“Being the first in my family to go to university, I had a lot to learn,” writes Sarah McLean-Orsborn. (Photo supplied)
Pacific Studies lecturer Sarah McLean-Orsborn never planned to go to university. No one in her immediate family had even finished high school, let alone attempted tertiary study. Luckily, her Sāmoan mum had other ideas.
As the first semester of the university year begins, Sarah reflects on her academic journey — and offers some advice for those who are just starting out on theirs.
My grandparents, Koko and Flory Wong-Tung, migrated from Sāmoa to Tāmaki Makaurau in 1962, when my mother was four. They chose to assimilate, which meant they spoke only English to my mum. It wasn’t long before Mum began to lose her language: she could understand Sāmoan but no longer speak it.
Even after their grandchildren arrived in the 1990s, my grandparents still believed English was more important. I remember my nan playing a game with me, where I was a newsreader. I had to read the news aloud, and Nan would correct my pronunciation.
It was my Pālagi father who wanted my sister and me to be connected to our Sāmoan culture — and it was mainly at his urging that our family moved to Sāmoa in 2000, when I was seven.
Mum had her doubts. She told me later that she cried on my first day of primary school in Apia because she was so worried that the decision to move back to Sāmoa would be bad for my education.
My primary school days at Robert Louis Stevenson School flew by. There were definitely moments that make me laugh now, moments that wouldn’t have happened at a school in Aotearoa. Like the time in Year 7 when my biology partner was meant to provide a fish for dissection, and her parents dropped off a whole fish — battered and fried.
Sarah’s Year 6 class at Robert Louis Stevenson School in Apia. (Photo supplied)
When it came time for me to go to high school, my parents had mixed feelings again. They wanted to push me, so when they heard from the parents of one of my kindergarten friends that their daughter’s school might have openings, it set off a series of events that led me to become a boarder at Diocesan School for Girls, a private school in Auckland, in 2007.
I was nervous about leaving Sāmoa, but I settled in quickly, finding the novelty of having a laptop for school, instead of a once-a-week visit to the computer lab, pretty neat. I made friends, and there was even another student from my school in Sāmoa in my year.
But despite being in an academically driven school, I didn’t see myself going to university. I didn’t see the point as neither of my parents had gone to university, and yet they were successful. They owned and operated a motel in Mulifanua, and Dad ran an electrical contracting business. They worked hard, and to me, that’s what mattered most.
So, in my final year of high school in 2011, I planned to find a job, save money for travel, and go back home to take over the motel.
But Mum had other ideas. She told me I had to apply for university, and reminded me of how much she and Dad had sacrificed to send my sister and me to boarding school. She said we had to go further than she and my father had.
I applied to both Victoria University and the University of Auckland, and I got into Auckland. I decided to do a BA majoring in criminology and Pacific Studies. Criminology seemed like a pathway to psychology or even the police force. And I chose Pacific Studies because I went to an open day lecture by Steven Ratuva (now Distinguished Professor Steven Ratuva), and it made me realise how little I knew about the Pacific.
I went on to do my master’s and PhD in Pacific Studies, so that lecture turned out to be very influential.
Sarah Mclean-Orsborn (centre) at her PhD graduation in 2024 with (from left) her father Dave McLean, sister Rebecca, and husband Nick. (Photo supplied)
First-year rookie mistakes
I know some parents worry when their children choose degrees without a direct pathway to a job, but I was fortunate that my parents let me make my own choices (and my own mistakes, too!).
Being the first in my family to go to university, I had a lot to learn.
For instance, I learned the hard way that you should check your degree requirements early and enrol as soon as possible, because courses fill up quickly.
I enrolled the week before orientation, two weeks before the semester officially started, because I’d been in Sāmoa until then, with unreliable internet. I remember being in an internet café in Royal Oak, trying to enrol and receiving “class closed” alerts. I called the University of Auckland helpline in a panic because I needed four papers, and I only had three, and all the arts papers I tried kept clashing. What was I meant to take?
The person on the other end looked at what was available and enrolled me into a population health paper, and boy, that was a mistake. Not only was it a different campus, which meant taking a shuttle bus from the city campus to the East Tāmaki campus, but I was the only student in the course who wasn’t doing a Bachelor of Health Sciences.
I didn’t know that you could swap and drop courses within the first two weeks of the semester, and that I should’ve been checking the enrolment system repeatedly to change courses when an arts paper became available. Instead, I stayed in this paper. And I failed.
It sucked that in my first semester, I had a blemish on my transcript, but my other passing grades reminded me that I was on the right track.
And I learned an important lesson. From then on, I only chose papers that I was interested in. A three- or four-year degree is hard enough without battling your own lack of interest.
As I discovered, the first semester is a great opportunity to explore. Along with the required courses for your major, you can take electives that interest you, and sometimes these subjects can lead you to a major that better suits you. In my first year, I tried sociology and politics. They weren’t for me, but I made some great friends in those classes.
Ultimately, that fail grade didn’t stop me from going on to postgraduate studies or completing a PhD with a doctoral scholarship.
And that’s the other lesson I learned in that first year: If you fail a paper, it’s not the end of the world.
University isn’t only about earning a degree. It also offers lifelong friendships, professional opportunities, and the personal growth that comes from filling your brain with knowledge. For me, it’s been about discovering who I am and finding the spaces where I belong.
That’s not to say there aren’t challenges. Experiences of racism are all too common for Pacific and Māori students, and as a Pacific student, I sometimes felt the sting of casual or overt racism. But being involved in I, Too, Am Auckland showed me that there is power in naming these experiences — and in finding a community to help you navigate your way through and resist, while also educating others.
University can be a daunting and isolating place, but you don’t have to suffer alone.
In my experience, lecturers, teaching assistants, and university staff genuinely want to see you succeed — and many will go out of their way to support you if you’re struggling, or feeling overwhelmed or unsure. Often, a simple email or a visit during office hours can make all the difference.
Sarah at her first graduation in 2014, with her parents, Eunice and Dave McLean. (Photo supplied)
I completed my BA in 2014, and then went on to do a BA (Honours) in criminology, thinking it would make me more competitive in the job market. But that year opened my eyes even more to the inequities Pacific peoples face, particularly in mental health distress and addiction.
Disheartened by the imprisonment statistics for Pacific people, I wondered what I could do to make a difference, and considered doing a master’s in criminology. But with the guidance of a lecturer I trusted, Jemaima Tiatia-Siau (who’s now a professor), I returned to Pacific Studies, where I completed my master’s and then my PhD.
I’m now a permanent lecturer in Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland. It feels like I’ve come full circle to have started my tertiary journey in Pacific Studies and now be a lecturer in the very department that supported it.
It’s a full circle in another sense, too. Through my education, I’ve been able to honour and affirm my Sāmoan heritage in spaces where my grandparents feared that being seen as Sāmoan would only hinder me.
I wish my grandparents could have been here to see that.
Dr Sarah McLean-Orsborn is a proud tamaita’i S**āmoa. She hails from the villages of Tapatapao, Moamoa, and Papa Satau but continues to call Mulifanua home. Sarah is a lecturer in Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland, where her research focuses on improving the health and wellbeing of Pacific youth and women.
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