Audrey McDonald

I was always interested in health and science, with many of my final year subjects at high school being in this area. For many years, I had the goal of postgraduate medicine. I initially viewed the University of Melbourne’s Bachelor of Biomedicine as a great stepping stone to that ambition.

Since being in the degree, my career ambitions have become much more fluid, with greater focus on the corporate side of health, including biotechnology (now my major) and policy too. The University’s strong ties to medical research seem like the perfect domain to become exposed to how these findings are transformed into successful commercialised products and services.

In addition to this, having grown up in Sydney my whole life, I wanted to experience living in a new place and meet new people.

The breadth of the Bachelor of Biomedicine is one of its best attributes. It allows you to be exposed to a very wide range of topics within health and science, with core subjects that guide you through your degree in the first few semesters. This exposure facilitates a sense of choice as you move into your further years, having less worries about prerequisites of choosing a major. The focus and flexibility of the degree is something I personally love about the Bachelor of Biomedicine – you can be focus on health and biomedical science and have the flexibility to discover and pursue your favourite aspects of the discipline.

Additionally, the facilities are great, and the staff are dedicated. Life in Melbourne has been made even better due to the University’s proximity to the CBD and vibrant suburbs like Fitzroy. I have also found this is the case at my residential college (Ormond College).

As I progressed through my degree, the nature of my career aspirations has changed dramatically. I came into the Bachelor of Biomedicine thinking postgraduate medicine and research were the only two postgraduate pathways, but I have become privy to the fact that this is very untrue. Now, I hope to pursue postgraduate studies in biotechnology.

The Bachelor of Biomedicine truly starts from the start – don’t worry if you haven’t studied biology before. Your success is measured based on how you apply yourself to your degree, not what you have learned in the past or how clever you were in high school.

A piece of advice I would give is to be open to the fluidity of the degree. Try elective you feel are ‘strange’ or ‘different’ and take agency in finding your unique pathway though your studies.