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My name's Ryan [? Whitby. ?]
I study at James Cook University Townsville campus.
I receive the Defence University Sponsorship.
When I graduate engineering, I'm going to be a weapons
electrical aircraft officer.
My name's Lisa [? Holiday, ?]
and I'm a third year dental science student at the
University of Western Australia.
I'm [? Bella, ?] and I'm a first year medical student at
the University of Queensland in Brisbane.
I'm a student of the Graduate Medical Programme, which means
I'm sponsored by Defence to do my degree and after I finish,
I'm going to be a medical officer in
the Australian Army.
Even up until the point when I got my Defence scholarship, I
was still working very, very hard to get through.
Defence pays me as would any other employer, and that
salary is primarily to go to University.
It's such a relief knowing that all I need to
do is focus on Uni.
When I go home at night, I can actually do my study and relax
and breathe and not have to worry about working and can I
fit this in, can I fit that in?
I discovered the DUS through Defence recruiting.
At the time, I was applying for a gap year programme and
when I informed my recruitment officer that I wanted to do
dentistry, he provided me with information about this scheme.
And I guess things just went from there.
When I moved to Townsville, I lived on my savings for a few
months while I sorted out a job.
I was going to Uni three a half days a week.
The days that I had off, I worked.
So for the first few months, I, like most people at Uni,
worked hard to get by.
I wanted to be independent but that meant I had to be working
at the same time as doing Uni, and Uni hours aren't that
great to try and work a job around.
I went onto my University site for scholarships and
sponsorships and things like that and I saw the Defence
Force one, but I didn't realise I could do that at the
same time as studying medicine.
So I just went onto Defence Recruiting Website, found out
a little bit more information, and I also spoke to some other
med students who I was tutoring with at the time.
Then I called up and got everything rolling.
The application process for the Defence University
Sponsorship is pretty much the same as for all the other
officer positions in that you undergo your YOU day,
assessment day, and then Officer Selection Board.
From my point of view, I looked into a number of
different large businesses and different employers for
electrical engineering.
For the most part, for a person straight out of
university, you've got two or three different options.
One is to head out to the mines and work for a few
years, and your other option was to work for one of your
specialist electronics companies or electrical
manufacturers.
I'm just a regular student pushing my way through
engineering, and Defence is the one thing I wanted to do
with my degree.
The benefits that come with the Defence University
Sponsorship are almost too good to be true.
Outside of the salary, you receive the rest of your HELP
debt paid for.
You receive most of your textbooks that
you need for Uni.
One advantage of living in a rural area and not going down
to Brisbane to study university is that I also get
a zone allowance.
I get rent assistance, I've got full medical coverage,
full dental coverage.
I've got the sponsorship and uniform allowance.
With the Defence sponsorship, you have support along the
way, and also job security when you finish, whereas a lot
of the other scholarships it's just a bulk payment of money.
There you go.
Do what you want with it.
You don't get all the support which I feel like you get with
the Defence sponsorship.
So it is a commitment, but it's definitely worth the
commitment.
When I finish university, I've got a guaranteed
job for three years.
The brilliant thing about Defence is if I want that job,
it's always going to be there for me.
I've lived in Brisbane my whole life.
I want to go to Uni here, I want to stay
here, my family's here.
And Defence will pay me to go to the Uni of my choice.
Upon graduation, it makes me a bit more secure in my mind
knowing that I've got a job sitting there waiting for me
and it allows me to plan around that.
What excites me about a career in the Defence force, aside
from being in an aviation environment, is I'm going to
be meeting new people, I'm going to be living in
different parts of Australia, and I'm going to be
experiencing things that I wouldn't otherwise get to
experience as a civilian dentist.
To be deployed, to go into situations that are out of my
comfort zone and experience new things and just learning
on the job, I think, is going to be really exciting.
My job that I've applied for and been accepted into is
weapons electrical aircraft officer.
So what that will means is that when I've finished, I'll
work on the weapon systems and from an electrical point of
view, all the aircraft that the Navy has in active duty at
the moment.
So that will mean the guidance systems or the interactive
systems, all those kinds of things on the new helicopters
that are coming out, on the existing fleet, as well as
anything that may be happening in the future.
There are options for me to travel if I'd like to.
With the new LHDs, there are currently capacity for two
weapons electrical engineers to be stationed on
each of the two ships.
From my understanding, the differences between being a
dentist in the civilian world and a dentist in the Defence
Force is you get to totally focus on patient care and
deliver the best treatment for your patient without having to
worry about the financial concerns of the patient and
dealing with the marketing and business side of things.
When you tell people that you want to be a doctor, a lot of
the time they say, oh, you're going to earn so much money.
But if you're in it just for that, you're not going to have
a rewarding career.
We want to do it to help people, to
give back to our community.
And even just being in Defence is giving
back to your community.
And being a doctor in Defence, I get the double whammy.
When I was in Year Ten, I started to become really
interested in Defence, particularly in the Army.
My father was in the Navy, so it was interesting that I went
straight towards the Army, but I just feel for me, the Army
suits me better.
I like the ground, not particularly
too keen on the ocean.
And since Year Ten, just been interested in the Defence
Force, interested in the Army, but never really thought that
I would be able to--
I mean, maybe I would have been in the Reserves and
stuff, but I never thought I could have a full time career
in the Army while doing medicine.
I'm there to help the people who are trying to protect our
country and I am helping people.
Being a doctor is about helping people, and that's
what I'm doing.
The main reason I chose Air Force is because I have really
strong interest in aircraft.
