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“My experiences have taught me a lot about<br />
relationships. There was this guy recently, and I<br />
think the whole time I secretly knew that he was<br />
maybe still in love with his ex. He was just giving me<br />
breadcrumbs and I was chasing them, but I ended<br />
up learning to actually respect myself a lot more, not<br />
to be someone’s second choice and all of these hard<br />
lessons that I’ve been ignoring my whole life.”<br />
After journeying across the world and living in Canada,<br />
Shay has since followed her whims to the Sunshine<br />
Coast. While she originally visited to help her parents<br />
renovate a house they bought, she said she stayed<br />
after something awakened inside her – a fascination<br />
for science.<br />
“At this point, I sort of knew I wanted to study<br />
something in nutrition, but then I started going out with<br />
someone who was doing biomed and that changed.<br />
We went out for a date and a surf, but the waves<br />
sucked, so we ended up on the beach talking about<br />
science for seven hours – we got so sunburnt.<br />
“He signed me up to a bridging course where I got a<br />
99 in chemistry and a 98 in biology, so my chemistry<br />
teacher pulled me aside and told me to consider doing<br />
biomed at the University of the Sunshine Coast – and<br />
so I did. Now I live here and call this place home, and<br />
it’s amazing. Making friends was really hard at first, but<br />
that’s what’s so good about dancing and surfing – I<br />
made friends through that.”<br />
Like so many miraculous things in her life, Shay said<br />
her name turned out to be prophetic as she took<br />
an interest in biomedical science and followed her<br />
passion into nutrition and genetics.<br />
“My dad is from Mauritius, so my name is French.<br />
My mum wanted Shay, and my dad wanted Elle, so<br />
they stuck it together to become Shayelle. Then, like<br />
a decade later, it turned up in a baby name book and<br />
means ‘mathematical scientific ingenious one’ which<br />
is ironic because both my grandparents have PhD’s in<br />
science.<br />
Like so many miraculous things in her<br />
life, Shay said her name turned out to<br />
be prophetic as she took an interest in<br />
biomedical science and followed her<br />
passion into nutrition and genetics.<br />
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