Off Campus magazine: March 2008
Regional profiles
Dunedin Student Pen Portraits
photo courtesy of Tourism Dunedin
Dunedin is the one positive result of global warming. When the black-ice age is over, when winter temperatures don’t begin with minus, it will be the best city in NZ in which to live. And it’s already the best place in the world for bringing up children – just ask the albatrosses. Only here have they chosen to establish a breeding colony on the mainland. The males land at Taiaroa Head – after four and a half years at sea! - and build a nest.
If it’s up to scratch, a female will come and
sit in it. Mind you, the ladies can’t be that fussy because, frankly, a lot of the nests looked like handymen’s dreams to me.
Amanda Riach
The most famous albatross is of course the one shot by the Ancient Mariner. Which brings me, in a way, to Amanda Riach. Not that she would dream of shooting an albatross, but she could if she wanted to, because one of her hobbies is small-bore rifle shooting. Well, it’s more her partner’s hobby, but she sometimes tags along `and fills this bit of cardboard up with holes.’ She could have accompanied him to Australia recently, but `sitting on the Sydney shooting range wasn’t really my idea of an Aussie holiday.’
So she stayed home and did her extramural assignments instead.
Per medium of the extramural summer course she’s doing her seventh paper of a journalism degree, although `there weren’t enough papers to major in journalism so I’m doing communications management as well.’
She came into the orbit of the Massey system in a manner that she regards as very logical and straightforward… but you may not. It goes like this. She wanted to go to university but couldn’t afford it so went out and found a job first. With the Dunedin City Council. Now she could afford to go to university. But would a degree lead to a better job than she presently had? Better to stay employed as she studied and find out when she’d graduated. But you can’t do a full-time course if you have a full-time job.
So Amanda enrolled at Massey. It’s the story of many an extramural student’s life – but smacks very faintly of insanity to everyone else.
She had left school in mid-seventh form and begun employment with the Council as an office junior in the news department.
Ah, so she could hone her writing skills? `No, most of my job was buying presents for visiting dignitaries and looking after them. I got thanked by a mayor from Korea, got said hello to by Prince Edward and I once poured a glass of red wine for a Dame and spilt it over the cheese on the table. Suki Turner (then mayor of Dunedin) said, “Don’t worry about it”, and cleaned it up herself. She was always doing things like that, she was fantastic. She made it all seem so everyday. Her husband Glenn would call in and say “Tell Suki I’ve got the spuds on for tea”. His brother Brian came to a meeting once and fell asleep.’ As you can gather, no one is likely to scold Amanda for spilling wine; she is a charming presence.
Here’s an example: I asked her a standard, bland, journalistic question: `What does your father do?’ And the answer was as follows: `Oh, he works as store manager for Fulton and Hogan but the job he always wanted was to be a jockey. That’s how you can tell I’m adopted, I’m up here and he’s way down there.’
Being Mosgiel-born (her parents still live in the same house and she’s bought one `just round the corner’) she is of strong Scottish heritage. As evidence, she tells me she was once `Tartan Princess’, which I think means she was second in a Scottish beauty pageant.
She is now a planning coordinator, helping to edit the District Plan. `The biggest project is re-zoning and sprucing up the harbourside - get more people over there.’ Her office window overlooks the passage taken by graduands in Grad week, which charges her determination. `I get so depressed when I see them all heading down the road to the Town Hall; I want to be one! I want to wear that gown and mortar. And I will. I’ll be finished by September 2012.’
In the meantime, she ploughs ahead with her assignments, not always in complete contentment - `Creative writing, why do they call it that? All writing’s creative!
But, as is almost universally the case, she is perfectly happy with her tutors. They, like Rodney Bryant her writing mentor on the council, Suki Turner, her dead-eye partner and Dunedin itself are: `Fantastic!’
Juliet McLellan
Another dinkum Dunedinarian whose genes ooze porridge, Juliet is possessed of that second-most important Scottish quality, `purrsestunce!’ She described herself as persistent at least five times: `I wasn’t very good but I persevered.’
On one such occasion she was referring to the hardest accountancy exam she ever sat, which she was doing from a basis in mathematical experience of almost nothing. `I was an average student at school, maybe a bit below average and quite weak at maths.’ So she gets an A in statistics. That’s not cussedness, that’s near genius.
On another occasion she `didn’t really enjoy it, it was very hard and timing was so critical you could hardly ever get it right. And the training was really serious.’ She was talking about the time she represented New Zealand in the International Dragonboat Regatta in Hong Kong!
She is extremely hard on herself, but then that’s Scottish, isn’t it?
She has a plethora of passed papers, spread across a generation and several provinces, which will one day cohere into `a B Comm /Dip Grad.’
She hadn’t liked school very much so left. But she was also suspicious of the ultimate benefits of a university degree so went to polytech instead. There she was to do a diploma in computing but there was a mix-up and she gained one in tourism instead. I think. Then, utilising that perverse perseverance, came a study of fifth and sixth form mathematics and accounting and the ultimate lurch into the university system, `To prove everybody wrong.’
Meanwhile, she had been dragonboat racing internationally, marrying and mothering three daughters, and receptionisting in the Waste Water department of the City Council - `answering phones for people who didn’t know what they wanted.’
Many of her papers have been done at Otago University, but there are a smattering done through Massey extramural. And what a smattering they are! Resource Conservation, Critical Thinking, Sustainability… And perhaps future others to plug gaps in a fascinating degree that is patently not the result of critical thinking. For example, when I met Juliet she’d just come out of a lecture on Ngai Tahu and the Natural World. Oh, and she has another Maori Studies paper from Massey as well. I think.
