From working as a security guard to becoming a university scholar and now giving back to his community; James Cherrington is living proof that no dream is too big.
At 47, Cherrington decided he wanted to study but that didn’t simply mean hitting the books.
Instead, he was working gruelling overnight shifts as a security guard to help support his young family while learning the basics of tertiary life, such as how to use Microsoft Word.
Cherrington told Breakfast on Thursday morning his journey began after his lifestyle at the time started to affect him outside the workplace.
“I’d worked for security for a number of years and done every job there was,” Cherrington said.
“I’d gone from $13.50 an hour to $18.60 an hour, I was working six 12-hour night shifts just to pay our mortgage and make things get by but I wasn’t being part of my children’s life or my wife’s life.”
In fact, it was Cherrington’s wife that help him on his new path.
“My wife said, ‘hey, you’re not happy, we’ve got a university on our back doorstep so why don’t you go up there and see what you can do?’
“That got me thinking about what I was good at and I was good at engaging with people; I thought maybe I could do social work as I’d observed a lot of social workers in my time as a security guard.
“Every time things escalated, they’d call me in to calm things down and I thought, ‘I know why the whānau is getting hōhā [annoyed] with you so maybe I can do a better job than that.”
Cherrington enrolled at Massey University where he has since graduated with a Bachelor of Social Work degree with first class honours. He graduated again this year with his Masters of Social Work also with first class honours.
Cherrington said the accolades and degrees aren’t just his though.
“When your whānau are making sacrifices for you to study – my kids were missing out on things like hockey reps because we couldn’t afford it – you study harder because you want to achieve so they’re proud of you and the sacrifices they’re making,” he said.
“And we had this old beat-up laptop at home so I used to write out all my assignments on paper and my wife would type them up for me because she knew how to type.
“She’d put them on a memory stick and I’d take them up to the library because we didn’t have internet at home at the time and I’d upload them there.”
Cherrington is now working on his PhD while mentoring other Māori and Pasifika students and working as a kaiwhakaaraara with Whānau Ora.
“Kaiwhakaaraara doesn’t mean Whānau Ora navigator – it means person doing awakening,” he said.
“I was passionate about what was different about what we do in our space and I came up with an analogy a couple of months ago about what a kaiwhakaaraara does.
“We’re not the ambulance waiting at the bottom of the cliff, we’re the manu [bird] that fly from the top of the cliff and our wings are te korowai o te ao Māori, the protective cloak of a Māori world, and the thermals that keep us flying are the dreams and aspirations of whānau so that’s what I wrote about in my Masters thesis.
“Now in my PhD, I want to write about what whānau’s experiences are of walking alongside of a kaiwhakaaraara… I’ve read a lot of literature about it but I want to go out and hear these stories.”
For anyone looking to start their own academic journey, regardless of age or other stereotypes, Cherrington had two simple pieces of advice.
“Don’t focus on the barriers, don’t say ‘I’d love to but…’ because you’ll never get off the couch,” he said.
“Focus on your dream and what excites you. Share that dream with your partner and whānau.
“Yes it will be hard to take a new pathway but when your whānau is on board you and share that dream with you, you find ways to get through the barriers.
“If a security guard can go up to Massey and crack it, anyone can.”
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