Been thinking about how I ended up at uni. I was in my early 20's with a special needs toddler & on the sole parent pension. No one in my family had been to uni (to my knowledge) but my mother had done teachers college and Newcastle Con for music before becoming a music teacher.

I'd been very good at school but had a lot of issues outside of the academics which led me to leave school, home (& music) at 14. I tried again as at 17 as an independent kid at high school on the Gold Coast...

..but left again after I nearly got trafficked(?) to a foreign country to marry someone who I was told wanted to marry an Australian for the purposes of Aus citizenship. I left school again (yr 11) after what I assume was the fallout of that not playing out as expected.

Worked in Surfers Paradise until the Dennys I was working at closed down & they let most of us go. Turned 18 & decided to go back home where I unfortunately met the man who would become the then 31yo dead-beat dad of my one & only child at a course I did to stay on gov payments.

We moved to Coffs & I began the Welfare Cert at TAFE. I met a wonderful single mum, Bronwyn volunteering at St Vinnies when I needed a food voucher. Bronnie had been a year ahead of my at my original high school. She was already studying at UNE & she nagged me to go to uni.

Bronwyn & I became very good friends as I was abandoned by the father of my child (still myself a teenager). She was studying accounting & convinced me I should not just go to TAFE but to uni. I had been at TAFE getting A's for a year or so but initially UNE turned me down.

I was utterly furious when I learned they'd given the father of my abandoned child a place in the economics course but he failed out in the 1st semester. UNE accepted me a year later into the Arts degree to major in sociology. My TAFE teacher had told me I should do sociology.

I didn't know what sociology was but was willing to have a go. It was during my early years at TAFE & then uni that I realised my then toddler had health & behavioural issues which complicated my efforts to join the 'productive' economy.

I was 19 when I had him in the 2 week break from TAFE Welfare Cert. I had no idea I was supposed to slow down so I just went back to study after the break, taking my newborn to class. There were complaints. Not everyone was comfortable with a baby in class.

Uni was very hard with a sickly toddler & no support. I remember one time he was in hospital and I went to class. Whatever I was doing, I felt like I should have been doing something else.

To this day, I recall having to make the decision: do I try to get the degree finished as fast as I can to get a job or do I prioritise my son's special needs? Given my own complicated past, I decided to focus on my son's needs, but that took far longer than I had anticipated.

In the end it took a very long time and I had to defer my degree for several years while I focused on my son's educational needs. In addition to his chronic acute illness & disabilities he was also profoundly gifted & we ended up literally enrolled in uni at the same time.

I doubt any of that would have happened if I had not focused on his needs instead of my own. He ended up doing very well but not before we had to spend many years in poverty, at times living in the car for lack of affordable housing.

When you are a parent & you can't even give a very hard working, honest & giving child a decent roof over their head, it is a very particular level of humility you must accept.

The idea that life in Australia is any kind of even playing field is a joke. The idea that middle class adults going off to uni are competing on an equal footing with single mothers is nonsense. That they end up thinking they are smarter & more accomplished is an insult.

Thank you to anyone who stuck with this story till the end.

Also pleased that I didn't end up married in a foreign country at the age of 17. Whoever came between me and that fate, I am grateful to.

Also just in case anyone is wondering where I met people who would entice me to marry one of their relatives in a foreign country in order to obtain citizenship- it was girls I used to study with in the library(!) It was decades later before I realised how at risk I was.

Just remembered the time when a media mogul(?) interviewed me for a journalism job and asked me to summarise my life in 6-8 sentences. I tried not to laugh. I didn't get the job. But I wasn't upset by that.

Let's face it, he should have asked me to summarise my life in 6-8 tweets.