I initially wanted to be a pilot when I was a bit younger
before I decided on doing dentistry, so I guess that was
the only option for me in that sense.
With the Navy, you've got options as an electrical
engineer, as any engineer, you've got options that range
from spending a few months on a sub to heading out to sea on
a ship for a few months to doing a similar jobs to what
I'm doing, which is a Monday to Friday, five day a week job
at the base down in New South Wales.
So depending on what you're looking for, you can pretty
well find it.
They sponsor you for your whole degree, and you owe them
back the years that they sponsor you plus one.
So my degree's four years, so I owe them five years.
But I also know someone else who just started this
sponsorship this year, and they're a third year.
So that means they'll be sponsored for two years, and
they owe them three years.
Most likely, one of my first postings in the Air Force will
be to one of the larger bases, namely Richmond, Williamtown,
or Amberley, purely because they've got a larger dental
facility and they've got more experienced dental officers to
help me through as a graduated dentist as I proceed through
my competency levels and gain more experience.
As with all officer positions across the three forces,
there's always an option for you to be thrown into any job.
So while I could enter into system programming jobs, I
could do logistical jobs, things like that that don't
need specialist techniques or specialist skills, I will, for
the most part, be spending most of my time down in New
South Wales at HMAS Albatross, as that's where the Navy's
three aircraft squadrons are stationed.
As part of the sponsorship, I had to do a one week
familiarisation course, and that was a really good
opportunity because I got to meet other undergrads across
Australia in different disciplines.
And then for each year of sponsorship, I have to do a
one week motivational attachment in my area.
So for me, last year, I did one week up at the Air Force
Base at Pearce just at the dental facility, watching what
the dentist does there.
So that was a really good opportunity, especially for me
in second year going into third year treating patients,
I got to see how he interacts with the patients and the type
of things that I'll be doing in my future career as a
dental officer in the Air Force.
I enlisted a few months ago.
Since I enlisted, I haven't done a
day of Defence training.
Defence pays me to go to Uni, and they want me to go to Uni.
So after I graduate, I go down to Royal Military College and
do a short stint down there for my basic officer training.
I think a lot of people think it's really scary fitness
requirements to get into the Army, but it's really not.
If you're moderately fit, you're going to get in.
Obviously, if you've been in there for a long time, they
want to make you fitter, but don't think that because
you're not an elite athlete now or some hardcore Army guy,
you're not going to get in, because that's
definitely not the case.
Once you get into it, once you get into the habit, which is
the most important thing about any physical exercise, you
feel better.
You finish your weights, you finish your run, and you feel
like you've accomplished something.
You feel stronger, you feel cleaner, you feel fresher.
My hobbies would mainly be exercise.
I guess that's what I do in my spare time mainly because I
need to keep my fitness up and I enjoy it.
So mainly bike riding around Perth, and there's a thing
called Jacob's Ladder in King's Park, so I really enjoy
running up and down that, surprisingly.
And I'm also a little bit competitive, so at Officer
Selection Board when we had to do our push-ups, I was the
only girl there and I wanted to beat all
the boys, so I did.
When you finish, you need to find an intern position, and
obviously, then you're committed to that hospital for
a certain amount of time.
But the problem is in the last few years, there's not a
guaranteed intern position for every med graduate.
But if you are going through a Defence Sponsorship, you've
got a guaranteed position.
You don't have to worry about that.
That's not a stress in the back of your mind.
From what I've heard speaking to serving members, also other
doctors who haven't had any military background, time
served in the military is actually seen as really,
really desirable.
If you want then get out of the Army, go into civilian
medicine, having that definitely
hasn't set you back.
Having a few years in the Army, if anything, it's given
you an advantage.
My grandparents are actually really stoked
that I'm doing that.
I think they think it will be quite character building for
me and really good life experience.
Nadine's happy with the fact that I don't have to work now.
When we started out, like I said to you, I was out of the
house seven days a week and it put a strain on our
relationship.
My mom was a little bit nervous because her baby's
going away.
I think she's going into it with a
different sort of attitude.
She wants to help.
She might be a person who makes a big difference.
She was very stressed about the more time spent working,
the less time she could spend studying, and that's all she
really wanted to do.
So now with a sponsorship, she doesn't have to worry about
that anymore.
She can focus completely on her studies.
My friends are really intrigued by the fact that I'm
receiving this sponsorship.
I think the thing that probably gets them most
intrigued is the sponsorship itself in terms of
the salary I receive.
In terms of actually serving in uniform upon graduation,
I'm not too sure how convinced they are, but I think it's
really dependent on the individual who's doing it.
So the recruiting process for an undergraduate entry is
split into three parts.
The first part is a generic YOU session, which all
recruits go through, which determines your aptitude and
the positions that you can apply for in Defence, or that
you're deemed suitable for.
Like I said, it was very daunting and it was very
frightening going in.
I'd never had anything to do with the Air Force, with the
Navy or with the Army specifically, it was something
that was a whole lot less exciting and less daunting
than you'd have thought.
The people that I met in the YOU session and in the
subsequent stages of testing were some of the nicest people
that I've encountered, both in Defence and [? AR. ?]
and they tried to make the process as comfortable and
easy for you as possible.
I don't think enough people know about the sponsorship or
know the right things about it.
They have this idea that you have to work for
the Army for 30 years.
But now that I'm actually telling people what it's
really about and all the benefits you get, all the
opportunities you get, they're a bit more open to the idea.
And also, people didn't realise that you could become
sponsored later in your degree.
Doesn't have to be first year.
If you get to third year and you realise that Defence is
really what you're interested in, you can apply for
sponsorship then.