Mark's story

So the question one more time sorry 

[Laughter] 

[Uplifting music plays] 

Hello I'm Mark, I studied criminology and I came into the grad program through the generalist stream.  

So I guess the first thing I would say about the grad program is that essentially you get to work 3 different government jobs in the 1 year.  

Something I was really looking forward to about this grad program was the opportunity to work really broadly across different parts of government.  

So in my first job I got to work on the review of the Wildlife Act 1975. I was doing a bit of research around different options that we might write into a new law.  

In my second role at the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, something I'm proud of is that I got to work on like a refresh of their budget reporting process from the previous year. It wasn't something that I'd studied at all, I didn't necessarily have a numbers background but um we managed to land like a new process that was pleasing to everybody, easy to use and it was also a big learning experience so yeah I really enjoyed that process of just being able to give it a go.  

The other thing that I really enjoyed is the social element of the grad year so everybody comes from different places, everybody's starting something new everyone's pretty keen to kind of meet other peers in the organisation.  

One of the biggest impacts that the program had on me is that it taught me a lot about what a workplace is like so I've always thought I might go back to uni at some point in the future get a PhD, kind of do something at the intersection of research and policy. I think in that sense it gave me like a clearer image of what I might want to do and how I might want to get there. It's been a relaxing, but also like interesting and challenging and intellectually rich year to have embarked on. 

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