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Live your own dream
The University of Otago strives to encourage students to be true to themselves.
By Harlene Hayne
At the University of Otago, we hold an Academic Convocation Ceremony at the beginning of each year. Like graduation, Convocation is a formal affair where the academic staff wear their regalia. The ceremony is attended by approximately 4000 new students who have assembled from across New Zealand and from more than 100 other countries around the world. During the ceremony, these students receive a formal Maori welcome from Mana Whenua( the traditional owners of the land that the university sits on), and they hear from the chancellor; the mayor of Dunedin; the president of the Otago University Students’ Association; a high-profile guest speaker, like the prime minister or the governor-general; and from me, the vice-chancellor.
The primary purpose of our Convocation Ceremony is to provide our students with inspiration for the year ahead, but another purpose is to inform them of the high academic and social expectations we have of them. We make it very clear that we expect them to excel academically. We also remind them that the taxpayers of New Zealand foot more than half of the bill for their education and that we expect them to make the most of the amazing opportunity they have been given.
I know that our students leave the ceremony feeling inspired. During the week following Convocation, students frequently stop me on campus to share their hopes and dreams for the year ahead. But in addition to feeling inspired, I suspect that many of them also leave feeling a huge weight of expectation. The university’ s expectations are compounded by those of their families, who also have high expectations for their daughters and sons, many of whom are the first in their family to attend university. To be quite honest, shouldering all this expectation when you are still in your teens is a pretty overwhelming proposition. So here at Otago, we are trying to do a better job of putting our cards on the table and outlining exactly what we expect of our students during their time with us.
First, what we want, more than anything else, is for our students to discover their intellectual passion. Many students come to Otago with plans to pursue a course that will allow them to enter a particular profession. Otago is home to one of New Zealand’ s two medical schools and to New Zealand’ s only dental school. Given this, many students come here with the goal of becoming a doctor or a dentist, and that’ s an extremely admirable goal. If students love science and they truly want to be a doctor or a dentist, then our advice is to go for it, and we are committed to providing substantial support to maximise their chance of achieving that goal. But if a student has other interests, passions and skills, they should not be afraid to choose a different path.
In New Zealand( and Australia), we need bright young people in the health professions, but we also need them in many other professions. We need bright young lawyers, teachers, accountants, artists, psychologists, conservationists,
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