When Tammy Dillon was diagnosed with a rare genetic brain disorder, she knew her life was about to change forever.
What she didn’t realise, though, was that it would result in her enrolling in university at 40, and pursuing her newfound love of neuroscience.
“In 2012, I was diagnosed with Chiari Malformation, which is a rare genetic condition that causes the base of the brain, the cerebellum, to push down into the spinal canal,” she says.
“This diagnosis put me into a spin, but the more I tried to understand what it meant, the more fascinated with neuroscience I became.”
After her diagnosis, Tammy was still coming to terms with the recent loss of two close family members, while also navigating life as a single parent to her two children. She says it was at this point that she had what many would call “a midlife crisis”.
“I felt so lost, I had to figure out how I was going to support us if this illness was going to continue to cause me problems.”
With her labour-intensive hospitality job no longer sustainable, she knew she had to change her life for the better.
“I took a deep breath and I applied to university,” she says. “I chose UNE because they support and encourage mature-age study and have flexible online options that I could fit around working and being a mum.”
Tammy was offered a place in the Pathways Enabling Course, which allowed her to ease her way into study and get a feel for the work-study juggle.
Having left school in Year 9, she says this stepping stone made the experience a little “less frightening.
After finishing the Pathways Enabling Course, Tammy was given the green light to enrol in a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Neuroscience and Psychology.
“Go hard or go home, right?” says Tammy.
“I have found myself chuckling sometimes at the notion of becoming a neuroscientist, but to me, where we come from does not have to define where we are going. Everybody had to learn how to walk, so I figured if I tried hard enough, I could learn this too. All I needed to do was give it 100 percent effort.”
