I, too am Auckland...

 

I had heard about this project and came across it and thought to share it with my blogging community. Interestingly enough, it reminds me of my first years at Auckland University back in the mid 80s with my sister. She was the first of our family to attend law school and I started the following year on an arts degree and was first to graduate with a Masters degree in my family.

 

Back then the comments that are shared here were surprisingly quite similar i.e. with the reactions of student colleagues in thinking that I had gone to a private or exclusive girls school but when I shared about coming from a public school in Mangere, it took many by surprise.

 

South Auckland had a bad reputation back then too, so much so, that I was aware that some people and businesses didn't want people to know that they were from Mangere with the phone number prefix of 275 or Otara 274 that they would request for a phone number change. 

 

I also became aware of correctly pronouncing Maori and Pasifika words rather than the Anglosized European pronunciation which I still do today.

 

I remember starting in my arts degree in English, History, Art History and Geography with a few Pasifika people in my first year in the huge lecture theatres or smaller classrooms, and then it whittled away to even fewer in my second year and by the time I'd entered my third year, in many of my classes there was only myself or one other. Of course, as Pacific and Maori students we would gravitate to each other and other people of colour but by the time I'd entered my Masters year, I was the only one left standing amongst my European colleagues.

 

And being in the department of Geography was even more interesting because most of the teaching faculty were older well travelled European males and my 'professor' or mentor was a Korean academic. Somehow, I didn't take it to heart and was encouraged or ignored but kept plugging on with my family as my best motivators and working part time on weekends in town. I guess, I had a bigger picture in mind, in knowing that I was the only Pasifika woman in this circle and kept my goal first and foremost to graduate.

 

It made me realise that perhaps it's time to soon return to teaching in a mainstream tertiary academic environment as I've been quite privileged to be able to work in an Indigenous environment with people of colour in that the tensions are quite different. But in listening to these tertiary students stories, I think there is still a mountain to climb in addressed covert racism and in some parts institutional racism but to not take things too personally in that it is not your personal endeavour to educate or change peoples' perceptions of you but rather continue to meeting those expectations of your goals.

 

You never know, you might be one whom they will seek help from in years to come...