Alumni of the University of Auckland...

Last night, I went with my teens to the Vodafone Events centre, in Manukau, to attend an opening evening for prospective students to the University of Auckland or Auckland University as I knew it as an undergraduate.

As they went around and asked questions at the various departments, I went over with my youngest to speak informally with some current students on the different experiences I had during the 1980s as opposed to theirs in this millennium.

One of the funny experiences was relating about how we'd go on protest marches like the: save the whales in walking down to the wharf and protesting there, anti-nuclear was about walking to the American Embassy and then lying down on the road outside with someone drawing with chalk around your body so that when we stood up, it looked like a murder scene and we would all assemble in the quad with signs and banners etc. ready to go.

In talking with the current students, they talked about how social media had changed that and that now people would put up posts and students would respond through their social media platforms rather than physically protesting etc.

I remember as an undergraduate about initially feeling out of sorts in that it was a very foreign space but as I got to make friends in each of my classes and got down to doing the work that was required, I actually enjoyed going to learn something new each day and also working out at the Uni gym.

Now I'm in a different space but those formative years paved the way for what I do now and I'm not at all intimidated by mainstream university speak in now being an alumni (post graduate) from two of the largest mainstream universities in the country i.e. U of A and AUT (Auckland University of Technology).

Sometimes it's about learning what you can in those spaces and then uses that knowledge to forge your own path. I've met so many people who wished that they had done better at school before heading out into the workforce and then returning to tertiary education to give better prospects for jobs.

I'm of the thinking that wherever you go, you are able to learn many things and to never give up if you have a dream to pursue that's meant to be, it's in realising those goals that one is able to bless many others. It's the experience that I've had and Auckland Uni or U of A helped me to succeed to where I am today as a part of my life's journey...