E rere kau mai te awa nui mai te kāhui maunga ki Tangaroa.
Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au.
Ko Ruapehu te maunga.
Ko Wanganui te awa.
Ko Te Atihaunui-a-Pāpārangi te iwi.

Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

My ancestral river flows from the mountains to the sea.
I am the river and the river is me.
My mountain is Ruapehu.
My river is Wanganui.
Te Atihaunui-a-Pāpārangi are my people.

Greetings, greetings, greetings to you all.

My name is Pua Virginia Good and I am currently nearing the completion of my Bachelors degree in Speech and Language Therapy with the Communication Disorders Department at the University of Canterbury. I have been the fortunate recipient of the Ti Maru Maori Trust Scholarship for 2007 which has enabled me to support myself as a full-time student and solo parent of the two most important people in my life - my son and daughter.
For the past four years I've studied at the University of Canterbury. The speech and language therapy course traditionally has an extremely intense workload. The field covers a vast range of services and can basically be divided into two domains, education and health.
The education side of speech and language therapy is what people typically think of, that is, working with children from preschool to high school dealing with articulation problems, language processing difficulties, enhancing reading and literacy. It may also be in helping children or adults to overcome stuttering.
However, hospitals also require the skills of the speech language therapist. Hospital work covers a broad spectrum from managing babies, children or adults with swallowing disorders, to working with a baby with cleft palate or feeding difficulties, to stroke patients or head injury patients who may have an acquired communication disorder following injury, to people with throat cancer or disease within the voice box. In addition, a speech language therapist may work with older people coping with Dementia, Parkinson Disease or Alzheimers.
I have enjoyed my last four years of study and have an A+ average. As one of the mature students, I'm happy that I've had some life experience and can bring that with me into my learning and my future career. However, my results do not come without personal cost, dedication and a desire to do my very best. Most days I am up at 4am. At the beginning of each new semester I write down each assignment or exam deadline on my calendar. Then I schedule when I can complete each assignment or begin studying for each exam. For exams I begin studying as soon as I have the material. I read the texts, I make notes, I make flowcharts, mind maps, flash cards - anything that will help me to remember and commit information to memory. I regularly use mnemonics - that is, use abbreviations to help remember long lists of information. If I have a number of exams to study for then I allot an amount of time to each exam depending on the difficulty of the course - more time to more difficult material.
The best thing I have learnt is to concentrate on ONE THING AT A TIME. Trying to multi-task while writing assignments does not work for me. I work at one assignment over an intense period, complete it and then move onto the next assignment or exam preparation.
I work hard and I hope that I have demonstrated to my children that they can achieve anything they want to by perseverance and commitment. While the past few years have been something of an endurance test, many, many doors have opened and lots of new ideas have entered my life. I have worked as a research assistant for four of my lecturers and this year was offered the opportunity to complete an Honours paper which is only offered to selected students. I have taken up that challenge and have the privilege of working alongside a pre-eminent researcher of international renown in the field of motor speech disorders.
While I am nearing the end of this degree I am considering the possibility of continuing my study with a further two years towards a Masters of Audiology. I have a special interest in this discipline as the first basic building block of language and speech is hearing. As an audiologist I could work helping to identify newborns with hearing problems, assess and diagnose hearing difficulties in children and adults and provide guidance in selecting and fitting the best hearing technology for those problems. I am excited about this opportunity as I believe that the more skilled you are the more chance you have to make a worthwhile contribution to the community.
He iti rā, he iti māpihi pounamu is a whakataukī, a Maori proverb. It means 'small indeed, but made of greenstone'. For those of us who easily communicate, speech and language can be taken for granted. But for those that lose the ability or struggle to achieve it, it's a precious taonga, a precious treasure.
Small indeed, but made of greenstone. I want to be able to make a change in someone's life. While it may be a small thing in the bigger picture, I'd like to think that it would be a real and lasting contribution to their lives.
For those of you embarking on your journey or on it's pathway:
Whāia e koe i te kahurangi; Ki te tūohu koe, me he maunga teitei. Seek the treasure you value most dearly; if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.

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