Golden Bay High School Dux
GBHS Dux Rose Stocker
A thoroughly good mix of deserved acknowledgements, imparted wisdom, entertainment items, humorous banter and the odd expected barb about reduced funding characterised Golden Bay High School’s senior prizegiving on 11 November.
Guest Speaker Karen Savage, who retired as a GBHS teacher earlier this year after more than 40 years service (and directly influenced over 2,000 pupils), spoke of the benefits of a rural education. To illustrate the spirit of applied ingenuity, she used the example of ex-GBHS pupil Adam Turnbull, now an aeronautics machinist, who successfully “drove” across Cook Strait this September in his modified Toyota Town Ace van. Nikita Buys, Timo Stoffregen and Melissa Wells all showed their talents with separate musical items, while English teacher Jim Barnes got up to give a rousing and most humorous farewell to year 13 students.
Rose Stocker was announced as GBHS Dux for 2009. In his address, principal Roger File said the choosing of this year’s Dux had been taken several days of discussion with senior teachers because there were four students who had made the grade.
“In the end, we picked Rose because her all-round effort and achievements over a wide area of learning simply stood out.”
Seventeen-year-old Rose said afterwards that her 2009 year at GBHS was lots of hard work. She studied level 3 chemistry, biology and physics, along with statistics, English and PE, but also spent a fair amount of her out-of-school time looking after and riding her horse, which evened it out a bit for her. Next year she intends taking a gap year and will look for a job locally, although she will probably do several Massey University papers extramurally towards a five-year veterinary degree course, which she intends starting there in 2011.
Rose first attended Motupipi School before starting GBHS in year 9. It hasn’t all been school for her. In her years 7 and 8, her parents Richard Stocker and Patsy Garrett took her and younger brother Ross off in a yacht, sailing around the Pacific – first from Auckland to Tonga, then Fiji and Vanuatu before waiting out the hurricane season in Australia and coming back via New Caledonia.
“I loved it; sailing around was really enjoyable,” she recalls. This young, talented woman surely has more adventures to come.
Gerard Hindmarsh
