Of all the things Rishi Singhal learnt in third grade, one memory stands out. “Our teacher, Mr Duker, always taught us to use the word ‘yet.’ So instead of saying ‘I can’t do it’, it was, ‘I can’t do it yet.’ Because there’s always a way to do it. There’s always some path you haven’t discovered.”
Years later, in high school, that lesson in patience and persistence would serve him well. “I’d been feeling sick for a good couple of months,” he says. “My school attendance got worse and worse. It was down to about 30 percent. I was sick, but nobody could figure out why. Then one long weekend I just slept for three days straight.”
A tough decision
He was eventually diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and started to feel better once he had the right medical care. But school was challenging. “You’re not allowed to have needles with you, so I had to keep going to the sick bay for my insulin,” he says. “I’d already missed so much school, and it was time to make a decision. I could either redo Year 10 or drop out and sort myself out.”
Rishi chose a gap year. He focused on getting well, then enrolled in an IT certificate at TAFE. Information Technology was an obvious choice for Rishi. “I’ve always been a bit of a tech geek,” he says.
With the TAFE certificate done and dusted, he felt ready for uni. But there was another obstacle. He says, “I contacted every uni in the state and they were all like, ‘No, we need an ATAR.’ It looked like I’d have to go back and do Year 11 and Year 12 and that seemed like such a faff.”
Finding UTS College
One of the unis had mentioned UTS College. “They said the ATAR wasn’t the main thing there.” That was enough for Rishi. He met with one of the College program managers. Recognising his special circumstances, they took his determination and good TAFE results into consideration. Before long, he was accepted into the Diploma of IT.
Rishi embraced every opportunity at UTS College, winning a Dean's Merit Award in his first semester.
Now in the final semester of his diploma, Rishi’s getting ready to enter second year of a Bachelor of IT at UTS. He says UTS College has been transformative in many ways. “From the first day of Welcome Week, there were so many opportunities to get to know people. Lots of icebreaker activities. It brought out my extroverted side. Also, I kept seeing these Student Ambassadors helping out. Seeing them was really empowering. It looked like a dream job.”
Finding community, friendship, and opportunity
He was determined to become an ambassador. The only hitch was that it would be a few months before they were recruiting. He says, “During that time, I worked as a Peer Mentor for the College. I joined a lot of societies and got involved in event management. All those things bolstered my resume, and when the time came, I got in.”
Becoming a student ambassador was worth the wait. “It’s a great community. All the ambassadors are so friendly. And there’s so much variety. I’ve done high school visits, campus tours, campus fairs, IT training. You never get bored.”
Despite his busy schedule, Rishi finds time to stay active and healthy.
Rishi’s already using his leadership experience to establish a new society at UTS. “It’s called the Google Developer Group. We’ve partnered with Google to run events at uni. Our first event, a workshop teaching everyone how to build an app, sold out within 24 hours.
An extra qualification
Looking back, Rishi sees advantages in having started his degree at UTS College. “For one thing, you get a diploma before you have your degree. I think that’s really valuable,” he says. “I’m going into Year 2 at UTS soon, which means we’ll be applying for internships. I’ll already have a diploma on my CV and lots of leadership experience.”
Rishi attributes much of his success to Mr Duker’s lesson about the word ‘yet.’ He says, “I still live by that. There’s always a solution I haven’t discovered yet, so I’m very, very persistent. There’s always a way.”