not a waste of time at all, because about fifteen years ago I suddenly discovered that I really enjoyed video. I loved working with video, loved working with audio. And those skills I'd learnt at university doing that fun thing I enjoyed suddenly became not only relevant but critical to my ability to do video production well. You don't know where life's going to lead you, but if you're doing things you enjoy and developing skills along the way, at some point that is going to be useful.

The path is behind you: stop pretending you need to have it figured out

Here's something really important. The path is behind you. Everything that you have done in your life is completely unique. No two people have led the same story at all. You went to soccer this weekend. Okay, so did everybody on your team. But after the game, they went on to do something else, and you went home and played video games. Your story is unique. And so we don't know where all this stuff is going to end up.

So stop pretending like you need to have this thing figured out. It's only in retrospect that you go, "Oh, I suddenly realised that I can produce video content, I know how to edit it, because I did those classes at uni." If you're doing stuff that you enjoy, you won't necessarily lead yourself astray. For those of you trying to figure out what to do, with no idea where to start: it's not about trying to figure out what your career is going to be. It's not even about trying to figure out the full degree you're going to do at university and how that's going to end up. All you're trying to figure out right now is: what's the best use of my time? What's the next step I need to take? What's going to help me get started?

Gap years vs. exploratory years: a reframe

In this expo, we're going to talk about gap years and working holidays. Let me reframe that for just a moment, because I hate the term "gap year." It makes it sound like you're just bludging off and doing nothing. Think about it differently. If you don't know what you want to do next, no stress. Take an exploratory year. Parents, tune in. It is not a gap year if you treat it like an exploratory year, a year where you take time out to try a whole bunch of different stuff.

What does an exploratory year look like? Get online. If you've figured out a few subject or career areas you're kind of interested in, there are a huge number of free online courses you can take, or courses that cost very, very little to get a qualification. You pay like 100 bucks and you actually get a little certification that goes along with it. You can go out and try all these different subject areas: do a little bit of business, do a little bit of agriculture, study a little bit of music. That will help you figure out what you enjoy studying or not. That can be a great part of an exploratory year.

Go volunteer. And when I say volunteer, people might think soup kitchen straightaway. Volunteering is vast. You can volunteer for Choosing Your Uni. We've literally had interns and volunteers working with us. The number of volunteering opportunities out there are literally unlimited. If you think maybe you want to get into the outdoors, something to do with the environment, go volunteer for national parks. If you think maybe you want to get into a trade, you can go and get a casual paid job working with a landscaper. You might figure out that you actually hate it. Once again, that's a good thing. It's one less thing. Remember those doors: it's a door you've walked through, and you're going, "Ugh, this sucks." Back away, close the door, and try something else. If you live life like that, you will do really well for yourself.

And hey, parents, if that's you too, I know a lot of people who started off in one career and are now looking for what's next. Finding the next step for you is the same sort of process. It's just trying stuff out: if you don't enjoy it, do less of it; if you do enjoy it, do more of it. And then maybe that eventually leads you on to an area of study to take you further. Only three percent of people doing a gap year are off travelling. Most people are actually working, experiencing things. There's plenty of opportunity when you take that time out.

Two practical tools if you genuinely don't know where to start

Let me give you two super easy starting points if you genuinely don't know what you might do next. If you don't know what to do next, there are heaps of good online resources to help you figure out what stuff lines up with your personality. We've built one: the Choosing Your Uni "What to Study" quiz. Details are down in the description for this session. It takes you about twenty minutes. If you haven't got twenty minutes to sit down, answer a bunch of questions, and get some recommendations about stuff that lines up with you, you're actually not trying. Take twenty minutes and it'll give you some recommendations.

When we first built the What to Study quiz, powered by AI, the very first real student we put it in front of sat down, did it, and we're looking over their shoulder. The AI processed and gave them the recommendations. This was a student who literally had no idea what they wanted to do. As they were going through the results, they suddenly went, "Oh, wow." They looked up at us and said, "Museum and cultural studies. What is that?" It was something they'd never heard of before. And then they turned and said, "I could see myself working in that." The parents were completely blown away because they'd never even thought about museum and cultural studies. The thing is, you don't know what you don't know, and sometimes having that sort of resource can open up opportunities, put doors in front of you that you didn't even know existed.

There's another one that some of you will have done through your schools called Morrisby. Morrisby takes a different approach: it's based around aptitudes, so it'll identify if you're good at maths, if you're a good problem solver, and things like that. Morrisby is also available to pay for. Both are great options. Do some of those, get some ideas about things that might line up with you, and then pick one. And if it doesn't work out, change.

