Vice Chancellor - Professor Peter Høj, PhD - University of South Australia

When I was young, my family's business hit hard times and we had to sell our belongings and move into a small one-bedroom flat. We had to start all over again. My father said to me, 'get an education, you can't lose it'.

When people have been in a situation where they have lost their livelihood and then had to find a new way, they realise that if they do not have a formal qualification the road back is a harder one to follow.

Education is a tool for you to renew and reinvent yourself, and to open your eyes to a world that is much broader than you would otherwise have thought.

Two rules for success that really drive me are: do what you really like doing; and do it well. Things will work for you, many paths in life will open up and you will find that you arrive at a place that you had never even thought about. I never had a plan for my career. Perhaps the greatest risk you can take in your career is to take no risk at all.

If you work at the forefront of a field it all becomes interesting - some of the greatest gifts I think I've had in my life have been the four or five occasions in which I had an insight that I knew was of some significance in the world. To realise that there is a little mountain out there no one has climbed and that you got to the top first: and you saw this magnificent view.'

Category:

Education

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