002: Graduating the Long Way Around
Meet Donna Ballard • Wingham NSW
Bachelor of Business from the University of New England.
"There's no right way to do it. It's just the way you do it." In this episode, Meredith & Kyle are turning the mic on our very own CEO at Taree Universities Campus. She completed a Bachelor of Business through University of New England and is dedicated to the success of aspiring students in regional communities. Listen to how Donna ticked things of life’s to-do list her own way.
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Transcript
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Intro 00:14
Hey there, Thank you for joining us for Six Degrees of Study: An Uneducational Podcast. Today, we have Donna Ballard who is our very own CEO here at Taree Universities Campus, after completing her Bachelor of Business at UNE. We want to show you how it's highly likely there's only six degrees of separation between you, the career and the life you want. This is the Six Degrees Podcast.
Meredith 00:37
I think everyone has this kind of idea of what the university experience looks like from the outside. And it should be very much like, you know, middle class privileged kid gets full support from parents, transitions from high school to university seamlessly, which there's nothing wrong with that. But I think people look at that as the norm, not like just one of a million ways. And if they don't see themselves in you, they don't see themselves in that fully supported, high achieving student that transitions seamlessly to uni, they don't see themselves in the university experience at all. And I think we've all gone to university with people, not just kids, but people that certainly didn't fit that mould. And there was more of that and less of that traditional thing. So I suppose these questions is about identifying where you sit in that 'Normal University Story' spectrum. So to sort of start off with, what does your life look like now professionally, and personally, post degree and I know, this could be a long stretch of time post degree. But I think it's important we let people know that the life you create with a degree is very much as much about your professional life as your personal life, you can't really separate the two of us to talk about a true success story. What does it look like for you right now? What does an average day look like for you?
Donna 01:49
Well, an average day for me at the moment is coming in and being the CEO at the University's Campus. But I wouldn't have got to be confident enough to take on that position without having a degree behind me. Because I did my degree much later in life, I didn't really have that confidence to step in and feel like I could give any job ago. I know you shouldn't have to hang your career on a piece of paper. And whether it's being a woman in the workplace is you're always looking for that little bit extra, so you can step up and prove yourself, in a way. So for me, it was all really about getting the confidence to finally say "I've gone to uni." Because when I left high school, everyone kind of had that expectation that I would, but I wasn't in a financial position to be able to do that back then. So it took me until I was in my 40s to finish my degree.
Meredith 02:43
And so when you say 'financial position', it was pretty much keeping a roof over your own head and the idea of having to work and study just... it didn't line up then? Or was there more to it than that?
Donna 02:52
I guess I was busting to get away from home.
Meredith 02:54
Yep, I the independance factor.
Donna 02:56
Yeah, my idea was, I'll take a year off. I'll get some money behind me. And then I'll be putting myself through uni, being very independent.
Meredith 03:04
SISTERS DOIN' IT FOR THEMSELVES.
Donna 03:08
In that year off, I met the person that's now my husband. And while that was never on my radar to go off and get married, I was married at 19. So that then became the focus of why I stayed here. We said a house up here, I got jobs here. I felt connected then to this space. But I always wanted to still get a degree. And it wasn't until much later that I started studying. I can't even remember when, because it's taken me - I feel like the degree has been...
Meredith 03:38
A labor of love?
Donna 03:41
Hanging there on the side of everything else I do for so many years. I think it's taken me about 12 years to finish my degree. And I probably finished it back in, well, maybe 2002, I want to say. I have to check that bit of paper that's on the wall, but a long time ago, but it took me a long time to do it.
Meredith 03:58
I think what's important to note is that you don't have to smash it out in three or four years. It doesn't have to be this 'do or die' process where nothing else has any kind of space.
Donna 04:06
And that would kill your life. Totally. And you know, for me, it was that hardest step - I was trying to do a distance education, felt I was totally on my own. In the midst of all of that they switched across from us being the type of degree where you had to print off your stuff, get it in an envelope, get to the post office to get the stamp on time to prove that it got posted by five o'clock on a Friday or whatever. To then being able to lodge it online. So I had this whole shift of moving to the electronic space.
Meredith 04:32
So you had to adapt to universities modernizing themselves as well as remote study as well as trying to do it around kids, life, income...
Donna 04:42
Emails weren't really a thing at the start.
Meredith 04:44
Oh god, they send you everything by email at university now. They live in your inbox.
Donna 04:48
That makes me sound really, really old. But we used to get the envelope at the start the huddle your stuff in it, and you had to go and buy your books, which was another cost.
Meredith 04:56
And doing it a massive technological shift would be really hard too. On top of everything else, there's that as well, where it's like you're learning, they're learning. You're trying to look to them for guidance on like, "how does this portal work?" And they're like, "Well, we really don't really know. We'll send an email to the tech department see if they know."
