This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. It may still contain transcription errors.
James: Would you please welcome to the show tonight,
Scott the camp.
Scott: Thanks for having me on Graduate Theory.
Intro#
James: Perfect.
It’s fantastic to have you on mate. You certainly had such a diverse and unique experience at universities. I think hearing from you is going to be incredible for some of the guys listening.
How Scott decided what to study#
James: One thing I really want to dive into is just your university experience generally. Cause yeah, we’ve spoken before the podcast. It’s super interesting. So one thing that maybe I’ll ask you first is what did you study at university and what was your decision making process to get to that? And How, like, how did you decide what you.
Scott: So the course I studied is called a bachelor of civil engineering and a diploma of engineering practice at UTS. And it’s one of those things where you can talk in hindsight with so much kind of clarity that at the time it was always making decisions just around pretty much, de-risking a bad decision rather than trying to make the perfect decision.
And the way I went about that was in about year 11, when you’re having to make these decisions. I was really, I had no idea where to start. I had no idea what I wanted to do. Or what life after school looked like. And during year 11, my sister was currently doing a gap year over at YMC in, in the UK having a great time.
And to me, finishing school, having a year off and traveling and seeing the world and doing just exploring just sounded amazing. However, I saw some of those programs and they seemed like just nothing seemed really exciting enough to, put off, say a year of uni or whatever kind of tertiary path I wanted to take.
And felt a bit more like a year in limbo. And that wasn’t something that I was really interested in and I was very interested. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I wanted to do something that would help point me in that direction. And that direction was more kind of start something and figure that out.
And if I had to change later down the line, then I would do that less, delay that decision. Which kind of how it at least felt to me I’m sure like, my, my sister is now taking a career path based on that gap year. So contradicts at least my thoughts, but that’s what I thought at the time.
So for me, it was really choosing something and it was something around a new, I was like maths and analytically minded or at least that’s what I thought I was.
And someone said to me at one of these careers fairs, engineering’s about problem solving. And there was something around that really just struck me.
And I knew I liked the built environment. So I was also considering like a bit of project management and construction management, those types of roles and degrees. And it was really the I was choosing around that and I went to a careers advisor to follow on with that. And she said engineering at UTS usually a four year course at UTS it’s five years, because in your second year, they actually get you to leave university for six months and work full time in that industry.
And to me, I’m just thinking of One that’s pretty much that second year gap you that I was thinking about too. How about, I just start that internship really early and I ended up starting it a week after first year exams and I was like, then I can travel to Europe for the European summer and I’ll be, I would’ve had six months worth of full-time work in money.
So I could spend that. And pretty much for me, that was the entire game plan for getting into tertiary education. And the thought around that was, I’m going to have one year of university understanding how university works. Like just how, how a semester works, how the subjects work, make friends go through all those, all that first year, just figuring things out.
And then after that I would have six months of professional work experience. Like I would actually see the job of what a engineer does and then I’d actually get to travel, which is what I wanted to do anyway. So to me that sounded like such a good way to not really dive too much into a particular.
But also give something a real solid go that, I was very open-minded if I wanted to change into say a commerce or economics degrees, I know those are where I was thinking a backup might be. But I, so I knew, okay this might not be right for me, but but I had a very kind of good action plan to get started.
And that was the plan from about pretty much as soon as I got accepted into that course and pretty much followed it, my, I was going to networking events and first couple of weeks of university and pretty much trying to figure out how to get a professional internship which obviously one of those challenges now, what that really was useful for was that pretty much as an 18 year old, I was able to one get professional mentor ship from pretty much just my boss, my colleagues, people in the professional environment from such an early age and that kind of compounds over time.
The second thing was. I was a kind of really complimented any theoretical studies I was doing because I was there like, doing the practice in the industry as my casual job. And then I’d also be studying that too. So it kind of made the whole, that was pretty much the starting point to my tertiary education.
And then I think everything else just built off that platform.
James: No, that’s really, cool when I think so many people, even myself,
like getting to the end of the university, Same people like that and fantastic opportunity at UTS to be able to do that, but to get that experience so early on, it was always something that I had, had certain friends that were doing that and I was like, so jealous because I was like, I really wish that I could have got something like that early on, just even, to get a taste of the actual job you’re going to be doing before, like you finished university and then go and do it is so important. So you can work out. Is this something I enjoy? is there something I don’t enjoy things like that. Was that your experience too? How did you find that and how did that even support your university studies as you continued on
How did working while studying improve his experience at university#
Scott: Yeah.
And that’s, it’s so true as well because when you start to feel like you’re in a role and the variables are, you have this industry, and then you have any given role at any given company is just a slice of a particular industry or a particular field. And then you have the team that you’re in and, are you in a great team?
Do you have a great manager? Do you not have a great manager? All those things when you’re really just getting started make a big difference. And for me, it was, I was always assessing that. And I think the first team I had was really good, both like both. I was in two main teams during my undergrad years on two projects.
Both those teams are really supportive. Like I would ask for some experience on say the environmental engineering team, and I’d get, half a morning or a couple hours, one or two days a week or something like that to, to have that breadth. So I, I was really lucky in that sense that I had that support, but it’s also one of the best positions you have is as a student, because everyone just wants to help you expose you to those different opportunities to support you in that way, because there’s.
Obligation like a full-time job, a full-time job you’re hired to do full-time resourcing as a uni student. You’re pretty much like a casual staff to help out in a couple of ways like here and there and whatever. I think I was lucky but I also utilize that to get a couple of diverse experiences, but coming back to university, when it gets to like third year, fourth year, fifth year, you and all of your uni friends have all had internships, probably at some different places.
