Tauranga students win Prime Minister's Scholarships

Samantha Aholima has won a Prime Minister's Scholarship to go to university in Japan for a year. Photo / Supplied

Samantha Aholima has a thing about languages. At 14, she began to teach herself Japanese after her mother refused to let her learn at school.

"I was so eager to learn ... so I decided to study it myself."

She said teaching herself was a slow process because she wasn't sure how to at first, but by 2016, after two years of learning, she'd got the hang of it.

All the pain of teaching herself paid off last week after the Auckland University of Technology student was announced as one of six students from the Tauranga area to win a Prime Minister's Scholarship for Asia.

Aholima is going to Japan in March next year to embark on a two-semester exchange at Kanda University in Chiba Prefecture.

The private university is known as a place for those who want to study languages, she said.

"It's one of the top universities in Japan for people learning languages and taking global and international studies."

Aholima, who is going into her second year of university, currently majors in Japanese Studies as part of a Bachelor of Arts and is planning to minor in Spanish.

To enter for a Prime Minister's Scholarship, Aholima had to go through a rigorous entry process.

It included applying to a university, writing an essay, and creating a video, where they spoke about where they wanted to study, how long for, and what they wanted to do with the scholarship.

"This was the most challenging for me ... You can't just think about yourself with scholarships, you have to think about who's actually going to benefit from the scholarship other than you," she said.

Aholima said the most daunting part was having to apply for both the scholarship and the university, without knowing if either of them were confirmed - so she had to act as if it was a given that she would win when she applied.

Because Japanese universities have different semester dates to New Zealand universities, it was a few months before she found out she had been accepted - and, crucially, won the scholarship.

"It was really stressful waiting to hear back from them because without the scholarship I wouldn't be able to go on the exchange next year," she said.

"I was so happy when I found out ... I got the email and just started screaming."

Aholima said she was most looking forward to immersing herself in the Japanese lifestyle.

"I've been to Japan twice already, but most of the time it was tourism things ... I really want to cement myself in Japan," she said.

She is also looking forward to the Tokyo Olympics next year.

When she graduates, Aholima is planning to return to Japan to teach English, as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme.

Then, she's thinking of going back to university.

"There's still more that I want to learn ... next up is French, after Japanese and Spanish, and then Korean," she said.

"I'm very ambitious with my languages, it's the number one thing I know I want to do with my life."

The other winners of the Prime Minister's Scholarships for Asia from Tauranga are Daniel Cossey (University of Waikato), Darroch Day (Victoria University of Wellington), Victoria Keiller (Victoria), Ellen Lellman (Victoria) and Kerran Saville (University of Auckland).

Sylvia Song, of Rotorua, also won a scholarship.