Donna 05:10
Exactly! Well, no, you had to send your own email to the tech department and try to get a response. And it was hard.
Meredith 05:16
There's just that one guy locked in a room somewhere quietly panicking because he IS the tech department.
Donna 05:20
He was the one guy.
Meredith 05:23
So that really kind of sums up the next question, which is, we always have this idea of a typical University story. Yours was obviously very different. So you did it post-kids, post-establishing a life with someone?
Donna 05:35
Yes. Just to clarify that I thought, okay, my kids are now babies. I've got time on my hands. I'll start my distance education now. So that went okay, for a while. They were like one and two and three. But by the time they were getting to be four and five, and then getting to school... by then I was needing to get back into the workforce anyway. Time became really, really tight. And I might have done one unit, one year, I think for a while there just to hang in.
Meredith 06:02
Yep. Because it's that magical time when they're too old for naps, but they're too young for school. And it's like "right, I have to entertain you for, what, eight hours straight? Fantastic. I'm not going to get anything done."
Donna 06:13
Yeah, so you'd start at 10 o'clock at night. And then you'd be falling asleep literally on the screen.
Meredith 06:19
Wow. So then after you graduated, how long did it take you to start - like, when you finally graduated, obviously must have been this massive exhale. Where were you at in your life then when you graduated? Like what did work / family look like? And then how long did it take you to start seeing that degree showing up in your life as like, "Oh, okay, now I'm starting to see it really pay off. Now it was worth it."
Donna 06:43
I guess at that point, by the time I finished my degree, my kids were in high school. I'm a very, very slow studier. So I found for them, which I really appreciated, it gave them the idea that going to uni from high school was something that you did, it was doable. I didn't have that. Like when I finished school, it wasn't you automatically went to high school. Whereas for them, they'd seen me studying and knew what was involved a little bit. And for them, it was that natural thought process from the early days: "yeah, I'm gonna go to uni."
Meredith 07:15
It's that whole kind of like, you can be what you see, you know. They need to kind of see that on the landscape of their possibilities to go, "Oh mum went to uni, and mum did it around like cooking dinner and running a house and running us around. So God, if she can do it around all that, obviously, it's doable."
Donna 07:31
And I think they saw the sense of achievement that I got from it. And, you know, they saw it as a good thing. And they've both done their degrees, I guess in a in a more normal process. They both did take a gap year. So that made me a bit nervous. Knowing that I'd taken my gap year.
Meredith 07:48
Those years can get really long!
Donna 07:50
Takes a long time! But they did do that gap year and saved their money so that they could go away to study. But again, it was about them trying to get enough money to get behind them to get a rental space. One went to Coffs Harbour to study, one went to Newcastle to study, which is the typical path from around here, I guess. It's just the cost of doing that was a bit of a barrier for them. But they put some money behind it. And we were determined to help them get through.
Meredith 08:14
I suppose what the similarity I kind of see there is you still had to choose. Like you still to choose between like, they might have met someone and might have been ready for kids sooner than what they had them. But they had to choose between getting the degree done versus getting their life started. And that was the same for you. You just chose opposite direction. You chose to get the life started and then do to the degree at a delayed rate. And sometimes I feel like you're still put in this position where, when you are in a regional area and you don't have that access with universities 30 minutes up the street. So you can still live with mum and dad. And you can still keep your part time job, you can still keep all your social connections, you have to choose between that stability, that support, that social connection, and then going away to pursue that degree or trying to do it kind of out on a limb, where you are doing it at home base, but you kind of get out on your own.
Donna 09:01
The other thing that was really critical for me, I'm just thinking back to that when I was studying, I really couldn't always choose a subject that I wanted to do because I had to choose the ones that didn't have a residential.
Meredith 09:11
Yep, access.
Donna 09:12
Because I was working. I didn't want to be taking two weeks or four weeks of my year, which has all the annual leave I had, saying goodbye to the family to go into a residential.
Meredith 09:21
And then would your head have really been in the game? Like if you had kids back at home where that parental guilt automatically sinks in. "I'm being so selfish. What are my kids thinking? What are they doing right now? Are they coping with everything?"
Donna 09:33
"How could I be so selfish to take my holidays away from the family?" So yeah, I chose every subject I could without any residentials until the very last one."
Meredith 09:44
It's kind of an awful situation to again have been faced with the choice to go "well, I do I choose this family I've invested in or do I choose this career and this education I'm invested in?"
Donna 09:52
But I think that's typical for women. I don't know. I guess I'm a woman, so I'm gonna speak from a woman's point of view. I don't know whether men have that same feeling. They probably would, they probably wouldn't want to be having holidays away from family either. So I think it's that distance factor that comes into your studies. And that's why I'm so passionate about this university being here.
