Personal Stories

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue21 1–31 October 2021

I graduated with a Pharmaceutical Engineering degree in China, 2012. If someone asked me years ago where I wanted to go, I would never have thought of going overseas, and if someone asked me what kind of job I wanted to do, I would never imagine working in a Research School that related to space.

I came to Australia in 2013 with very poor English. I still remember the first day I landed in Sydney, I answered every question with one word. After only three months of living in Canberra, I fell in love with this bush capital. I had to learn English from scratch, then decided to go to university to pursue a higher degree. In 2016, I graduated again with a Master of Business of Administration and a Master of Professional Accounting from the University of Canberra.

I started my first full time job in the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, but I enjoyed helping students and missed campus. Luckily, UC College offered me an admin role and about one year later I joined ANU. I felt my career had started. As I accumulated more experiences in student admin, I started to wonder if I could work in a finance area to utilize and develop my knowledge of accounting but was not sure if I would still be competitive, then RSAA kindly opened the door for me.

I’d like to mention a special person in Australia to me. During my study time, I was doing a part time job in a retail shop and met Bob, he was 70 and already retired from a senior engineer position in Duntroon. He asked if I could teach him some Mandarin. Although I could not figure out why he needed to learn a difficult foreign language, I still took on the job. I was treated like a proper teacher, which I am not qualified for at all, and a family member! I was invited to spend Christmas at their place. He was full of knowledge and stories but still showed humbleness and curiosity to my stories. The whole “teaching “experience, to me, was a more learning and encouraging experience, as I was a shy and unconfident person. He passed away about 3 years ago, but his voice and stories are engraved in my memory. I have not been home, to China, for 3 years due to COVID, but when I think of Bob and people like him, I feel at home here.

Now I have two dogs who have “taken” really good care of me during the lock-down. I used to have dog phobia, but it has all gone since I came here. Canberra is such a dog friendly community which has cured me and enriched my life from a nature perspective.

If you ask me where I want to be and what I want to do in ten years time, to be honest I wouldn’t know, but one thing I know is ten years later when I talk about now, I would say I am very grateful to be living in Canberra and working at ANU because they let me be the person I am and also helped me to be a better one.

Mingming Li