Tucker, Abigail Rose Interview

I’m going to interview Abigail Rose Tucker, who is the daughter of Stephen, and she’s know as Abby, is that correct? Thank you so much, Abby, for coming. So over to her to tell you a bit about herself.

I’m fifteen years old and I go to Havelock North High School. I have a part-time job at a restaurant named Deliciosa and I work there on the weekends.

And how many hours a week do you work there usually?

Usually around eight … start at six and then I work just ’til when it’s closing.

And are you preparing food, or you serving the customers, or both?

I help out with running the food, so I just take all the dishes out and serve the food to people.

And do you do the counter as well?

I haven’t been trained up to doing that yet, so I just take out the food. But I do know how to work the till and …

And what was the first thing you noted when Covid-19 hit us?

I remember being a bit disappointed that we couldn’t go to Beach Hop, but I can’t really remember when I first heard about Covid. I think it was just over social media and stuff like that.

And do you go on social media quite a bit?

Yeah, I usually just scroll through the social medias and message my friends and …

Do you take hockey as well? Or did you go to netball, or basketball?

No, I play hockey as well, field hockey.

And did you miss most of the season this year?

Yeah the hockey’s over the weekdays, so it didn’t clash or anything.

Do you have a mid-year dance in the middle of the term? Do you call it semester or term?

Term. No, in my year – so I’m in Year 11; we don’t have that, but in the older years, Year 12 and 13 they have a school ball; and I think that was affected and they had to postpone it. And then, because of how many people were going they couldn’t do it, so people just had parties instead of having the ball.

And what about doing your schoolwork online, how did you cope with that?

I quite enjoyed it, because when we went to France we did Correspondence, so it was quite the same. And I quite enjoyed being able to work on the stuff that I needed to work on and have more time on that, and then stuff that I was already ahead in I could just put that to the side; work on the things that I was a bit behind in.

And you’re doing two languages, is that so you can travel extensively?

Yeah, I’ve got big dreams of travelling to Europe and studying over there in Year 13, so I’m doing Spanish and French to catch up with that.

And what about Mandarin?

Not yet. [Chuckle]

And what about your friends when you couldn’t go and visit them – would you talk on the phone, or would you just message mostly?

A bit of both; we messaged quite a lot or would FaceTime; so we’d go on calls with all of us in a big group, and we’d just talk. Yeah.

For an hour or half-an-hour? Or two hours?

Sometimes it was like, all day that I was [chuckle] on the phone with friends, ’cause the friends that I have in my classes would FaceTime while also on the class conference; ’cause we couldn’t see each other through the platform that we were using, so we’d FaceTime while we were in the class as well, so that we could talk to each other about the work we were doing.

Hope you didn’t swap your essays or what-have-you by phone so that you had the same ones. [Chuckles]

No, we just helped each other out and just talked like we’d normally do in class, but it was just over the phone.

How long do you think it was that people [have] had cellphones?

Oh, I don’t know. I hear my grandparents saying about how they didn’t have …

[Speaking together] We did a lot of jigsaws – did you do jigsaws?

No, we didn’t really have any jigsaws, but we played a few board games.

And did you play cards at all?

I don’t think we did. We don’t really …

You don’t – you’re not a card-playing family?

No. No, we played the Logo board game, which … yeah.

Stephen: We were actually very, very busy.

Abby: Yeah.

Stephen: That, you know, with the schoolwork and our work, working from home, so …

Abby: Yeah.

Stephen: Where we thought we’d have all this free time, we actually didn’t have a lot of downtime.

Abby: Yeah, we spent a lot of time just catching up on schoolwork or going for a walk or something.

So how long each day would you’ve spent during the week? I take it you wouldn’t work in the weekend on your schoolwork, would you?

Oh, sometimes. So at my school they took out the last period. On Thursdays we normally just have Encompass, which … for each year it’s something different; so in my year we do mindfulness, so we do meditation and things like that. But it was too hard over the conferencing, so we took that out; so on Thursdays we’d have a big lunch break. And we have form time as well just before lunch which they didn’t do, ’cause that’s just catching up on notices. So it was a bit shorter, our school days, but we started at the same time and finished at the same time.

And did you and your sister and Alex all have independent computers, so that you could be all working at the same time?

Yeah, we all have our laptops which we use for school … that we take to school; and I’d sit in my room at my desk and work there and the others would be at the dining room table.

What subjects were you doing?

I was doing Food and Nutrition, Spanish, French, Maths, Science and English.