Meredith 10:10
I think more dads and fathers would be feeling that because, and I think it's from a different angle. So I saw this - not to take away from your story - but I saw this with my husband trying to start an accounting degree when he reached a point in his life where he's like, "I need to provide for my family, but I can't be reliant on a physical role. Because if something happens to me physically, tomorrow, I can't do that job. And I've got no plan B. My plan A is my ability to keep myself safe and healthy and well. And that's a very tenuous Plan A. And so he tried to pursue an accounting degree because he wanted to be able to switch gears and go do something that was more mentally driven, but he felt like he was just at sea with the paperwork and the communications and the study and things like that. It was this pressure and this desire to provide and feel like you are the provider. If you do this, you got to make it stick there's no "Oh, we'll make it work and see how it goes." It's do or die for them. So I think for women, it's this kind of, I'm being selfish, and I shouldn't be taking this time for myself, I should be investing my kids. For guys, it's just like this, "I can't afford to take time away from them, I'm the primary income earner, I'm keeping this family afloat. I can't take time away from that, and money away from that, to invest in myself." So I think that's the emotional battle. Well, you're a dad Kyle. How would you relate to the male perspective in that situation?
Kyle 11:29
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the time away is just, it's impossible, really. Not just for Mum, because as a dad, if you're leaving you then leaving someone there entirely on their own.
Meredith 11:42
Who's sleep deprived and stressed.
Kyle 11:44
Exactly right. And in our family, Cristen's working just as much as I am, almost. So there's a lot of time there where were like, if I wanted to take that I again, same thing, I'd feel selfish in doing that, and prioritizing me and my career over her and the kids."
Meredith 12:01
Because culturally do this big shift where people are expecting dads to be a lot more invested and hands on. And I'm sure that invite's being met openly, there's so many does that want to feel invited into the day-to-day parent experiences. My husband's a really hands on dad. And so on the one hand, you're expected to be showing up so much more on a day-to-day basis for kids. But then how do you then take time away from those kids where you just starting to get a taste of what it's like to be really involved. And you're the primary breadwinner, so you're already split two ways. And then to throw a degree in there, even though in the back of your head, you know, that degrees standing between you and a better future, potentially based on what you want to do.
Donna 12:35
And I guess, going back to our perspective on things, because my husband knew that I'd always wanted to get a degree, he was extremely supportive of me getting the degree. So he was really the primary carer for the kids. So it was a real team effort me getting through uni. I could hardly say that, he took that choice to be the one to look after the kids more than me, really. So I went back to work fairly quickly after our kids were born. Because he was a stay at home dad. So he's really been nothing but supportive. So it's really been a whole family...
Meredith 13:10
Which is massive, but unfortunately not common.
Donna 13:14
And not common in my age, I don't think.
Meredith 13:17
And again, it's probably just a generational / cultural thing, where that's probably been a very modern way to have approached it, where he was quite happy to facilitate your ambitions. Whereas I suppose in a lot of traditional family setups, the expectation was that, "Oh, you can do a degree, as long as you can fit it around all your other family obligations as a mum."
Donna 13:38
In that regard, I was fairly spoiled. I was allowed to not do all the house duties and study.
Meredith 13:45
Oh, you just picked a good one. You just have good taste. So if you hadn't been able to complete that degree, knowing what experiences and opportunities you enjoy now, if you hadn't made it, how would your life look different?
Donna 14:00
Actually, just to rewind a bit, I guess, when I was about halfway through, and I starting to think, think this is crazy. This is take me three times longer than it should. I was got the point very close to - and this is stupid, you know - is it really going to make any difference? I was very fortunate to have a chat with the UNE campus here. And I've got to say the Yves just kind of got me through. At the end, she was planning the subjects that I could do the easiest to get the quickest to get the results to get me through the line. So that helped a lot. If I hadn't finished the degree, I guess my life wouldn't have really changed. I didn't really get jobs I don't think primarily because of my degree. Except perhaps for this one that I've just got now. I would not have got to be CEO at the university without having a degree. I'm hoping that through us having this university here and more people around us in this area getting degrees, that they might become normalized. And it does become more of a requirement for local work, and in itself then lifts the level of employment in this area and lifts the level of employers that move to this space. Because we can cater with a wonderfully skilled workforce.
Meredith 15:12
So it's kind of a catch 22 situation isn't where it's like, is there the is a skill set there for me to build a business here? It's like, well, the business has gotta be there for the skill set to come and work in it. Going back though, you don't think your life would have been that much different had you not had the degree aside from this role. What would the impact have been on your kids are not saying you get a degree?
Donna 15:30
Yeah, I think that's the thing.
Meredith 15:32
It's that spill on effect.
Donna 15:33
It's a spill-on effect, where it becomes like, "well, mum did it. I can do it." It's always hard if they're first in family trying to get a degree. I can really relate to that. And that's where I see one of the main benefits of my degree is that filtered through to the normal expectation for my kids to do it.
