During the Summer Holidays three senior students attended Hands on at Otago which was run by the University of Otago.

This is an On-Campus experience for senior students from around the country, interested in studying at Otago University.  This is a week long experience and while you are at Hands-on, you stay in one of two halls of residence. Arana or Studholme. 

This year we had three Queen's girls attend Meleana Veikoso, Jordyn Martin and Serena Evile, they all stayed at  the Arana Student Hostel together with over 150 other students.

When you apply for the experience there are 36 projects to choose from. Serena and Meleana choose the  Music and Maoritanga project, and Jordyn was in Media and Communications.

Meleana and Serena: For me, Music and Maoritanga were topics that I never saw myself doing but Music is  something I was passionate about. We were taught how to play different types of sacred Instruments and see how the sounds merged in with the sound of nature and how much nature is reflected through these specific instruments. I got to play quite a few and all I can say is… good luck getting it on your first try. We then went to a beach and our task was to find shells or rocks that you think have a similar sound to the different Taonga’s (sacred instruments) we used back at the workshop. One thing I learnt from there was that you can pretty much play music through anything, our teacher sure did prove to us that it was possible, one of the things she found and played a tune with was seaweed!!!

To sum it all up it was a week full of learning, it really helped me see the different courses Otago University offers and how well many are executed. I'm so thankful for this amazing opportunity I was able to be a part of and I recommend it to our senior girls, apply and trust me you will find life long friends  and start to be independent.

Jordyn: On the Media and Communications project, we got to evaluate potentially bias news sources and use these skills to present our own radio show. We went to Radio One, the on-campus radio show and were told we had 90 minutes to research, write and present three newsworthy stories for the 12:00 news.

The next day we were taught how to interview someone in order to get the most information. We were then taken to the Otago Daily Times HQ to interview one of the editors for the Online ODT, Vaughn Elder.

Thursday night = Fun night where we all dressed up to the theme “something magical” everyone really went all out and that was a big highlight of our week at Hands-On. It was great to mix with different people from all over New Zealand.

On the last day, we all presented the work we had done over the week before saying goodbye to all our new found friends from around the motu. 

We were all lucky enough to receive scholarships from the University of Otago which paid for the cost of such a rewarding experience. Several scholarships are handed out every year. We all loved our time at Hands-On and would highly recommend to anyone considering studying at Otago University.