Some of you had worked together or insane companies on different projects and whatnot. So like just your not even on the individual basis, but on your cohort basis, everyone’s talking about what’s going on. You’re speaking to friends who had great internships and you’re thinking, oh wow, that industry is probably pretty good.
I never would’ve known about that. You might’ve had people that had, pretty much terrible internships and you’re like, wow, okay. Stay away from that. That’s not what I like. That’s not right for me. Or you might just hear about other people liking stuff. You just not for me. So it’s like that, that learning vicariously through your cohort, I think was also that to me, that just it just upped the level of the types of conversations you would have.
You could talk professionally about what’s going on in the industry. People did have opinions about particular projects about particular things. And that kind of I wouldn’t necessarily call it like a professional environment because you’re still uni mates. You’re still getting coffees. You still getting beers after class and whatever else, like it’s still very casual, but it’s casual, but you’d learning about this stuff together.
And I think that, that just made all of us way more informed about what type of pathways we wanted to take, but also what opportunities, I think one of the first ones in first year when my sister was in third year uni, cause she’s two years older she was doing, she studied a bachelor of architecture, so same at UTS but there was one of these overseas trips that you could go on and UTS would give you a scholarship. She told me about it. I applied the day
Before applications closed and I got awarded that as well. So she had it and I had it, we both went to Banda RJ in Indonesia, which is that Northwestern point where the boxing day tsunami, was like the focal point for where, for all the tsunami kind of hitting Indonesia.
And it was a one week social project and I was like, wow, like what university people can send you overseas to do some social impact project and, it’s paid for, and, but you get to learn so much during the time and you get to learn, you get to meet, 10 other people from UTS, from all over campus to do this stuff.
Wow. How cool is that? And yeah, I ended up doing kind of multiple different projects like that. And of course, I’m, from the ground up in the pool with Joe. And but that even back then was very early, but, the, like our friends and cohort were telling each other of these types of opportunities that came up in third, fourth, fifth year.
Because that was the type of, that were the things that we’ll talking about. I think if you have that peer group who are, all identifying what’s going on and where the opportunities are, particularly if you’re friends and what each other likes I think that’s always really powerful as well.
So it’s really, I guess it always comes back down to who your community is and, and where does that information like local information get past.
James: Yeah, definitely agree
Then even in my own experience at university with when it comes to the example, like moving degrees, like you were saying, like economics was your backup option, but things like that, where, you only really hear about what that degree, for example might be like, if you know someone doing it or these kinds of things
just helps so much.
with Just knowing what’s out there knowing what opportunities you can pursue, because often that’s sometimes like a bit of a blocker. is you don’t even know what you could do. Like it’s not that you like it. It’s not that you don’t want to do it. Or, you just have no idea, but it’s if I like knew that the opportunities could exist and even your example of going and exchange all your trip to Indonesia, like it’s fortunate that you found out about that, so then you could decide that you wanted to go.
So I think, like we were saying that who you’re friends with in that community that you’ve built around through university I can really shape the opportunities that you see in the opportunities that you pursued. And it’s so important in creating like yourself as you go through uni and who you end up being as you go into your career.
Exploring extra-curriculars during university#
James: I want to ask you then we’ll continue to university timeline. So you’re going, you’ve started this second year program, You gone on exchange. Your third and
fourth year, how did those shape up? Were you continuing to explore other extracurricular things. And what did that kind of look like
Scott: Yeah. So when I was in Europe, that was really. So I was mid second year. That was where I was really asking myself, do I continue with engineering particularly civil engineering, or do I consider doing something else? And just using your first year subjects as electives or transfer subjects, no harm done.
And ultimately I came down to the decision of, I had a lot of momentum. I had a lot of momentum in the course I had a great group of friends. I had a great team and the internship that, where we’re there for when I came back to Sydney and wanted a job again. And to me, like the potential of another path even if I wasn’t set on say civil engineering that momentum I thought would be would be too good to give up for a unknown path.
So I was pretty much. I didn’t really think twice about it. I was like, this is, I’ll see where this can go. This is pretty good. So what happened in the end of second year was really, was great because all of my friends, the second half of second year is when it’s actually scheduled in your course to take the six months off.
So all my friends had taken six months off with their internships. So I had to meet a whole bunch of students that were like off the set timeline the set course timeline and people just follow it to a T I kind of front-loaded internships.
And then after that happened, then I was always optimizing the timeline for how many days I could work and things like that. But it was great because I always had the Cole group of friends, but I was also meeting mature, aged students, people from here and there, people who transferred from other degrees and.
That was really good breaking out of that initial kind of starting year one and just follow the same group of people, each part like each semester. Because I also got to learn through them what they did, what they didn’t, someone took two years off to do a ski, like ski seasons and go do ski seasons, in Australia and then overseas and everything else like that.
So I got to hear about kind of those types of stories and journeys as well as refined. How did you end up landing back in engineering or someone who was studying teaching to teaching degree and then transfer it to this? Someone who studied engineering went to do nursing was nursing for 10, 15 years, and then came back to engineering.
Those are the types of people that I met. And I think that those types of stories, right at that time, as I’m coming back from Europe contemplating, whether I want to continue this path that really grounded. My constant thinking around what am I doing? W what am I liking? What can I do? What can I try to figure out new things? Third year I’d probably say it was more seeing really sinking into the university ecosystem. I was got, I got in, I was still had that job at the internship that was still a casual job. I had my core university work and I was involved in uni games.
That was a lot of fun.
And I don’t think too much else happened. I think I was just re calibrating really third year is probably the toughest year in, in, in the course. So I think I wasn’t really doing too much beyond that. But I had planned to do in fourth year, do my due exchange for six months.