It's okay to get it wrong: you've got more time than you think

Let me promise you this. If you're a high school student right now with no idea what you want to do with your life, you can stuff this decision up. You can get it completely wrong, and you can go and try something else. You can drop out of uni and get a job, and you can muck stuff up for the next five years, and you're still going to be as young as anything. You're still only going to be in your early twenties. People get stuff wrong all the time. They fail at things all the time. It's by failing that we actually start to work out the things we're good at, the things we're not good at, the things we like, the things we don't like. Forget this idea that you have to have it worked out. Try something. If it doesn't suit you, change.

And let me bust a myth here. Society absolutely shoves down our throats that you've got to figure out what you're passionate about. Following your passions can be a good thing if you're good at it. But if you're a pretty mediocre musician, trying to become a professional musician is not going to be a good thing for you. However, if you love music and you're not going to cut it as a professional musician, maybe you're an amazing audio engineer. It's not so much about passion as it is about skills and experience, the things we're good at and the experience we've developed in those areas.

Having interviewed hundreds of people about their careers and how they've gotten to these very impressive places where they love what they do, almost universally it's not a linear path. Almost nobody will say to you, "Oh yeah, I always knew that I wanted to be this thing, and I did it at university, and I got into a career, and I've worked in it for twenty years, and I absolutely love what I do." Those people are an absolute minority. Most people who end up in interesting careers where they love what they do have gotten there through small steps. They've tried this thing, found it was crap, backed away, tried something else, found a door opened. Life is not linear. Doors will open as you go.

How an exchange in Oxford led to sleeping in train stations across Europe

So how did I end up sleeping in half a dozen train stations across Europe? I ended up doing a student exchange programme through university. I can remember being in high school, sitting in our quadrangle on a cold morning during roll call, and there was a guest speaker from a student exchange company talking about doing an exchange in the US. I remember thinking, "Huh, that'd be cool. I think one day I'd like to do that."

When I started volunteering for the biology laboratory, it opened a door for me. I suddenly realised, oh, I can go and do a student exchange. Why not? So I ended up going to do a student exchange in Oxford. Amazing. When I was in Oxford, I ended up joining the travel club because I wanted to discover Europe. I met a whole bunch of amazing people. Ended up going travelling all over Europe.

Side story: my favourite band, Pearl Jam, were doing a tour around Europe at that time. I booked two concerts. I was like, "I'll go and see Pearl Jam a couple of times." At the first concert, I met about thirty people who were following the entire tour around Europe. They said, "Rob, you've got to come with us. Come and travel around Europe." Off I went and did that. I was living on a shoestring. Even though I'd been saving, doing all those casual jobs, I didn't want to blow it. So some nights you'd arrive at one in the morning getting off a late-night train, and rather than going to a youth hostel, I'd sleep in the train station. That was something I did that I never would've dreamed I would do.

All of these experiences that you will have in your life, you don't know what they even are yet. So stop pretending like you should've figured it out, or that you can even possibly know. And stop looking at social media and thinking that that's real life. There is a tiny percentage of people who are actually out there doing that thing, and it has got nothing to do with you. You do you. Forget everything else. You're unique. You've got your story. Own your story.

Your story is your asset, not your burden

If you've had a tough life, I feel for you. I'm genuinely empathetic for the tough stuff that you have gone through. That is your story. You have to decide whether your story is a burden or a gift. I've met some extraordinary people who have come from the hardest of backgrounds, people who were orphaned, who grew up in foster families, and have gone on to win the biggest scholarships in Australia, travel all across the Asia Pacific on the New Colombo Plan, and are now working incredible jobs. That doesn't happen because their story holds them back. It happens because they use their story to help drive them forward. Your story is who you are. The good news is that the story is the path behind you. You're the person who gets to write the story that comes next.

If you're a student, I call it the first quarter. Realistically, you're going to live longer than eighty years. If you're twenty right now, you're going to live to 100. The second quarter that's coming for you right now, you're just about to start it. This is the first quarter of your life where you are fully in control. If you're taking your parents' money and they're paying for everything for you, you're on their leash. If you want to get off that leash, you need to walk away, step up yourself, work your own job, have your own money, make your own choices, and take responsibility for the things you get wrong. And you are going to get stuff wrong. It's okay.

The second quarter is your quarter. But it's not about the next six months or the next twelve months. You've literally got a quarter of a lifetime. If you figure your stuff out by the age of thirty, you're doing pretty well, because you've got the rest of your life to actually benefit from that. There are so many people who get to their sixties and haven't figured their stuff out and are unhappy and realise they wasted their life. You have until you turn thirty to figure it out, and you're still young. So don't feel like you need to work this out in the next six months. That is absolute rubbish.

