Student Spotlight: How Jadhu turned challenging moments into growth

The dream before the disruption

We all dream big. Dreaming big means envisioning a grand future, one where success smiles on effort and progress follows intention. In my mind, I would be walking into a corporate building with a lanyard around my neck and a coffee in hand, speaking fluently with professionalism and confidence by Term 2 2025. I told myself I wasn’t chasing prestige, yet my shortlist read suspiciously like a map. Jane Street, Wall Street, or any street that implied financial competence. Reality, of course, does not operate in montages. It grounds you in repetition, rejection, and unglamorous action.

When momentum stalled

Going with the flow was my way of life. It felt easy and comfortable. That flow was disrupted in the form of a rejection email. The American Express internship was not happening. Everything suddenly felt heavier than it should have. I networked. I polished the CV. I showed up on time, prepared, professional, and enthusiastic. Yet the answer was no.

I dwelled on that rejection letter for days on end, doubt creeping in subtly at first, then loudly. I stopped considering internships altogether, not because I no longer wanted one, but because somewhere along the way I had lost myself in the process. Then a striking epiphany hit me:

“You can’t steer a boat that isn’t moving.”

When that first came to me, I thought to myself how glib it was. However, I realised it explained how I was feeling. I hadn’t failed because I lacked direction; I had stalled because I had lost momentum. Self-reflection journeys are painful, but those often produce the most beneficial outcomes. There’s a reason why folk wisdom has always told us that we grow through pain.

Opening up to professional development

I’ve always felt that there’s something naturally elusive about professional development. Like most young individuals, I thought professional life was something to be explored in the distant future. However, life had other plans. My best friend encouraged me to sign up to the Co-NNECTIONS Launch, despite all the reasons I had conjured up in my head not to. 

I soon realised this was not just a program about learning and acquiring professional skills. It was a program about confronting uncertainty, challenging assumptions of all the necessary things we don’t want to think about when planning our futures.

Rebuilding my perspective

After completing the Co-NNECTIONS Professional Development Program, I was invited to attend a 3-day leadership camp in the Southern Highlands. I arrived not with certainty, but with intention. While there was some skepticism, I wanted to explore myself more deeply, to challenge parts of me that preferred familiarity and control. I wanted to try things that frighten me and observe how I interacted with others when comfort was removed.

One of the first practical challenges dismantled that caution almost immediately. I entered it with a sense of quiet confidence, shaped by prior experience and armed with a strategy I trusted. When that strategy failed, so did my composure. I felt subdued, momentarily useless, watching my assumptions unravel in real time. And yet, it was that discomfort where fortitude began to take shape. With the help of others, I pulled through. Not by forcing my way forward, but by letting go of control and allowing collective effort to carry me.

What struck me afterward was not the challenge itself, but the dynamics beneath it. Our team’s homogeneity had narrowed our range of ideas and quietly ushered us into groupthink. It reminded me of the value of different perspectives, that surrounding ourselves with people who do not think like us can spark creative breakthroughs.

My perspective shifted at that moment. I had once equated fortitude with resilience alone, pushing through and standing firm.

"I now understand fortitude as something more nuanced: the willingness to be wrong, to feel inadequate, and to remain engaged, nonetheless. A growth mindset is not the absence of doubt; it is the decision to move despite it."

Going forward, I intend to place myself deliberately in unfamiliar teams, to seek out difference and to embrace the discomfort that accompanies meaningful change. I am not abandoning who I am, but I am allowing myself to become something more.

Momentum reclaimed

As I look toward 2026, it feels remarkably different from last year. Not because the uncertainty has disappeared, but because my relationship with it has changed. Upon completing my second year, I stepped outside the familiar rhythms of study and assessment, and quite literally ventured out into the world. 

For two weeks in Thailand with a group of university friends, I tested limits I had long accepted as fixed. I confronted a fear of heights through bungee jumping, a fear of water through snorkelling, and a quieter, more persistent fear, social anxiety, by meeting new people without the safety of shared context. 

Returning home, I noticed something subtle but significant: my momentum had returned. I no longer felt paralysed by the absence of a “perfect” internship or a neatly linear path. Instead, I approached the new year with curiosity and agency. I continued applying, reflecting, refining, and brushing up against rejection without allowing it to hollow me out. Eventually, that persistence culminated in securing an internship, but the outcome mattered less than the process that led me there. What once felt like stagnation revealed itself, in hindsight, as necessary preparation.

There were many moments along the way when I felt unaccomplished, even worthless. Yet each step, every misstep included, was progress toward something quietly transformative. 

To a student sitting at home right now, convinced their goals are unattainable, I would offer this: 

"Momentum is not built through certainty, but through movement. You do not need to see the full path ahead. You only need to keep moving long enough for it to reveal itself."