So it was pretty much like. Ground myself and really follow through with the degree. So I don’t really recall too much from third year of note, but it was in fourth year where I did exchange for six months in the states. And then from there I came back and that’s where I started getting involved with, from the ground up.
I started getting involved with UTS. I, I started getting involved in a whole range of other activities. Yeah. And I think that was really the changing point. The other thing I was trying in third year was actually a year of that was when I was trying to get internships at startups.
I was I was emailing kind of consultancies and things like that to see what I could do pretty much for my second internship. I knew I was going on exchange, but then after I came back, I was doing my second internship. That was pretty much a big time of trying a whole bunch of different things, but nothing really came out of it.
But there was certainly a lot of things that were tried. There was a social payments company that I was one of the kind of brand ambassadors full for a couple of weeks. And then they go to bought by Airbnb and that kind of shut down. One of my friends was starting like a cleaning platform startup and, I was trying to get a job help out with that, but had No, idea what to do that didn’t really go anywhere.
So though, even whilst I was at uni and I was and I did have a casual job in the industry, I was still trying a whole bunch of other things, or at least I was looking for the right opportunity to then say, yes, let’s try it. But then obviously all that kind of came to a pause when when I was going on exchange and you pause life for six months and you go overseas and traveled during that time.
And I think in on exchange was really cool because I didn’t know engineering subjects. I’ve obviously have a lot of a lot of interests beyond just the civil engineering.
This was my kind of opportunity to explore it. So did psychology film studies, public speaking and then a marketing subject, and those are they’re all introductory subjects, but I think just learning entirely different things that are not a part of any engineering, coursework that was that combined with obviously living in a different place and also not having the internship and same lifestyle.
All of that was a really good kind of like breather from back home engineering. But I think that, and I think that is that was really good because when I came back home that actually energized me to feel like, getting back to work, like getting back to the business reaching out to Joey saying, Hey, Joey, I think I can help.
How can I help, the famous I said to Joel, just be a fly on the wall. Don’t know what I can do, but I want to be involved and, see what happens same thing with UTS. So it’s almost that cause I had momentum then when I pulled back, I became more hungry to dive into things.
And I think that’s always help very healthy to pull back from what you’re doing. Sit back, let it let the hunger build up again so you can go full steam.
James: No, I absolutely agree with that. And
I really want to dive into this experience. that you’ve had on exchange more because I know even from my own personal experience, when I went on exchange, or if you weren’t a jumper at the moment I went to Sheffield in the UK and it was a similar sort of thing.
where Like I went away and then it was a good, like opportunity to reset and really consider like where I was going at uni and what I was doing with my life, essentially. And when I came back similar to what you’ve said, I was like really energized. My grades went way better. I was, joining more clubs in participating in things.
Going on exchange#
James: I was actively seeking out opportunities much more than I had done before I’d been there. And I just think honestly, one of the best things I’ve ever done. would you agree with that? And how do you think that really shaped was there a clear kind of before and after moment?
Scott: The main benefit I got was I feel as life goes on, you accumulate more things, you accumulate responsibilities and like things get set, you have this casual job and, you don’t have to opt in to that job anymore. You pretty much have to say do I not want to work here anymore?
I do. I quit. Otherwise you have to continue. I don’t have to opt into this university degree anymore. I pretty much have to say am I going to continue with it? Am I going to finish it? Or am I going to quit? And I think that, those types of things you accumulate in your life we refer to it as a bucket that like, everyone’s holding a bucket and there’s responsibilities that are just being constantly put into that bucket until it’s full, and then when there’s still more responsibilities It’s like, you’re walking down a beach and these responsibilities are like shells in the bucket, but now you found like a really nice shell, your buckets full, but there’s the nicest one that you’ve seen. What do you, do you find something in the bucket and you say, I don’t want that anymore.
You’re going to take out that, this responsibility that you no longer want to be a part of, there’s a committee or something else that is taking some of your time that you’re not really enjoying or something anymore. You take, you take that out and you put this new thing in exchange.
At least for me was tipping that bucket out entirely like life’s on hold for six months. I’m going overseas. Work uni, like you are doing exchange subjects, but you would know that it’s not as academic as what you’re used to in a normal semester. You’re not working a new group of friends.
So all of that to me was very like for. As well as even the space to explore beyond engineering as well. It wasn’t just like I had this narrative in my head that I am a civil engineer. This is what I’m doing. And that is the narrative I had first year, second year, third year uni, that I’m going to give civil engineering who would shut.
I had this always had in the background. You know what? This may not be the case, have a plan B plan C, but I was pretty much give engineering a solid go. Like this is prove to yourself that this isn’t for you by doing a good job of it.
And I think that was very freeing for me actually to have then gone and said, all right, Scott at the end of the day, you’re not civil engineer.
You’re Scott. And Scott can be interested in, in, in a lot of things. And that was my time to really explore it. And I really got into it. I was probably some of those subjects that I didn’t exchange, even though they’ll pass fail, and didn’t really matter I was studying for more than what I needed to, to.
Get by because I was liking it. I was, found myself speaking to lectures after class. Just about the topic of the day for the no reason. So I think that’s really that kind of like intrinsic motivator, but then that’s at, towards the end of it. That’s where you come back and integrate back into normal life.
And that’s the, to me that was before I stopped putting these responsibilities back in the bucket, I have to think about, all right is this, what do I want to commit myself to, and that’s where, and w is what I currently have, enough for me to be satisfied.
And, that’s why, Joey and doing this from the ground up Nepal project. I loved overseas projects. Yeah.
