Megan Moshovelis

I grew up on Sydney’s northern beaches with my parents and twin sister, and we’ve always had pets. I’ve enjoyed playing community sport at my local associations and watching elite sport - netball in particular (go NSW Swifts!). I took a gap year in 2020 after completing high school with plans to travel and head to southern Africa for a few months, which unfortunately didn’t end up happening. Instead, I spent my time trying new types of fitness training to fill up time in lockdown, which is where I cemented my passion to study sport and exercise at uni.

I’m incredibly passionate about sport – I love playing and watching sport and engaging in other forms of exercise in general. I also think sport can be a really valuable tool not just for physical fitness, but also mental, emotional, and social health – I’ve made a lot of close friends through team sports. Netball and softball are two sports in particular that I love playing and watching, having been involved with them for a long period of my life. Other than sport, I enjoy travelling, playing music, and hanging with friends. 

I really enjoyed studying PDHPE in school, then took a gap year after finishing and spent a lot of time figuring out what I actually wanted to study and where I wanted to pursue a career. During lockdown, I tried new types of exercise and spent a lot of time watching sport, which helped me definitively realise that I would love to make a career out of it. I’ve also been super lucky with the support I’ve received from people around me, who have really encouraged me to pursue this degree and also my passion. I’ve also had my fair share of injuries and visits to the physio over the years so I know first-hand how that feels, and would love the opportunity to help out others. 

I chose to study at UTS because the facilities are incredible – particularly for sport and exercise science, which has the (relatively) new building out at Moore Park that has some of the best facilities in Australia, which sounded like an incredible opportunity. I’ve also had friends go through UTS (some doing the same degree, some doing other degrees) and everyone has incredibly positive things to say about the classes, course content, and teaching staff (and it all certainly lives up to the hype). Logistically, it’s also pretty easy to get to and there is lots of flexibility around class timetables which is good for being able to schedule work around. 

One highlight has been the teaching staff! They have all been so incredible, whether learning has been on-campus or we’ve had to switch to being online. They are all super engaging and put a lot of effort into planning lectures and tutorials so that every student can get the most out each session, while still making it interesting and fun along the way. I firmly believe teaching staff can make or break a course and I feel incredibly lucky that everyone I have had a chance to interact with has obvious passion for the subjects and teaching, confirming for me that this course was the right decision. 

As much as I loved sport before, I think this degree has helped me see all the ways sport can be used – to promote healthy lifestyles, to enact social change and achieve social outcomes and looking at different issues in sport has broadened my understanding of sport. It has also given me so much more of an understanding about various career pathways my degree can lead me into, some of which I had never even considered before commencing the course.

For the future, I’m not sure exactly what I want to do – but I think that’s part of the beauty of the degree, because it has given me so many ideas of jobs that I weren’t even aware existed in the field. Like a lot of people doing the course, I would love to go into a high performance sport environment and work with elite athletes, but I also think I might like to go into using sport to achieve social outcomes and reduce inequities in society. Working on injury rehabilitation and prevention would be cool too.

My advice if you’re considering this degree would be to engage in as many types of exercise as you can to gain experience and figure out what you enjoy. I’ve also found it helpful to engage with sports news and issues as much as I can because there will always be something there that I’m passionate about which helps keep me engaged with the degree (through podcasts, Instagram accounts, blogs, etc.). Don’t worry if you haven’t done any sort of science in later high school or are coming into the degree not thinking you know much (or anything) – we’re taught everything from the start in as much detail as we need to know. If sport and exercise is something you’re passionate about, this is absolutely a degree you should consider. 

Learn more about Sport and Exercise at UTS