Studying Research in Civil Engineering

Transcript

It's lovely to see if you have anything drafted and when it comes to life, and you see a house or a building or a bank or maybe anything just standing in front of you, that's an achievement.

My name is Rufaida Zikria and I'm doing my Master in Civil Engineering with CQU through research work.

I'm doing the ‘Geocell and geogrid inclusions for railway ballast stability’ is the title of my thesis and I'm working on that, it's really interesting.

My supervisor is amazing and he has always been very highly professional, super motivating and he has always motivated me to come forward and share my ideas.

The environment is so warm and so welcoming and whoever I've met here has always been like supportive and the campus is beautiful as well. We have a beautiful campus in Gladstone. That's why I love CQU.

I was lucky enough to receive a women scholarship that is given to a woman that can display a gap of at least 10 or more years from their graduation to whenever they want to study. So, I was lucky enough because I had that 10 years gap.

Receiving this women scholarship helped me with the living expenses and everything. And so yeah, that was very exciting, and yeah, it was a great opportunity.

I loved working on campus before COVID. It was just every day, I used to come so happy to my office. The campus is beautiful. I used to come and just it was very relaxing, and everything was perfect.

But then COVID happened, and we all know that. And ever since that time I've been working online and I find the online student portal designed by CQU, the research Moodle and everything, it is so good.

I've made so many friends. We're all so diverse in cultures. I've got many friends from different ethnicities, and we just come together, and we also get time to talk.

But most of the time research takes lots of time and it’s very occupying and you hardly get any time to really go out in the community and meet everyone.

But whenever I did, we had some, most of the times we used to have a sausage sizzle or a breakfast morning. Or anything. They did try a lot to engage us, but whatever was possible for me, I used to participate in that, yeah it was really nice.

Ever since I started this masters, I've seen that when you have such a huge gap in your graduation you think that ‘oh, it's impossible for me to go back now.’

But it's never impossible because I can do it, anyone can do it. I would say just come it's interesting. Engineering is tough, but it's really interesting once you get the hang of it, it's really nice.

And I would really recommend that no matter how much the gap is, no matter what, you should come, and you should explore yourself. You should never give up on your passion.

I would definitely recommend them to come here and this staff is so supportive. Everything is so good. Definitely.