I’d been traveling to Indonesia and other parts of Asia and. I’m studying civil engineering, the built environment, and this is building schools and health centers and an infrastructure after an earthquake, so you can see that’s a very natural thing for me to want to be interested in given what I’d been doing. And that was just the opportunity to help out. And I think that because I came back if I had, if I didn’t have that break and I didn’t have that like reset, then there probably I would have always said, I’m too busy. I’ve got this thing coming up, sorry, Joe, maybe something else. But because it was actually like, I came back from exchange and I told work and not starting work for another bit of time. In the university, like the mid SEM break or the in between semester break.
So you had that time and when you had that time, then you can see that those natural things for you to be interested.
You have that opportunity to do it. So I think that’s that gap was good, but then at the same time from the ground up, grew with responsibilities and UTS grew with responsibilities and the engineering job grew with responsibilities and it all starts to accumulate again.
James: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s cool.
That was fantastic analogy about like, you had things in the bucket and Alright, good shows in the bucket and things like that. that’s like, that’s really cool and a great way to think about it. Definitely because yeah. I yourself and feminine for me as well. I think, having an opportunity to like the bucket, and things in that you really want and things,
You can really dive
into the things that you really are interested in rather than things you’ve just picked up along the way almost by accident.
certainly like a life-changing thing really and just can take you down a path it’s closer to things that you really want to be doing rather than the things you’ve always done. So I really liked that. One thing I wanted to speak to you about is this this thing you’ve done in Nepal, the non-profit work.
Non-Profit work in Nepal#
James: Could you just describe what was actually involved? You did a little bit there and then what were the main, like learnings from that? What was your, would the real benefits for yourself from that
Scott: Yeah. I played a very small role. I would probably say. 90 99, 90 8% was a guy Nick Abraham, who was living over in the pool for three and a half years. And yeah, so he, it was pretty much, he was going over to Nepal. He’s a cop and up a builder and he was going over there to build himself and Joey and him got connected.
And Joey is pretty much just supporting him. And then next thing, Joey was going over to Nepal to help. And so then Joey was involved and I kind of saw it at a distance, but I was like, you know, I’m going to work on exchange soon. Same thing I had that like inertia of a call, it’s called that.
Joey’s doing that. yeah, Joey and I had been close friends since high school. So very accessible, but I didn’t know that it was going on at a distance. And then it was really one of those things where I came back from exchange. yeah. it said I’m keen to help out.
I’m not sure what I can do. I’ll be a fly on the wall. And then over time I just started helping out more and more. It was about seven or eight months later. Yeah, it was August 2016 and then March, 2017. I was over in Nepal, where I met Nick, for the second time, but for the meantime, since being involved and so Joey went over over to Nepal and, he got quite sick quite quickly.
So he was like, you know what I’m going to help you from Australia. So you keep doing your good work, I’ll help all the backend around running the nonprofit, helping support with fundraising and anything else that you really need. And pretty much I was helping Joey will with what was going on.
And, but I guess. The goal was Nick, was there living in this community about two hours out of Katmandu, the capital of Nepal. And whilst what we’ll try and do was initially build a school because that’s what we were being told, what people needed. But ultimately over the time whilst they do need the core infrastructure the two main things that we saw that they needed that wasn’t being served by other nonprofits, as well as by um, the local governments, the local governments were also kind of building schools.
When we come in, we’re also competing with the local governments for building their own infrastructure. So you can see how it gets a bit messy coming in from Australia to try and build, locally government infrastructure.
But what the people did need, which Nick could give them was one.
Like an increase in education around construction methods and quality of construction so that whenever the next earthquake happens,, there wouldn’t be as much devastation because the building quality is a lot higher.
The second thing is that not only giving them the education, but also giving them the platform through employment, that they can practice that as well, as earn a sustainable income within their local community and not have to do what most people, not most people, but a number of people in in Nepal and in parts of Asia where they kind of go overseas and they send money back back to Nepal.
And I would have known this number. This statistic has lost me now because I haven’t been involved for a number of years now. But one of the big contributors to, I think it’s like the GDP of Nepal is actually money being sent back. From overseas family members, I guess a significant contributor to the,
not sure if it contributes to GDP or whether it like another metric of how money flows into Nepal.
But it is statistically significant. And I think through doing that, we transitioned from a nonprofit where we did a lot of incredible work. We built two schools, we built a health center and we built over a hundred toilet blocks in this particular region. But we also started a social enterprise business and a brick factory.
So it was a construction contractor and a brick factory that next door runs to this day, as well as he also has a Australian branch of the same business as a builder.
That was all really exciting. And what my journey was from that, it was really two things,
The two big lessons would probably one, it was a self-directed project that we had Nick kind of boots on the ground, leading it and us supporting, but there was no set goal. This is what we’re doing. It was pretty much we’re here. We’re here to help. Nick’s really a part of the community.
How can we help them? And we had various advisors and mentors and people around, but ultimately it was our own, it was like our own decision that we had to move things forward with. And I think that’s something that is very not that there’s very few opportunities.
I actually think the opposite. I think there’s plenty of opportunities like that. To do self directed projects. I think that’s certainly what’s what we’re doing with the constant student. But I think that in the more traditional sense outside of That entrepreneurial world. There are very limited opportunities and what I was doing, working in a very big kind of engineering and construction company, as well as being at university, you’re just being told what to do the entire time,
rather than this whole, what’s the goal deciding a goal and then working towards it.
So that was that just conceptually, like that gave me so much of the confidence that I needed to go into espresso, leaving university with no prior industry experience.
I had done the reps of setting a goal and working towards it, even if I didn’t know what the exact path was.
And I was doing that with Nick and Joe and a few other people. The other thing that it was doing was it gave you a lot of experience around, around all the nuances and challenges. When you aren’t, when you don’t know what to do, who do you ask? When you how do you build like a supportive mentor network around you?
