SB_issue55_Digital

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