Rachael Marren
Student
Finance
Only a few months after finishing high school in Nelson, Rachael Marren was working at a high school in England.
Rachael, who is studying Finance and Accounting at the University of Otago, took a gap year before taking up study and worked as a tutor at a girls' boarding hostel in England. She says the experience gave her a sense of confidence and direction, which she brought back with her to Otago.
“I spent a lot of time helping out in a Maths department, and I really enjoyed that,” Rachael says, “so that helped me to realise the sort of area I wanted to move into. I didn't really know what I wanted to do at University, but it helped me put some perspective on that.”
A self-described “numbers girl”, Rachael returned to New Zealand with a desire to take her passion for mathematics and apply it to tangible, real-world situations. Finance and Accounting seemed to her to be obvious subject choices, and she describes the first year of her course in a word: “brilliant”.
She cites the wealth of subjects on offer and the ways in which they connect and inform one another as a particular strength of the Bachelor of Commerce degree.
“I really like the way that all your papers overlap, and you can increasingly see how each one is relevant to all the others,” she says.
Of course, there is more to life than numbers, and Rachael admits that the Otago lifestyle has also been a major highlight of her first year at University.
She has spent the year living at Arana College, a residential hostel, an experience she says provided her with security in her first year in a new city and the opportunity to meet interesting people and make new friends.
“Hostel life is awesome,” Rachael says. “There are 380 people living at the hostel and 28 living on my floor, so it's a great way to meet heaps of people your own age.”