In January, four TGHS students spent a week at the University of Otago for the Hands-On at Otago camp.

Run annually, HOAO gives students an amazing opportunity to take classes with university professors, experience the halls of residence, and meet students from all across the country.

It was a busy week, with registration, orientation, and a pōwhiri on Sunday, followed by activities that kicked off Monday morning.

Each student had a core project which we worked on in the mornings in teams of around 10 to 30, mine being computer science, where we used digital forensics to find Ruffles, the department mascot who had been kidnapped. This involved learning skills like finding hidden partitions on a hard drive, recovering deleted files, and making ethernet cables. Other projects ranged from things like chemistry to international business or even surveying. In the afternoons we took part in ‘taster courses’, which were short introductions to different areas of study, and then other activities to help us get a feel for Dunedin and university life.

Some of the activities on offer were a trip to Baldwin Street, a tour of some other residential colleges, games like laser tag, or we could have free time in the College or wider city. One afternoon we spent some time at Unipol, a gym and recreation centre free for all University of Otago students, and they put on a range of activities to show us some of the options and classes they have available.

We were incredibly lucky to be staying at Te Rangihīroa College. Having only opened late last year, we were the first group to stay in the brand new residential college, which featured its own movie theatre, music room, gaming room, basketball court, volleyball court, and more.

All of our meals were at the college, then after dinner, we had more activities. Monday night was an amazing race, which was a great way to get familiar with the campus and start to find our way around. Tuesday was a quiz night, and on Wednesday we had the evening to talk with course advisors and university professors about any questions we may have regarding the university itself, courses, or the application process.

On Thursday as the week was drawing to a close, we spent both the morning and afternoon slots finishing off our projects and getting ready to present to everybody the next morning. There was a last-minute shopping trip for some needing costumes for our final night, which was an out-of-this-world-themed ‘Big night out’ at the Otago Business School.

To finish off, on Friday morning each project group gave a short presentation summarising their week to the rest of the camp. This was one of my highlights as we got to learn about all the different projects that people had been working on. Some groups talked about what they did, some showed videos, and a couple even gave performances!

A huge thank you to Mrs Shaw and TGHS, the University of Otago, event organisers, project leaders, and redshirts. I had a great experience and would recommend Hands On to anyone interested in finding out more about Uni life.

For more information, check out the Hands-On at Otago website.