Name: Olive Collins

Graduated from GHSS: 2015

Olive attended Golden Hill for her primary school years before completing high school at DSHS in 2020. Halfway through her final year at Denmark Senior High School, Olive was offered a place to study Psychology at UWA. She completed her first year of psychology studies at UWA’s Albany campus, before relocating to Perth to complete her Bachelor of Psychology degree at UWA’s Crawley campus. Olive lived in a share house in Perth while studying, and throughout her final two years of university, also volunteered her time at her local Headspace branch. Headspace is a mental health service for young people aged 12-25 years old, and during her time as a volunteer, Olive got involved in community events and delivered high school presentations on resilience, depression, anxiety, and other issues related to mental health.  

Olive completed her Bachelor of Psychology degree last year (2023), and was promptly offered the role of Community Engagement Officer at Headspace. Olive’s role now involves managing the branch’s social media sites, continuing to deliver mental health presentations to high school students, and co-ordinating her crew of volunteers, amongst other things.  

One of the latest programs Olive has been facilitating is ‘Spill the Beans’, in which participants can come along for a coffee, cake and some social time, as well as chat about any mental health related issues they may be experiencing. The program also helps to reduce the stigma of talking about mental health.

Olive has recently been offered a place at UWA to complete her honours degree, however, she is enjoying her time at Headspace too much to give it up right now, and is loving being out in the workforce and earning a living.

Olive says that she recently realised that she has gotten ‘everything she wanted’ - to do well at high school, to move to Perth and finish her uni degree, and to get a job that she enjoys in her field. She says that soon enough she’ll start thinking about what to aim for next, but for now she is happy and feeling fulfilled in her current role.

“One thing I really loved about being a student at Golden Hill was all the plays we did. Thinking back to playing the part of Titania in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, I could never have done that before - performing in front of so many people. I think that getting involved in all the plays at GHSS definitely made me a more confident person. Now at work, I’m pretty comfortable talking to a crowd and doing presentations for high schoolers.”

Olive Collins