And it was also the platform, so it was the platform to get mentorship. It was a platform to get advice.
It was the platform to then get these opportunities that came up like UTS.
So UTS, then goes, oh you’re doing this in the poll thing. Or how can we, how can the university then support that your workplace, how can the workplace support the work that you’re doing?
And I think that having projects as a platform in the same way of having a podcast that you can then go and reach out to people to then interview for that podcast,
Like the, I think the platform mentality of having your own project is something that you can you can learn a lot from it’s just really great to have for pretty much anyone.
James: Yeah. Yeah. I really loved what you were saying there about thinking independently in that kind of shift that happened when you were working on this project, like going from, working in a team where sort of the manager or whoever says please do this. And then you just a bit of a, like almost a robot sort of thing where you’re like, yes, I’ll do it.
And then you do it. And then, that flipped between doing stuff like that and then deciding for yourself I want to achieve this Okay. do I do that? And then, and this whole thing is certainly important to be like, particularly for what you’re doing, but even just as a general life skill, really is being able to think independently and go after the things that
you’ve decided that you want.
Coming back into university#
James: Super, super important. One thing you mentioned there, as well as your experience with UTS and how that Nepal experience was able to integrate back into university
experience,
Do you mind like diving into that and how that what was the situation that. came up there
Scott: So when I was for me at university, I always I always knew approximately what marks I were going to, I was going to get, I had a couple of techniques and tactics around, if there’s an easy assignment aimed to get high distinction go for a hundred percent, do things like that.
It was, always ask one of the things, if you had an an assignment that was given out. The day that it’s given out, do three, four hours make your template do as much as you can. They’re really map out what the actual assignment entails. And then pretty much the classes, each class lecture, tutorial, come with a couple of questions to ask that help you answer the assignment.
So it’s quick, it’s efficient. The lecture likes you. Cause you’re asking one, you’ve started an assignment way before everyone else. And you’re asking questions around it. So you can say just a couple of like cheeky tactics set, like a very good use of time. And I always knew how to do that.
University subjects were tough and I certainly thought around exams when you don’t know, you think you might have tanked an exam. And you’re very worried after that, like high variability. Usually say with an assignment, you, you said, the quality that you’re going to submit. If you’ve seen past papers, approximately how you’ve performed in other stuff.
So for me, it was always like, pretty reasonable. I don’t, I never really had to like, complain about marks or anything like that. And when I came back from exchange around the same time when I started with Nepal, one of my friends was messaging me cause it was around exam time around, oh, I, thought I was going to get this good mark.
And I put so much effort in, but I ended up getting this mark, I’m really disappointed. It wasn’t fair. Like the, I was always just interested around like the student experience of university and how, I was always, cause I did have like industry experience and I did have, I was still a student like, 20, 20, 21 at that age.
And I can kind of see both sides. I was like. Th there are gaps and barriers where, you know, where the student experience could certainly get delivered better, like where it could be. You can learn more, it can be easier. Everyone can get better outcomes, but also at the same time, the student experience of, oh, the academics should be doing everything, it’s not easy, it’s unfair type stuff.
I was oh, I can see how you feel, but also that’s not necessarily the answer either. So I was interested in that. So I started emailing a bunch of pretty much just subject coordinators of subjects that I’d done saying, oh, I’m interested in learning a bit more about the shooting experience.
And eventually I got forwarded to a guy who runs teaching and learning in the faculty of engineering, which is the looking at the course level about student learning outcomes and learning. And I had a coffee with him and I was telling him about about some of these stories and how I approached university group assignments.
I had a method for that as well. And from that he, he just started inviting me, to, Oh, we have a faculty offsite once a semester. How about you come? There’s always a student panel around, the student experience. And I remember going there and I felt a bit like an outsider, not because I was a student, but every other student there was president of this society has done this, involved in X, Y, Z, all these credentials.
And
they’ll everyone was asking me as if, oh yeah.
So what do you do within the university environment? I was like, pretty much nothing. I turn up, I do my classes. I have friends, I have an internship. That was, I’d just, I was only stopped with just starting it.
At the non-profit that was only just getting started then, or maybe not even at that stage. But I remember that feeling weird that I’m around all these people and I’m not why am I here being a student voice? Why was I there because I was interested,
So it’s just the question. Why did why did that staff member want to invite me? Because I was interested, and even to flip that whilst I was feeling weird about not being president of a particular society or a group or all these other things, like if anything, maybe I was there because I was most interested in that specific topic, not because I did have these accolades and with the accolades, you become the person that gets invited to all these particular things.
You just turn up.
And I think it’s it’s funny to con the comparison around that, because. My grades, like what you said, my grades were going quite well, And I ended up doing really well in one subject in particular, that was also related to Nepal. We had to design like a concrete and brick mix, which was actually what we were doing in Nepal at that time.
So that was really cool where after class, I could speak to the subject coordinator around that specifically. So this is the whole platform conversation. So doing good marks, the mark to also related to the work I was doing, and the other parts of the subject was actually related to the work I was doing with the engineering internship.
So you can see all of this just starts to stack up together. Very serendipitously. And then once that subject was like, once I got my marks back and things like that, I w I pretty much went to the subject coordinator and I said, Hey, can I help you teach this subject next semester?
Because work experience did well on the subject, Nepal. How can I do that? And I had no. idea whether I even could, whether he even had spots or anything like that. I just thought to ask Yeah.
Eventually
like I, I did get a job pretty much as like a tutor or teacher’s assistant, just being in the class, helping students sign really easy.
But then once I was comfortable with that, I was saying I can run these tutorials. You don’t, you can spend, you can have this two hours or three hours without me. Cause I did the first two classes. I think I did the first class where I just hung in the corner and kind of answered questions for students.
