Paid content is paid for and controlled by an advertiser and produced by the Guardian Labs team.By the end of her second year at Griffith University, Krystal Flynn was close to burnout. On top of her full-time course load, the aspiring primary school teacher was ricocheting between three casual jobs to pay the bills, and living 650km from her family in Rockhampton.
The eldest of three daughters of a single mum on a disability pension, Flynn couldn’t ask her family for financial support. Instead, she scoured the university website and discovered the Griffith Brighter Futures Scholarships. She applied and received one in her final year in 2014. As graduation loomed, Flynn’s thoughts turned to adventure, so when a lecturer suggested a remote posting, she leapt at it. She spent the next three years at Tagai State College on the isolated Torres Strait island of Saibai, where locals still speak traditional languages.
For her master’s, Flynn analysed the differences between Yumplatok and Standard Australian English, which not only upped her effectiveness in the classroom, but helped win her the Queensland College of Teachers Excellence in Beginning to Teach Award in 2016.