Maddy's Story

Attending international academic conferences alongside working part-time and completing a PhD is no easy feat, but Maddy is not one to shy away from a challenge. Seeing her list of accomplishments, it seems almost unfathomable that Maddy once believed she was not capable of academic success. When asked to reflect on her early schooling, Maddy shares that she suffered from a lack of confidence due to her struggles with dyslexia. She believes her teachers did not have the knowledge or resources to adequately support students who had learning disabilities, stating “I don’t think they had the skills … they just didn’t give me very much confidence”. As a result, Maddy was left feeling discouraged about the prospect of tertiary education, so instead spent the next several years working various jobs and travelling in the hope of finding her place in the world.

When Maddy reached her early twenties, she began to feel increasingly unsure about her future, and this uncertainty, along with a stirring desire to attend university before the age of thirty, prompted her to enrol in Open Foundation in 2013. Although she was living in Sydney at the time, Maddy was able to complete the program part-time, making bi-weekly train trips to Ourimbah over the course of a year. Although when she entered the program Maddy was still feeling doubts because of her experience at high school, she soon developed a sense of confidence due to the support she received from the Open Foundation teaching staff. Reminiscing about one of her lecturers in particular, Maddy tells “she was one of the first teachers who really made me feel like I could do it”, sharing that Open Foundation was “life-changing”.

After finishing the program, Maddy not only went on to complete a Bachelor of Environmental Science and Management, but she also managed to graduate with Class I Honours the following year, along with being awarded a Faculty Medal for her academic achievements. Aside from having built an impressive resumè over the last few years, working across several roles within Coastal Management, Hydrodynamic Modelling and Environmental Software, Maddy is also currently undertaking a PhD in Estuary Morphodynamics.

When asked how she manages her dyslexia now, Madelaine says;

I’m always checking my work … it’s given me a bit of an edge to push myself more than other people would, I think.

Although she attributes some of her academic success to the women who mentored her throughout her studies, Maddy is becoming an inspirational academic in her own right, and she is already making an impact in the field of estuarine science. As part of her postgraduate research, Maddy focuses on mapping the movement of sand over time, along with how this movement interacts with sea levels. She hopes that her research will eventually help to influence positive change on a governmental level, particularly during a time when there are increasingly urgent concerns about rising sea levels.

Story by Isabel Whittle

Photo by Ben Collison

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