Back To School With Dr Anne Aly

We chat to Dr. Anne Aly, Australia's first female Muslim MP.

This post is presented in partnership with Bankwest.

Our webseries Back to School With invites Australia's most interesting and successful people to share stories from their school days. In each ep, they let us know how they landed their dream careers, as well as how they faced all those inevitable obstacles of teenagerdom along the way.

In the first four seasons, we interviewed David Koch, Julie Bishop, Samantha Jade, Dr. Karl, Daniel Ricciardo, Tom Ballard, Gretel Killeen, John Marsden and many, many other fascinating peeps.

And yet, Season Five looks to be our biggest season to date.

In the fourth episode of the new season, we chat with Dr. Anne Aly, the accomplished academic and counter-terrorism expert who this year was elected to Australian Parliament (becoming the first Muslim woman to achieve such a feat). Dr. Aly shared with us her experience as a practicing Muslim in Catholic and Anglican schools, how she returned to university as a mature age student (and a single mother) and her continuing struggle to fit in.

"I've never really been a person who fits in. I didn't feel that I fit in very well at school. Didn't fit in very well at uni. Didn't fit in very well in academia. And I don't imagine I'm going to fit in very well here, but that's okay, I think that sometimes that's a good thing."

Check out our chat.

Stay tuned: We'll be dropping new episodes each Tuesday. Join us as we venture back in time with another Aussie legend every week!

In the meantime, catch up with previous seasons:

Season One

Season Two

Season Three

Season Four

You can find our Season Five archive here:

Season Five

Back To School With Season Five is presented by Bankwest. Need a bank account with student benefits? Find out more here (and remember to consider the PDS).

Photo: Student Edge.