Hitaua Arahanga-Doyle, PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology.
It feels a bit clichéd but the biggest reason I returned for postgrad study was that I wanted to help people. During my undergrad my awesome whānau helped me a lot, but groups such as my iwi, Ngāi Tahu, gave me a number of scholarships and work experience so I really felt like I needed to give back. My actual undergrad experience was all over the place to say the least, in fact I changed my degree six times. One of the biggest hurdles was when I spent a semester studying in Germany near what was meant to be the end of my undergrad.
When I got to Germany I found out that I had made an admin error and I couldn't enrol in the one paper I had to complete in order to graduate back home. That “little” error meant I had to drop out of the honours programme that I had been invited into for the following year. Instead, I enrolled in additional 300 level psychology papers where I found that I had a bigger passion for the subject than I previously thought. Now I'm in the third year of my PhD in social psychology and next month I am heading to the States on a Fulbright Scholarship to learn from leading scholars in the area. My research is looking into the benefits of whanaungatanga/belonging on tertiary students, particularly first year Māori students, through the use of brief social psychology interventions.
I've learnt so much throughout my time at Otago, but the biggest lesson that I'd probably give to younger students is that things may not go as smoothly as you hope for. Just look at my undergrad experience. The thing is, that's alright. Talk to your friends, talk to your whānau, they'll help you get out the other side. For me, that's what matters. As Nesian Mystik once said “when worst comes to worst, my tangata comes first”.