“For pretty much my entire life I have been surrounded by theatre: both my mother and father were involved in the local theatre company. I have participated in several theatre performances, both on stage and from behind the lighting desk.

From when I was in year nine, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. One of my science teachers at Singleton High School made our classes so much fun and would engage students in such an interesting way that it ignited a spark for me: I wanted to… be able to teach like he did.

I knew I wanted to teach drama and biology – an obvious choice for me, but when I first told people, a lot of them thought it was a very strange choice!

I started a Bachelor of Theatre and Performance at UNE in 2016, which I’ll finish this year. I’m also now studying a Bachelor of Education (Secondary Science) at UNE majoring in biology.

Switching from theatre subjects to science subjects has been a crazy transition. In theatre we had a lot of fun and there was lots of joking. Science lectures are more fast-paced, with lots of notetaking and trying to remember all sorts of different formulas and functional groups!

I also didn’t realise how stressful exams could be before moving into science subjects – having to retain all that information and get it on to paper in such a short period of time, it’s unbelievable! Very different from theatre essays!

I hope to travel around New Zealand when I finish, but then I’ll stick to the career plan of teaching drama and science. I’d like to start a school-based amateur drama club too, so students interested in drama don’t have to miss out on other subjects during school time.

I think studying creative subjects like theatre helps a lot with confidence, which helps in any career, whether it’s teaching, engineering or mathematics.”

– Daniel Taylor