During her 40-minute bus ride to school every day, Elsie Strahorn doesn't let a second go to waste.
The Newcastle teenager is taking on the mammoth task of finding out what young people think of success, and what stands in their way.
In Year 10 at Hunter Valley Grammar School, Elsie is undertaking an independent study of how years 9 to 12 students nationwide understand the concept of a fair go.
"I'm very proud of it, and I feel very excited that we could actually build off this and make change," she said.
Having never led a national research project before, the idea first occurred to Elsie while she was part of the High Performing Students Program at the University of Newcastle, which allows high school students to complete one first-year university course.
Coming away from the sociology course with a high distinction, Elsie couldn't help feeling like something was missing in what she had learned.
"I noticed that a lot of the data was coming from adults and that is not representative of the whole of society," she said.
Elsie learned that a lot of people believed getting a fair go was the core pillar of Australia, but this was far from reality.
"When you deep dive into it, that is actually not true, it isn't equal," the teenager said.
She approached her professor with the idea of surveying young people, and he helped her with resources and guidance on how to design the questions.
After a month of research and perfecting her questions, Elsie sent out the survey to about 1400 schools and school-related organisations.
Opening in early August, she has had several hundred responses so far and was hoping for at least 1000 before the survey closes on October 23.
Elsie defined the concept of a fair go as the belief that everyone should have the opportunity to succeed through hard work, regardless of their background.
Socioeconomic factors such as education inequality, cost-of-living pressures and housing affordability had called into question whether equal opportunity exists, she said.
She wanted young people to have a say on what barriers they face, what they think they need to succeed and what needs to change.
Once she had collated all her results, Elsie planned to write a report and share it with local government representatives so young people's perspectives could be part of policy discussions around opportunity and inequality.
"I don't expect one study to change government policy, but I do hope it can add young people's voices to the evidence policymakers are working with," she said.
Students from years 9 to 12 are invited to take the survey online at: https://forms.gle/Hi25wsUjLDPG9yyH9.
The survey is anonymous and takes about five minutes to complete.
