My name is Debbie Dunn and I am studying a double degree in Sustainable Development and Community Development through Murdoch University. I started off with Community Development because I home schooled my kids but they were growing up, and it's like what's next, and so I really wanted to find a way to give back to my community.
When I first left school, I did do another degree in Psychology and then I'd also done the graduate diploma in education, so I had some brick and mortar experience, and I mean there's definitely some value in that. But just being a single parent of three boys, for me, the Open Universities opportunity provided that flexibility, which, when I was home schooling and I'd be taking my kids to here, there and everywhere, I'll be in the car and I could be studying from the car so you can really integrate it with your life. And that's the other great thing about Open Universities, that you can just access really good courses that are in other universities, and you get that breadth to choose from, which is just fantastic.
There was some trepidation when I first thought about going back to university and how I would cope and there was a lot of help and assistance available to build my confidence and then I realised, yeah, I’ve actually got it and have continued to get distinctions and high distinctions since, so I've been doing really well.
Well because I’ve done the sustainable development side, there’s opportunities to work for like natural resource management or community collaboration on developing urban sustainability.
Community is really important because my sense of identity doesn't come from who I am. It comes from where I am and who I'm with, so any community is about remembering how important those social connections are. It's imperative really, if we want to have a good society that values community.