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Student Achievers - Christopher

Posted on December 31, 2019

My name is Christopher. I am 24 years of age and am living with my partner in Hillcrest. I have three siblings; I also have two children who live with their grandmother, their names are Lisa Marree and Scott Andrew, Scott is named after my late father, whom I miss very much.

I have Autism and an Intellectual disability, which affects my reading and writing, but with the help of all my family I still manage to achieve things.

I am very interested in trucks and constructing model trucks, working on my Toyota Land cruiser and my ex-CFS International C1300 truck, I also love to be outdoors.

My experience at OAC...

I first dropped out of school just before I finished year 10 due to personal reasons. A couple of years after my youngest brother was enrolled with OAC, I then decided to try and complete my SACE again being able to study at home in my own time with the help of my partner, my family and also the support and understanding of my teachers.

The subject that I enjoyed the most was Auto Tech because I was able to work on my Land cruiser.

I think the challenges that I encountered whilst studying at OAC were all related to my disabilities, but as I said above I still managed to complete my assignments.

I found that studying at OAC was very good because the class sizes were small meaning more student-teacher time. I would highly recommend Open Access to anyone who wishes to study but is unable to attend classes in person.

And today...

I would like to eventually become a truck driver sometime in the future, owning my own transport company. But have to go through all the steps which take anywhere from five years to complete from start to finish. But for now I am just going to take a couple of years to work out exactly which way I want to go.

I would just also like to add a very big ‘Thank you’ to all of my teachers and Darren Johns for all of you help and understanding.