And then the second class I slowly went in and said, oh, Hey, can I can can I actually run that class? And you can just supervise instead. And he’s okay, sure. And then did that for two classes and eventually said, you know what? I’m fine. Like I’m there for you if you need me, but I know the content, I know all of that.
And he’s just I’ve seen you do this for two classes, so I sure. So then it’s they’re very much these incremental just let me do this, let me do this. And then and being able to do it. And I, I loved doing that because I loved like what I what I very rarely got as a student was relate-ability to the teaching staff,
Particularly in engineering.
And what I really liked as being like a student tutor was that relate-ability, that I could on one side say the course curriculum. Here’s what it is. You’ve got to get through this, but I’m not also not going to dress it up and say, you need to know this cause yada yada, like I could speak to the students in a way that is understanding, okay, this is the information you need to get through the course.
And here’s how it’s related. Based on my work experiences, I was related, based on this non-profit work. And that was really enjoyable. And then once I was involved in that subject, there were other subjects and other opportunities that came up one of which was when UTS was transitioning from semesters to trimester.
Which basically shortened and changed the timeline of the both core
semesters. As well. as this new summer trimester opened up and there were no subjects to fill it because people were always went on holidays. Academics used to do a lot of their research during that time because the teaching semester is really hard for them to do the real body of their research.
So
they were looking for subjects and whose who’s who’s one of the people that naturally when they’re trying to see who should I speak to? I will. What about that Scott Guy? Like he might have a subject that you might be able to do and That’s what happened. Yeah, and that was really good. Joey was the he was the client representative of, from the ground up and I was the UTS representative and to top it all off, I even got the engineering company. I was doing an internship to sponsor a industry prize for that subject as well. So the real trifecta, but yeah. and it was really good then.
And that’s What was speaking about earlier was that’s those types of things, as well as when I was talking about leaving university and that graduate sloppily know graduate employees still think that, you don’t, they expect you not to know all that much about the industry when you graduate from this three, four five-year course. That’s why I ended up creating my engineering capstone degree project of kind of the aligning and redesigning parts of the engineering course to be in alignment with the graduates, with a very clear university ramp and an off ramp to graduate life.
James: Yeah, no, I think that’s,
there’s so much to unpack there.
That’s incredible. Just like all that initiative that you’ve shown like through these things, which like you were saying slowly built up all these experiences that you were having that led you to, basically create your own subject at uni. I think that’s an incredible story and certainly shows the, the value in, continually like pushing your case forward, because so many people would not do that.
Showing Initiative#
James: They would oh, I know no one would accept me.
If I asked this, were not, I would say yes, faster. and they count
themselves out straight away before even asking. And I think that is a great example. And really through most, a lot of the things you’ve done and said tonight so far, is these things.
where you’re pushing it forward and maybe they say yes, maybe not, but regardless let’s continue on. And I think as I guess you can see with your own life, like so many doors have opened just by, just being out there and being in it to win it. So a fantastic story. And one thing I really want to dive into there as well is you’re talking about this sort of ramp between being like a graduate in the company and then leading university in this kind of mismatch that can occur between the things that the workplace expects you to know to be effective.
And then the things that you get taught at university, can sometimes not match. Was that your experience and how did you find that when you were coming up to graduating, did you have any discussions with people about this
Scott: Yeah.
that firstly, I was in a very like non-typical position where by the time I started in my first year, know the end of first year uni a week after first year exams. And that’s when I started my professional experience and that carried through to four and a half years until I graduated.
And I think that, like I knew, like I was onboarding and, doing all the introductions for all the graduates who started and then the level up from the graduates. Like I knew that exact pathway and I knew the level and the quality of those particular roles on that, in that job, in that profession, because I worked there like for years.
So you gather a degree of proficiency and that many people, it was a big project, like 400 people in the project. So you get to see the breadth of people and their experience and, and the work that they’re able to do. And you could determine where you work compared to them type, like in, in what you could do on a day-to-day basis. So I understood that quite well, And that, to me, there was a lot of uncertainty coming towards, cause I was doing all these great projects, but I really didn’t know what was next. And the first thing I was doing is I was trying to figure out pretty much someone sell me a job that looks great.
Like just excite me about something. The company that I was at was not doing that at all.
Unfortunately. And I was trying, I was asking, I was having meetings with, the site-based HR was having meetings with the company, the corporate HR about
got, I got shown a couple of opportunities that they weren’t really that interesting.
And I was also one of the things that they were doing was they were trying to create a grad program and I’m like, awesome. This is like the to me, honestly, I was like, that was the thing that I wanted to do. I wanted to create them a grad program because. Undergrad for so long. My university thesis was partially redesigning part of the civil engineering course to have that kind of graduate on-ramp, and I knew the company since I was 18 now 23.
And then they’re trying to create a grad program anyway and so I obviously had opinions on all of this stuff and for me, that was what I was really aiming for. And what ultimately happened on that path was that you find that, one, it was pretty much, we’re going to put this in the HR bucket and from HR.
And I remember sitting down and okay, can I have a conversation with so-and-so from HR? And based on I, for them, it was, I’ve got 10 things to do on my to-do list at the moment. That’s one of them, that’s it. And I, and here I am let me do it. Let me do. And so that was one path.
The other path was I was speaking to a bunch of other kinds of graduate employees
trying to find a kind of role that I liked. And then to various, standard programs that you enter into,
And then the final thing was this kind of entrepreneurial course I was doing. There was a bit of a, there was a side project that was coming out of that.
Pretty much started off, a second screen for a laptop. And that same thing was gathering a lot of momentum. It was a lot of excitement around it. We’ll started making prototypes very quickly. We’ll both very keen to see what was next and see what was going to happen.
