Academic Rivals to Best Friends: How My Degree Netted Me a Lifelong Mate

Uni can give you so much more than a very expensive piece of paper

I always appreciated how inherently social my degree was. As a student at Curtin University, studying in their Screen Arts program, we were forming friendships from day one - partly out of compatibility but also out of necessity.

We were going to be working with each other for the next three years, and after that we’d be each other’s closest connections in the real world. But we weren’t always working together - sometimes we were working against each other.

At several points during my degree, we can pitch our ideas for projects which are then decided on by vote. For our first year documentary unit, I was one of those lucky few in my class and directed/produced She's The Light of the Party. Another documentary from that class grabbed my attention at our screening - A Quiet Neighbour by Christian Diodato.

Christian’s first year documentary (left), my first-year documentary (right).

I’d seen Christian around in some of my classes, but never really talked to him. After the screening we congratulated each other and exchanged some light-hearted banter about whose project was better, and largely went our separate ways. The next year we found ourselves experiencing a little déjà vu - once again, we were spearheading two competing projects in the same unit.

Having recognised the pattern, the friendly competition between us became more explicit and we actively tried to out-director each other. We began devoting extra hours to storyboarding, rehearsals, and research, the fire of our desire to create our best work, all in the name of some friendly competition.

We never agreed who ended up winning that little competition (it was definitely me), and we joked that one day, eventually, we’d work together.

However, by the third year of our course, I had foregone the path of director in favour of the role of producer. This meant I was no longer in direct competition with Christian, opening us up to work together for our final projects. We both secured our desired roles and when it came time to form crews, our fateful day arrived.

Pictured: One day, 600km away from Perth on set in Mount Magnet (Christian on the left, me on the right).

In some ways it was a risk for Christian and I to work together as director and producer. Most crews were made up of people who had already developed proven working relationships. If we didn’t mesh, personally or professionally, the whole project would suffer and it would be a particularly painful year for not only us, but the rest of our crew.

From day one, we knew that our risk had paid off. Our workflows were compatible, our priorities were in sync, and our arguments were as productive as they were entertaining.

Unlike most of the other producer/director combos (boy, do we have some stories there), we experienced no tension or hostility. Instead, we elevated each other’s work to a level that we had never reached before and produced something that we’re both incredibly proud of.

Today, Christian and I are close personal friends and are working on several projects together now we’ve finished uni.

Once friendly rivals, to now successful collaborators, our uni story is just one example of many relationships that are forged in the gauntlet of undergraduate study.

Whether you’re about to start studying or you’re already partway through, I hope you take this story as a sign to look at your degree not as just a means to a certificate, but as an experience that’ll give you as much social and personal fulfillment as it will academic/but as a time in your life that’s just as significant for your personal life as your academic one.