Tara Murray
Like many year 12 students, Tanner O’Mara has gone through a range of emotions over the last two years.
With the pandemic adding to an already stressful period for VCE students, many have started to look at things a different way.
Tanner, who goes to school at Mill Park Secondary College, said the last two years had been disruptive.
“It’s been quite hard to be having face-to-face learning one day and online another,” he said.
“It has a mental effect and it’s quite disruptive motivation wise. Saying that my school and a lot of the other education institutions have been quite good in adapting the education to suit the students.”
A Swinburne University study to coincide with the launch of its virtual open day tool, Swintopia, found that almost half of year 12 students said the pandemic has changed their views on enrolling in university in various ways.
Tanner is one of them, planning to head straight to univeristy instead of taking a gap year.
“Before the pandemic I was quite keen looking at the humanities side of things… I still am, however knowing a lot of the jobs I was looking at might not even be there in a post-COVID environment, my thinking is pushing me to think about doing something more practical.”
Tanner said that the universities had provided plenty of different ways for students to check them out without attending open days.
He said Swintopia, which is a virtual, immersive and gamified experience, was something he enjoyed.
“It feels like a computer game you played when you were a kid.”