And I was also being offered more jobs from from UTS to teach more subjects, to be involved in some other casual. Teaching teaching and learning, like some of the curriculum work following my my capstone. And so I there’s a few things going on there and ultimately what I said I gave myself to the end of, from, I think like August to like the end of October when my actual graduation ceremony was so I never accepted a full time full-time graduate graduate contract or anything like that because because I didn’t want it.
Um, but eventually it came to like my graduation ceremony. And I was just like sorry, I end on this date. And I said, Hey, look, I’m interested in doing this grad program project. I go, I’m not interested in anything else. And then ultimately it was like, no, sorry, don’t really want to, we, can’t get involved in this right now and stuff.
And then eventually it just that, that led me to say one, I’ve got all these, I got this UTS work too. Let’s see where espresso displays can go as well. And really dive into kind of startup world in startup land, which was really, which was really exciting.
From the outside of wow, the possibilities and, even at the right, at that time, right at the beginning, we’re already flying to China to visit manufacturers and learn about, how do you actually develop a product? You had, I had that journey just starting to open up, and at the same time, I’m having to fight really hard to try and do something that makes sense for the person like me to implement that project.
And, I just relate it to big corporate, hard to get things done. Everyone has to stick in their lane. It’s hard for one of the most important things is getting the people who are the most interested working on the things that they’re passionate about.
And I think that it’s just so hard to do that within a big corporate organization, unless the culture is really there. And I don’t think that was the case. But an opportunity lost opportunity gains.
James: Yeah, no, totally. I think that’s, yeah, very interesting story. And
I
definitely a gray line. We’d like to big corporates that can, there can be that kind of it’s not slow moving, but there’s a lot of. You’ve got to ask this person to ask this person.
that just sometimes can go around a bin for someone like yourself as an example, who’s got the initiative and got the drive to just
Go on and just smash
things like straight away. You can certainly see
how this, like from
What I’m thinking. Yeah. You don’t really, it just would not see you at all.
Cause you want to just go there and do the thing and there’s all these barriers almost in the way. So
Start up
Scott: Right.
James: Perfect for you Yeah, it definitely
Scott: But I didn’t know that at the time as well. I hadn’t, all that was the only world I knew. And I didn’t know,
Scary startup world, but now yeah, in a couple of years later, it’s definitely where I belong a lot more.
James: Yeah.
Cool. No, it’s a
great story. And one thing I want to ask too is, as
you’ve gone through this startup, that you’ve now been a part of, for a few years. How have you gone
about doing that? What are some real challenges that you’ve
faced that you’ve overcome
along the way?
Facing challenges with Espresso#
James: How have you dealt with those challenges? There’s no doubt in a stock, you facing some like proper chart, like real, like serious challenges that, you wouldn’t face if you were just to graduate in a company. So what are some of those that you’ve faced so far and have you dealt with them?
Scott: Yeah. One of the first things like. That espressos is at a stage now where it’s growing quite fast and I’m learning so much every day and learning more like at an increasing rate. And I think around, right at that early stage, that the kind of first six months, first 12 months, like very, you know, efficient with what I was doing very much, like not focusing on the right things very much.
It was good that we had pretty much two very clear goals. One make a prototype that we can pre-sell and to pre-sell and launch a Kickstarter campaign. Everything else was pretty much non essential. And so there was a lot of non-essential stuff going on.
And which is it at the earliest stages?
This is why, what I wish I had back then was, the constant student that I could have someone I wish I could have, project feedback session. People who are a couple steps ahead to go and say, not just give you the pat on the back, but also tell you what are the skills that you can spend the time now actually developing that will pay itself off in the future and other things that you can work on.
So I guess the answer is at the early stage is get very clear on what you want to try and achieve. And then the second part is, create your own kind of learning, learning curriculum. What are the things based on the amount of time that you have, and also based on the resources that you have if you’ve got money to spend, you can get pretty good advisory, like pretty early on.
I, one of the things that I didn’t do, which I probably could have done is I probably have, probably could have got like an expert advisor and paid them, a couple hundred dollars a month just for one or two check-ins. And then that is if they didn’t want to do it for free, and just because they are supportive of the of what you’re doing This there’s a lot of different things. A lot of software tools that I wish I got better at, that I would have had I had at the time back then, but I don’t have now that I wish I dove into. But you can always look back and as you learn things over time, you can always look back and see how you can do things better.
I think the, but that’s what the importance is like really having that clarity of what are you trying to achieve? And then creating forced milestones which allow you to get, get more done quicker or, go to where you’re going faster. And I think that’s pretty much the challenge the big difficulty that we opted into was with espresso, we launched, we launched a crowdfunding campaign based off a prototype.
Not knowing, entirely about the whole manufacturing process. A lot of people actually launched Kickstarters, right? As the manufacturing processes ready to go. And just that final order, we just had a prototype. So we’ll very much biting off more than we can chew.
But then as that campaign went really well, we sold over a thousand units in that first 40 day campaign that, we had to then figure out how do we actually manufacturer the product.
And then during that process, that’s when the initial kind of COVID pandemic started in China first where we were manufacturing
a wheel, my co-founder was in, in Shen Shinjin as all that was happening as the whole country was in lockdown
and then struggled to get back just before the borders shut.
Yeah there’s a lot of challenges, a lot of things like that, but yeah, and this is what kind of coming back to say from the ground up and the professional work experience and everything else,
the momentum and the confidence, reveals itself. You just need to keep on pushing and keep on making that next step.
Like it doesn’t matter, which, it doesn’t matter what startup you’re working on. Doesn’t matter what the current milestone or objective you’re looking for. You need that kind of perseverance. I think if you listen, read or hear about anything related to this type of work or kind of trying to make something from nothing that perseverance is pretty much the number one.
