STEPS - Library - Central Queensland University

Part Four: Student transformations
change that. I found it hard to see beyond my own educational
shortcomings, and believed that it would not be possible for someone like
me, a woman in her forties, to change career. Even though my involvement
in church life at that time offered many different education and support
tools for equipping you to help people, it became obvious to me that, to be
really capable of counselling people, I needed more training, preferably
from tried and tested sources such as a university degree. But how could I
get a degree having only completed Year 8 and doing the first term of Year
9 at school 28 years earlier? It seemed such an impossible task to overcome
the education barrier, and how to do that eluded me until I stumbled across
STEPS.
One afternoon in Autumn 2004, I went to TAFE in Mackay to find out if I
could do Years 11 and 12 so that I could enter university. They directed me
to CQU that afternoon, where I met Lyn Forbes-Smith, the Head of STEPS.
Lyn encouraged me to enter the STEPS program and answered my many
questions, revealing that for me to achieve my goal, this program was most
definitely the best option. But was I ready to commit myself to the learning
curve ahead? I believed I was very ready to take on the challenge to achieve
my dream of entering uni, even though I had no idea how deep I would
have to dig within myself and uncover so much self-doubt.
Within a month, I was sitting in my first Tertiary Education Preparatory
Studies class, and I was terrified that some awful mistake had been made,
that I was taking up the space of someone else who would be far more
capable of completing this program than I. The overwhelming feeling of
inadequacy tormented me daily for at least the first half of STEPS, and I
shed many self-loathing tears. Self-defeating attitudes cloaked in frustration
ran wild. The learning curve was so steep that many colleagues fell by the
wayside, despite the incredible support offered by the lecturers and support
staff (who might I say were sensational). Completing the STEPS program
was, for me, so life-changing in as much as it gave me not only the
confidence to enter university, but also the skills. There is no way that I
would have been able to get through my first year of Psychology without
having gone through the STEPS program.
STEPS also connected me to a terrific small group of new friends, bonded
by the intense learning journey that we undertook together; people I am still
in touch with today and can draw upon for support and laughter. I am now
in my second year of a Social Work degree. I switched programs from
157