Year 11 student Olivia Craig from Mark Oliphant College has turned a class project into a powerful podcast series, using her voice to explore student wellbeing, leadership and future careers while helping shape her own pathway beyond school. 

Created as part of her Activating Identities and Futures (AIF) learning, Olivia's three-part podcast series focuses on issues that matter to young people and provided opportunities to connect with professionals from a range of fields.

For her first episode on student wellbeing, Olivia surveyed around 200 middle and senior school students and interviewed her school's student wellbeing teacher. Her second episode explored leadership and confidence through an interview with the college principal. 

In her third and final episode, Olivia turned her attention to future careers, interviewing the CEO of the Women's and Children's Health Network and gathering insights from professionals including an engineer, a radiographer and South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas. 

Throughout the project, Olivia demonstrated key attributes of student agency. She used her initiative to develop her own podcast concept, planning the series and creating timelines to keep the project on track. She worked things out for herself including independently organising interviews, recording conversations and editing each episode.

Olivia also learned how to improve her interviewing skills throughout the project. 

"I recorded my face so I would be able to analyse it afterwards," Olivia said. 

The experience has had a lasting impact on her confidence. 

"At the start I would be fine talking to a crowd of people, and I would be fine at public speaking, but one-on-one conversations were really the thing I had to learn," she said. 

"As the interviews went on, I felt less nervous." 

The project has also helped Olivia gain greater clarity about her future aspirations. She hopes to pursue a career in healthcare as an ophthalmologist. 

"I have a better idea of my future now and I'm less nervous about it," she said. 

Congratulations Olivia on successfully completing your AIF project and demonstrating outstanding student agency. We wish you all the best for the future. 

If you have a great student story to share, please contact us at sace.media@sa.gov.au