Turning failure into passion

the story of transferring multiple degrees in 2 years…

My passion for chemistry was inspired when I took Chemistry in year 12 with my favourite teacher. I love how personalized the class was and how his teaching method would excite me to be great at the subject.

I was wrong. Chemistry was actually my worst subject and I was told to drop it multiple times. Going into university I continued to explore Chemistry with the degree Industrial Chemistry under the school of Chemical Engineering. No one knew what my degree was about, so I was known to be studying Chemical Engineering for 2 years instead. I became a representative for the “Chem Eng” society and was a camp leader to inspire the future generation in partaking the degree. I was featured in Women in Engineering article and the quote is still there “I want to produce my own chemical and own a cosmetic company”. I learnt to start my own jewellery business part-time and had always thought to be an entrepreneur.

Big dreams. But shattered.

In my first year of Engineering I failed a computing subject, famously known as “Computing for Engineers” where we learn how to use excel spreadsheet. I felt embarrassed because I didn’t know how to use an excel spreadsheet. I thought it was a common course for student to fail, after finding out majority of my friends got 95 and above. There was no supplementary exam and the course didn’t offer in summer, meaning I would have to delay my degree and so on… I just didn’t know what to do and my solution was to change my degree. Each day, I would pull out of a hat which degree I felt like doing now. I was lost.

I was so persistent in keeping Engineering. I had all my friends, I was representing Women In Engineering, great career, great salary, oh… and the article was still there. So I gave Chemical Engineering another go but this time, I was failing the whole semester. I didn’t enjoy it. I started losing my passion. I never really thought about my second option, Engineering had always been in my mind. My jewellery business was still up and running so maybe I could transfer into commerce? Or because I like designing jewellery so maybe I could transfer into Industrial design?

So I transferred to Mechanical Engineering.

I was excited because it solved my problem. I was still within the Engineering School and I learned how to design at the same time. However, whilst I was studying Mechanical Engineering, I also enrolled at TAFE Design School to take Certificate IV of Industrial Design. I was juggling between full-time study at UNSW and full-time study at TAFE but I wanted to discover where my passion lied.

My turning point in discovering my passion was when I realized passion is not a chore. Passion is when you realise a task is no longer a task but an activity of joy to complete something not for others, but for ourselves.

Whilst studying Engineering, I would be studying for exams, memorising all formulas and literally read the answer like a bible. I didn’t understand it but I was doing it to pass the course. On the other hand, design was project based. I would be designing and completing the project late at night last minute but I enjoyed it. I didn’t complain, and I could do it for hours and hours. Whereas, I couldn’t last 15 mins into studying thermodynamics.

When the decision was finally made that I wanted to transfer from Engineering to Design, I had people saying the career was not as good, lower salary, and Engineering was way better. I wanted to keep the technical aspect and but also wanted more design based. So I came across this degree called “Computational Design”, a degree that was very design based but also involves a little bit of Engineering to be able to understand the design functionality.

It was my answer.

I was back to day 1 of my University stage again where no one knew what Computational Design was. I didn’t either. Until there was a compulsory subject in learning beginner python and I was so scared of failing coding again. I got out of Engineering for a reason.

That python course was life changing because it was coding for design and I was able to integrate something I absolutely hate but applying that with my passion, which is design. I would be designing statically and then with the magic of coding, I was able to animate it and interact with my own work. Most importantly, people were able to interact with my design work, creating an impact physically and emotionally (UX/UI design)

After completing a year of Computational Design, I was invited to teach coding to first year. I never thought I would be a coding teacher after failing and hating it.

Turning failure into passion is not an easy thing to discover and it takes time. You can hate something for the rest of your life but you will never be able to escape it because at some point, it will come back to you without knowing. You concentrate on avoiding them so much that you have completely forgotten what you should really be focusing on. First of all, find passion first, because if you are working towards your passion, not even failure can bring you down.