It’s the Resource Conservation she’s doing through the summer school course and things are not all that easy. `I don’t have a computer at home and have to take the three kids to the library.’ Now separated, she has to cram most of her study into `Mondays, Tuesdays, every second Wednesday and every second weekend.’
Not unsurprisingly, Juliet has set Massey a teasing problem by wishing to cross-credit Business Law II without having done Business Law I. – (You had to be there.)
As you would expect of someone who excelled in a sport she didn’t really like – `(dragonboat racing) is like trying to paddle a bath tub’ – Juliet has strong likes and dislikes on many things. She only likes half the content of the Accountancy degree she’s doing, for example. `I don’t like shares and bonds and the emphasis on profit.’’ And she doesn’t like poverty – having experienced it first-hand. She would like to help people on low incomes to budget wisely, at which she is `quite good’.
Above all, she wants to work in the field of environmental sustainability. Which leaves the delightfully complex Juliet in a characteristic impasse - `except I don’t quite know how you use accountancy in sustainability – I mean what is the market value of a park or a wild animal?…’ I am sure she will persevere and find an answer.
Helen Walsh
Helen is perhaps the most enthusiastic advocate of the extramural system you will ever meet. In fact, she is the most ardent fan of general education you’ll probably ever meet. She has been almost unswervingly devoted to an educationary career since childhood `although it wasn’t always fashionable to say so.’
Now let me explain the `almost unswervingly’. Her father was a plumber and is now chairman of the board of Plumbing World. Her brother is a plumber. And Helen was once offered a plumbing apprenticeship! She could have been one of the few woman plumbers in the world – perhaps NZ’s first. `But when I saw my brother coming home with this unmentionable stuff on his overalls I knew it wasn’t for me.’
In 1993, whilst teaching full-time, she began an extramural BA in English and History. She subsequently did `the odd paper for teaching development,’ then almost inevitably, began the Masters in education she is now about halfway through. `It’s such a convenient way of learning; if you want to work at 6:30 in the morning or at midnight, you can.’
And there’s that wee bonus that is not often mentioned out loud: `With two pre-schoolers it was nice going to the on-campus courses; no cooking or dishes, food is put on a tray and when you’re finished the dishes are taken away!’
She’s moved out of the secondary school classroom into an executive position at Aoraki Polytech, responsible for `the day-to-day running’ there. But the running, of course, is of an educational institution. `The buzz is seeing students heading from here out into the wide world with the skills to deal with it. That’s exciting!’
Her unwearying interest in education stems from the noblest of motives; in her Masters she is concentrating on student motivation and the overcoming of learning difficulties in students. And she must overcome difficulties of her own - her summer course, she confesses brightly, takes her into the frighteningly unknown world of `innovation and technology in education.’ She recently grappled for the first time with the arcane processes of the interactive whiteboard - `I had no idea how to work it but we must use the digital age to advance education.’
And she’s just learned that ‘blog’ comes from weblog. And before you sneer, I learnt it from her.
As already remarked, Helen is the most enthusiastic partisan for Massey extramural system in the universe: `From on-campus courses and chatrooms I have made friends all over the world.’ And she is `astounded at the speed’ that emails come `firing back’ from her tutors. She’s a satisfied customer, dead keen to get her navy-blue gown - `I’ll be so proud to wear it among all the black down here.’
And her answer to the question, `Do you have any complaints at all?’ has, perhaps, never been heard before, in the history of distance learning: `No, none whatsoever,’ she replied.
Daniel McMillan
A central mystery was solved during my meeting with Daniel McMillan; how can you learn to fly extramurally?
You can’t, of course. You learn to fly separately, whilst, in Daniel’s case at least, studying for a Dip Aviation Science, then a full aviation management degree at the same time. He could have done the diploma course through Griffith University in Queensland but chose Massey, presumably because he hadn’t learnt to fly across seas at the time.
He has `a couple of years to go, at a rate of a couple of papers a semester,’ but already he has papers to prove he knows the impact of aviation on the environment and that he has skills in the strategic management of airports.
In fact, at age 23 he’s already doing that - since January this year he’s been the business manager of Mainland Air in whose vast and tidy hangar I talked to him.
Flying certainly speeds your progress up the career ladder; as well as his role in senior management `in a pretty progressive company’, Daniel has spent the last year as a flight instructor, a teacher of aviation theory and a line pilot ferrying tourists hither and yon. He’s doing Massey proud, too – not only does he study there but encourages his pupils to do the same.
His aim is ultimately to get into the big ones as a line pilot `until I lose my medical or have had enough and move into management.’
I ask him if he’s a mathematical whiz and he modestly deflects the question by replying that you don’t really need to be – in fact, you don’t even need to know much more of the principles of flight than that it’s caused by air moving over the wing. The fact, however, that his pupils spend three hours a day in a classroom for their first year of training suggests they learn a damn sight more than that.
Born in Gore, he was aiming for a career in IT (`there seemed to be money in it’) until the hankerings induced by his first flight at age eight (not behind the controls it should be added) set him towards the skies. Where, it seems, he will remain.
Flight takes up a great deal of his life. He works sometimes seven days a week - although not in the cockpit, he explains carefully. The dominance of flying in his life is attested to when you ask him about his hobbies: `Well, there’s kayaking – I bought a new one yesterday, actually. But then there’s flying; if you haven’t got passengers, then flying’s a hobby too.’
