 Tako came on my radar because my family had kind of had a talk and I became aware that my parents might not be able to fund me to live in a different city to go to university. My family are very, very middle-class family. Dad's a truck driver and a back-of-operator. Mum's a secretary for a family business. Neither my parents, neither of them, went to university. So I grew up in a very multicultural and very interesting community. My dad's a tradie and my mum was a housewife. As a kid, I was really interested in my education and I sort of saw my education not as a way out, but as a way of making sure that I could live a good and happy and comfortable life. The Tako scholarship is no ordinary scholarship. It brings bright young Australians from around the country to here in Canberra. It gives them support and encouragement to thrive in their university studies, not just in the classroom, but outside of it in our vibrant campus community. It offers people that opportunity to have an amazing university experience that they otherwise might never have had and might never have thought of. I would not be in Canberra if it wasn't for the scholarship. I wouldn't be at ANU and so much has happened in the last four years. It's changed the trajectory of my life completely. If I had to sum it up in two words, I think the scholarship for me has offered opportunity and community. It's opportunity to study things I care about, to meet amazing people who also study things they care about and share those experiences with me. The most amazing thing is that with my degree, I get to do these supervised one-on-one research projects with academics I really respect and it's that ability to really actually find yourself in an academic sense that has been the defining part of the ANU. Yes, there's financial support to study here and to come here. Yes, there's health and wellbeing support, coaching and mentoring support. But for most scholars, the best part of the Tako scholarship is the community of scholars. I think the best thing about the Tako program is the ability to mix and mingle with a hundred people who are all witty, smart, engaging, diverse. They all have unique experiences and, you know, a different lens on the world. I've had brilliant mentoring and brilliant support and just knowing that you've always got people to fall back on with this program is the really special thing. You do get to form a community. You do get to make really cool connections with people. You do get to be aware of opportunities and different perspectives from the network that forms around Takwell. The people that I've met, the professional connections that have become possible through the scholarship, it's all really, really valuable. This is a scholarship for any young Australian who wants to make a contribution to Australia and the world. As I move on into my career, it's really been kickstarted by Takwell. Takwell has fundamentally changed my life in every facet of my life. I don't really know where it's going to take me. I just know that I'm going to be really well educated and also really well empowered to make a difference. And those two things, wherever I go, I believe will work out pretty well. If I was a 17-year-old looking at this now, I would just want to say absolutely go for it. There's no reason not to. Even if you think you don't have a chance at all, that's exactly what I thought. And look who I have now. You know, I just thought I was a kid from Tamworth who didn't have a chance in a million of getting the scholarship. You know, you don't have to have been school captain. You just have to be genuine and have a passion and, you know, be willing to give back. There is no set of characteristics which entirely defines a Takwell scholar. You're the kind of person that we want here. You're the kind of person that this program offers so much in terms of building you up. And you're the kind of person who's been rewarded with this scholarship time and time again. So you should give it a crack, have a go at the application process because you don't know you could be the person that they're looking for.