James: No, I think that’s
really cool.
Like absolutely great in, in this slide. The Iran, whereas like heaps of stuff happening, being able to persevere and even with the things you’ve been doing through university, getting nos and whatever, but persevering anyway, I think is a fantastic way to go about things.
Definitely. One thing I wanted to ask about where you are now,
how do you think what are some key things
that you think the university has prepared you for really well in what you do now? Do you think the university has done a good job of prepping
you? Or has it been more
of these other things you’ve done, your working experience Nepal?
Do you think university prepared you well?#
James: Um, other things you’ve done, what would you say as a fit to do more and even within let’s say university, how well do you think that’s prepared
you for what you’re doing,
Scott: Yeah university is one of, one of the best educational ecosystem products and it isn’t education equals. That’s the product, the product isn’t the curriculum is the excuse. It’s, that’s the thing you enroll in. It’s the actual ecosystem. It’s the people, the friends that you’re doing, these things with, there’s no internship without the degree, in, in my case.
But also, the yeah. the prompt for getting the internship was that, the prompt for traveling during that particular time, because it was in between university semesters the prompt for exchange, you have to you have to exchange somewhere, you gotta be part of the university to exchange somewhere,
right?, because I was involved in those types of things, that’s how I got involved in, from the ground up because I was a student, I got involved in university and the teaching and learning and everything else like that, within the university, there was this entrepreneurial course that I was interested in. yeah.
Yeah.
That’s where the first idea for espresso started. So you’ve to really think about what do I get out of it? Was that any given subject, any given class, any given syllabus dot point? No. And I think it was really, the ecosystem is the value. That’s why, I guess I, I feel so much for first year, second year, third year uni students over the last year and this year because they, all they have is the curriculum and they don’t have any of the ecosystem.
The ecosystem is remote. And that’s why, same thing. That’s why one, the 18 and Lost our recent book is pretty much supposed to be, the eight different stories around what people have done, how they’ve navigated through this time, just to give reassurance. I feel like for people at that age and stage.
Then you don’t really know what to do, and there is no perfect answer. There’s no perfect path. But if you actually start hearing, in-depth a number of other stories, it makes you feel empowered that you’re on your own story and you can make decisions on a daily basis that help put you on the right path.
And the goal of the book is to have people think about their path and their decisions like that. And then I think the other thing is the constant student, which is what are the best parts of the ecosystem and let’s remove the worst parts of the product,
which, you would know as a as a participant, as a member that there’s no curriculum, absolutely no curriculum.
And it’s just the ecosystem and any of the programs that are being run through it. They’re not being run because here’s your certificate here. Something, here’s something that you can show everyone else. It’s here are techniques that help you do more of what you want to do.
Anyway, this is the prompt, the reason that everyone has their goal, their six week programs that you’ll get from point a to point B and make a tangible difference during that time. So I think that’s what that’s what I’ll take away is that think of university as an ecosystem, it’s a great ecosystem that you can get a lot out of.
And that’s why, anyone who’s just going to their classes and not really getting involved much beyond that. I think there’s a lot more.
James: Yeah. No, I think that’s, that is a fantastic way to put it
Cause it’s so me, I don’t know if myself, the amount of benefit that I got from being a university was much, much more magnified.
Once I started getting involved with your university clubs and, doing exchanges and going to class and meeting my housemates and, doing stuff with them and all these kinds of things that are associated with uni but aren’t necessarily the actual university process itself. I think that’s, yeah, that’s way to put it.
in. Certainly, it does describe quite well the value that you can get during the university. I’ve got one last
question for you, Scott. And that is if you were going to start
university again, given all your experiences. Now wave where you are, you’re with your startup and your experiences all through university.
What is one, one lesson that you’d give yourself if you were starting university again, at the start of next year,
One lesson to those starting university#
Scott: Join the constant student. Honestly that is what I would say that without it, without an absolute doubt, that is what I would say. That’s why, that’s why Liam and Joey and I are working on it. That’s why that’s why it exists. There’s so much that you can learn right now. If like university is being delivered online, the internet is imagine the, imagine learning on the internet without the kind of university constraint of having to do subjects and coursework.
How about, learning within the 12, 12 weeks or within one or two years? Within one year,
not only do you learn one year’s worth of information and content, but you can actually then learn and earn and you can earn money for things that you’re learning. Really level up in multiple ways. And same thing it’s the ecosystem.
The ecosystem is something that is it’s your platform to build upon. So all of the things that I kind of benefited from are kind of consolidated within the constant student and that will still continue to grow over the years. It’s the same thing. Get involved, ask questions. I think if people who are looking for the answers to be given to them, rather than, think of yourself like an adventurer, you’ve got to, you’ve got to discover it. You’ve got to look through and determine things. You’ve got to ask you to go try things. People will always like, people are always happy to help.
They’re always happy to guide you along the path and try things. So if you have that mentality, it doesn’t really matter what you do. Just because you’re doing things and you will you’ll find the right.
answer
James: Wow. That’s amazing advice, like very profound so I really appreciate it. And certainly, yeah. That’s very valuable, So thanks so much for your time today.
If people are listening and I want to find out what you do and connect
with you further, where’s the best place from, to go.
Scott: So to find me at a suppressor, the espresso website is a suppressor E S P I S dot. So, You can find me on LinkedIn as well. So Scott McEwen on LinkedIn and yeah, that’s pretty much it.
James: Cool. Thanks so much for your time, Scott mush. appreciate your wisdom.
And yeah,
we’ll wrap it
Scott: Awesome. Thanks so much.