AI and the future of work: opportunity, not threat

Something is different now for all of us in terms of our careers, and that's the new technology that is upon us: AI. Students, we know you're using it. You're using it to study, probably using it to give you advice, maybe even as a companion when you've got troubles. Fair enough. Parents, the kids are using this technology whether we like it or not. When the internet came around in the early two thousands, people said it was going to steal all the jobs. It didn't. This technology is no different.

The students coming through now are going to be AI natives. I call them Generation GPT: the first generation who have no expectation that they have to write a single email. In a world where everything can be generated instantly, text, audio, video, music, ideas, ideas are a commodity. I can go to Claude right now and say, "Give me 100 ideas about this topic," and I will have 100 ideas. Your ideas don't count for anything anymore on their own. What becomes critical is how we interact with the human beings around that idea. How we persuade, how we negotiate. These become critical skills.

All of us are going to be working with teams of AI agents across all elements of our lives. If you don't think that's true, go on YouTube and look for the China Robotics Conference and see what robots are capable of doing now. You will be blown away. They're saying by 2030, in-home robotics is going to be a real thing and it's going to be booming. In a world where we are all working with teams of AI agents, we are all leaders, we are all managers. Managerial skills and project management skills become some of the core skills we need for the future.

But this technology is also the greatest opportunity in the last hundred years. The internet in the late 1990s becoming a thing was a massive opportunity. Imagine if you had bought Amazon shares when they floated at ten dollars, and now they're worth thousands. Imagine if you had invested in Bitcoin back in 2011 when it was a laughing stock. This is the moment in time we are at right now with this technology. Regardless of what you are thinking of going into, whether it's teaching, healthcare, communications, or business, the opportunities are just enormous right now, and you are walking into it fresh.

Does that mean you need to be worried about what your career is going to look like? No. Things will evolve. The workplace will evolve. The job you want to do may look very different, but that doesn't mean it won't exist in some form. Think about a career as being something made of clay, not concrete. Whatever decision you make, you're going to be moulding this sculpture for years, maybe even decades, as long as you don't treat it as something static. If we just leave clay as it is, it's going to set, and that's not necessarily a happy story if it's not in the form we actually want. So back to where we started: you've just got to get started, and if you're not happy, you've just got to change.

Change takes courage, and that's the point

That sounds easy when I just say it. Changing is hard. Change takes courage. But if you continue down a path that you're not enjoying, one that doesn't align with you, whether that's relationships, work, or something to do with your personal values, you're going to end up in a not happy place. So change is the number one thing we need to get used to. And that feeds into this technology. The opportunities are going to be huge, but there might be an opportunity that's right here right now and in six months it's gone. Something else has sprung up over here, and that's the opportunity now. We've got to be prepared to explore, to fail, and to change when things don't work out. Yeah, that takes a bit of courage.

This afternoon I've got a session with Anita van Rooyen on making confident decisions, where she'll take you through a framework for how to decide this stuff confidently. Because right now, parents, I know where you're at. You might be wondering how to help your child. We'll show you how to actually do that confidently. And students, it is very normal where you are right now. If you're not sure, that's very, very normal. We'll show you how to take that next step confidently. Because rest assured, it is only just a next step.

What's the best use of your time? Only you know. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Is TAFE better than uni? For the right person, yes, TAFE might be the right choice. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Are you fried and do you just need time off after Year 12? That's the right choice for you. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Your circumstances are completely unique. Only you know what's going on in your own head and in your own heart. You must do what is right for you based on your circumstances. Nothing else.

Closing: the journey of small steps

If I think back to Rob walking down that corridor in his first year of university, would he have imagined that one day he would be standing here live streaming to literally thousands of people all around Australia? Absolutely not. And all of that has just been a journey of small steps: doing things I've enjoyed, doing more of that, doing less of the things I haven't enjoyed, and you never know exactly where that's going to lead you.

Enjoy this National Virtual Expo. Please participate. You're not alone. If you've got a great support network, you're one of the fortunate ones. But if you don't, we have a Discord server where you can get on completely anonymously and ask your questions about different options. You can share as much or as little as you want. Parents, if you need help, the Facebook group is there to support you. You can post anonymously and you will get responses to your questions. Always ask questions, be curious, and keep moving forward. I'm Rob. I'm looking forward to seeing you throughout the National Virtual Expo. Thank you so much for joining this session on getting started, because in the end, that's what we're here to do: just make a start. We're not trying to design the endpoint right now. Thank you.