Back at uni

I had the best time being a university student again ... for four days.

On the GM's recommendation, I enrolled at Charles Darwin University in a short course called Qualitative Research Methodologies. (I'll be doing some qualitative research for our division shortly.) The course duration was 4 x 1 day. So every Wednesday for the last month, I have been going to CDU for the day. It's been great.

CDU is a relatively young university. It was founded in 2003 when a number of vocational, higher ed and research institutions across the Territory were amalgamated into one institution. CDU has five campuses — four in the Northern Territory. The largest campus is in Casuarina, a suburb about 15 km north of Darwin's CBD. The Darwin Community College was on this site previously.

My course was delivered in the Menzies School of Health Research, on the Casuarina campus. I would have liked to explore the campus a bit more widely, including the art galleries, but our course days were full. We were expected to be there at 8 am and other than a break for lunch, it was pretty intensive. At the end of the day, after 4 pm, all I wanted to do was get 'home' for a swim!

But I did enjoy the immediate environment. This impressive building houses the cafeteria.

Much of the architecture and design is tropical — open, airy, plenty of outdoor seating and water features. The Australian Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Education is next to the room where we worked ...

... as is the Boab Court. To my delight it has a set of pukamani poles, those beautiful and symbolic funeral poles that we first learned about when we went to the Tiwi Islands.

There were about 15 participants in the course. Because it was a course offered by the School of Health, the majority were health professionals. At our table was a dentist working in public health policy and two remote area nurses. Does anyone else remember that wonderful ABC series called RAN (Remote Area Nurse) about 15 years ago? With Susie Porter? Remote area nurses go out to remote communities for months at a time. They do incredible work in really tough environments (as do school staff in those same areas).

Of the 15 participants, about 12 were health professionals. The rest of us were from other branches of NT Government: Education (me), Primary Industries and NT Police. People were doing really interesting stuff — one research project was evaluating the success (or lack of success) of messages related to safe sex and STIs in secondary school students; another research project was investigating the delivery of pharmacy prescriptions to remote areas by drone.

We were all quite sad when the course ended. One participant suggested extending the course to a fifth day! For me, it was a lot of fun being out of the office and in a different environment, meeting different people, talking about different disciplines, learning new things — and not having to organise anything myself.

Hey ho, onwards. Now to do that work that the GM wants ...