Meredith 15:51
You suddenly set the standard for what's possible in your household, don't you. It's the microculture you create in your home. And suddenly, that's the new level of what's possible. That's what we do here. We pursue growth, we pursue development, that's what we do in our family.
Donna 16:04
And it just becomes more normal. And, you know, for me, I was like, I didn't know how to enroll, didn't how to do anything, it was always a bit of a barrier.
Meredith 16:12
It's like another one of those things, it's the whole normalizing. It's like the mental health conversation. It's like getting dads more involved in family life and making that, the whole talk around men's mental health, the more you talk about it, the more you normalize it, the more you're gonna see that progress. So obviously, there was parts in your university story where it was really a struggle, and you really didn't know if you're going to come out the other side of it. What would be something you wish someone had told you at the very start of all this?
Donna 16:45
I guess to just really keep going, and then you didn't have to study two or three units at a time. Just to wind it back. Take a bit longer.
Meredith 16:53
It's okay to take your time.
Donna 16:54
There's no right way to do it. It's just the way you do it. It really is everyone's personal choice.
Meredith 17:01
And it mightn't have changed the way you did, it might have changed the way you felt about the way you did it, where you probably did it at a slower speed feeling like you're failing. Where you would have done it at a slow speed feeling like, "Oh, no, I'm just ticking along, we're gonna get there."
Donna 17:12
And time goes by quicker than you think. Really. Yeah, starting at the beginning, if I had a thought it was gonna take me that long, I wouldn't have done it.
Meredith 17:21
You're looking at the uphill slope. So and then because we are so much integrated in the TUC, what would have meant to you to have had access to something like the Taree Universities Campus in your experience.
Donna 17:33
I think the real benefit for me would have been, I would have been able to connect with another employer in this area, so that when I did finish my degree, it really did mean that I had meaningful employment relating to that degree. Rather than it just being something that I take with me to the next interview and go, "I've got this" and hope it sticks and hope I get a job. I would have felt more embedded in the local workforce from the start, which I think is what is our real difference.
Meredith 17:59
I think it's like this case of, it's three years, and then I hope it works. Whereas it'd be so good to move through howevermany years of study, knowing that it will work. Knowing that the next step is there and waiting.
Donna 18:10
That you've already had some 'career matching', if you like, along along the way. You've met some employers around town, you feel comfortable, to be able to work with them, they're comfortable with you, just creates that embedded employment, if you like, as part of your education, rather than chasing it after the education.
Meredith 18:26
I think it's gonna be the "Oh once I've got this degree, it's only just beginning. Then I've got to do the resume, interview circuit." And again, that fear of being in a regional area, it's that perception that there's only so many spots, like it's gonna be me and like 20 other guys vying for these three spots at these three companies, because that's the only way we think we can see our career in application. Because that's the other thing too. I found when I started University, is it felt very prescriptive in that like, if you do this degree, here is the six 'choose your own adventures' that you can pick from. And what I'm doing now is so far removed from that and better. But it wasn't a future that was visualized to me. So it was a case of Well, thankfully, I like the six ventures I could choose from, because what ended up happening was even better, but it's a case of this, we have such a limited like scope of what's possible with that education.
Donna 19:17
And I think another thing that comes from us being here in a regional town, is that we have that six degrees of separation if you like from everybody here. You're probably going to know an employer that knows someone that knows you that will trust you to become one of their employees.
Meredith 19:32
It's a benefit of being here. It's the the network that you're not going to get in a major metropolitan area. It's the fact that you will know or at least know someone who knows most of the major employers in town. There are those stepping stones there, if you know how to make them work for you. Wow. Well, thank you Donna. I'm looking forward to hearing your voice more on this because obviously you're gonna be such a key person in this. We were saying before we recorded you're gonna become town Mum, wherever it comes running up to you after the degree going 'I GOT THE INTERVIEW! I GOT THE JOB! AND IT'S AMAZING"
Donna 20:02
I'll be the mum that cries "I knew you could do it!"
Meredith 20:06
You'd be the constant sobbing mess in the corner of the local supermarket. "I just bumped into a student they're doing so well and I knew they could do it and it's just I'm so proud of them."
Donna 20:14
So thank you, Meredith.
Meredith 20:16
Thanks TUC Mum. Look forward to the next one.
Donna 20:20
Thank you so much.
Outro 20:22
Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Six Degrees Podcast. This podcast is produced by UpBound Business Consultants and is brought to you by Taree Universities Campus. Based on the New South Wales Barrington Coast, TUC a hub for supporting Distance Education study for university students with campus facilities, mentoring, post grad career opportunities, and more. If you'd like to share your story, you can send us an email at podcast@tareeuni.org.au and let us know your unconventional road to a degree. Until next time.