What about Science … would you’ve used the computer more for that sort of thing than you would’ve normally?

Yeah probably, because I couldn’t really ask, so I’d just search it up, or I’d just send them a message.

And you’d have to submit your work each day or at the end of each week?

Well if they set a task, we’d work on it and then when it was finished we’d just submit it online. They just make tasks on platform Schoology; so they set up tasks and then we do it on like, a document and then we just submit it; and then it gets sent to them.

Would the teachers send back your results?

Yep. They’d mark it and give us feedback.

This is very like Correspondence School stuff?

Yeah. Yeah, I do French over Correspondence because we don’t have a French teacher at school, so yeah, it’s the same as that.

And how do you think you’ll get on with your first NCEA? [National Certificate of Educational Achievement]

I’m not sure; we’ve just had benchmarks and they went all right; I did pretty well in those.

When you say pretty well, how do you mean?

I got a few Merits, a few Achieves, and I got Excellence in Spanish.

Very good …

Yeah.

Absolutely. So now we’re back in Level 1, when you go out are you using your cellphone to go into a shop?

Yeah, I sign in whenever I go somewhere with my phone and scan the code.

You’re back at school now, so do you have to sign in every day when you get there?

No, we just … it’s just like normal at school, we don’t sign in.

And if you wanted to meet up with somebody now, would you still go out or would you be more inclined to invite them to come home?

I think we still go out; we just kind of sit at a park or …

Would you be doing that in the weekend?

It just kind of depends if I’m doing something; but if I hang out with my friends we usually go out but sometimes we do go to like, each others’ houses, and do stuff like that, yeah.

And what about the Blossom Parade; are you going to that?

I’m not sure, we haven’t really gone to it before. I went last year, I think, with a friend, but yeah, we haven’t really been to it. [Chuckles]

Stephen: There’s so much to do in Hawke’s Bay, that’s the thing.

There is a lot. And did you go and see that dinosaur tent over in Napier on the Marine Parade?

Abby: Napier … no, Dad and I drove past it just the other day and I thought it was the circus, but then we saw the big dinosaur; looked quite interesting.

It was, but do you know how much it cost? $30. [Chuckle] Ridiculous! [Chuckles]

When Nan first said to you I wanted an interview with you, as a teenager, what did you think?

Oh, I just … didn’t mind, I just wasn’t really sure what I’d talk about though, yeah.

Covid could hit you at any time; has it affected your thinking of what you might do in the next two or three years?

I guess a little bit. But what I want to do in a few years – I’m not really thinking about it too much now – but, yeah, I didn’t really … Over lockdown everyone else, like, in my family would watch the news and stuff, but I was just like, well it was just happening, so I didn’t really pay much attention.

What do some of your friends think about it?

We haven’t really talked about like … it; but I think it’s just …

Not even the hockey team?

Oh … yeah, I think they were a bit affected by it, ’cause we couldn’t start as early and …

And the life-saving?

That’s what Jess does.

Anyway, in twenty years time you’ll be thirty-five, you’ll probably have a family – do you think it’s a good idea that we’re recording this now for them?

Yeah, I actually think about that sometimes, like … if the technology’s changed so much, what it will be like in twenty years ’cause you never really know. Might be quite different.

And are you on the side of having an injection? [Vaccination] Like, we had TB injections when I was your age …

Don’t even know what that is.

TB was tuberculosis; it kills you if you’ve got it in your lungs.

Oh yeah.

A disease of the lungs. So would you be happy to have an injection, at fifteen?

Yeah, maybe, if like … not really sure. Yeah. I guess if Covid gets worse and it helps it, maybe, but …

And I should have asked you too, Stephen – inoculation against getting Covid-19. Would you be happy to have it?

Stephen: Yeah … it’s an interesting one, because I’ve done quite a bit of research on vaccinations and things over the years, and, you know, there are some vaccinations that the girls haven’t had which are more recent ones, which, you know, we question the need for it. As far as Covid, I would probably have a Covid vaccination just purely because it is so prevalent in society and it’s a real concern. And I think, too, with what New Zealand has done as far as locking the borders down, we are going to be so reliant on a vaccine. We’ve missed the opportunity [speaking together] for any form of herd immunity, and think our only hope is vaccination.

Anything you’re planning for the rest of the year, notwithstanding Covid is still around us?

I don’t really have any plans. I think just over summer spending time with friends once study’s over, and working a few more hours and getting some more money for future plans of travelling and things like that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You’ve done pretty well.