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Jasmin Harris, 2022 Brighter Futures Scholarship recipient
From an outside perspective, university life may evoke images of care-free years spent making friends and pursuing a vocational passion.
Graduates in the workforce might look back with rose-tinted glasses, while high school students look forward with aspiration to exploring a world of new ideas and studying on their own terms.
But for some students such as Jasmin Harris, university life can also be a complex juggling act where family, finance and health concerns bring enormous pressure to bear.
A series of complications outside her control shook Jasmine’s academic progress and almost jeopardised her enrolment, until a $5,000 Brighter Futures Scholarship turned her world around.
“This scholarship helped me through last year more than I can explain,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been able to get through without it.”
Jasmin started her dream degree—the Bachelor of Fine Arts/Bachelor of Business—on great footing.
She moved from her hometown of Boonah into student accommodation on the Nathan campus and got work at cinemas in Ipswich to support herself.
Her dad was largely recovered from the lingering brain injury he suffered in a 2013 farming accident, and she fast fell in love with Brisbane’s network of art galleries.
“I grew up interested in art and painting and I wanted to be a practising artist, but after coming down to uni and Brisbane I fell in love with the gallery atmosphere,” says Jasmin, who took on a business degree to pursue a future in galleries and arts events.
But at the start of 2020 things started to turn. Coronavirus shuttered cinemas and strangled her income, while her dad had a serious car accident that put regular carer responsibilities—including the 90-minute commute to Boonah—on Jasmin’s plate.
Next, some old dance injuries flared (dropping a $150/fortnight physiotherapy program on her already strained budget) and then her car died en route to her single work shift for the week.
“It was pretty rough, but I’m a budgeting queen so I made it all work,” she laughs.
“With the scholarship and having one less thing to worry about, my grades have gone back up.
To know that I have the scholarship support again this year, brings so much relief and optimism for the year ahead. I can push through and continue my education. I’m beyond grateful to the donors that believe in, and support students like me.”