Western News: May 12, 2022

Thursday May 12 2022 5
so easily’ ranger says
Teen bound for
maths Olympiad
CREATIVE: : Rate-Smith built this seat in collaboration with a local carver and weaver for
one of the parks, and made a fairy house in his spare time for the children’s fairy forest in
Bottle Lake Forest Park.
When he was tasked with
replacing picnic tables at The
Groynes, Rate-Smith said he
“wasn’t impressed” with the
cost so took it upon himself to
design his own tables and get
an engineer to build and install
them. This roughly halved the
cost of ordering tables in.
It’s things like this that
make Rate-Smith get up in
the morning feeling excited
to go to work, something he
feels incredibly fortunate to
experience.
While Rate-Smith loves his
job, he said there are some
aspects that he really struggles
with, particularly seeing people
damage the parks.
“We do all of this work and
there’s always an element to
society that seem to congregate
in parks that want to destroy
stuff,” he said.
“You put everything you can
into it and you do believe in what
you’re doing, and it might only
last a week before somebody’s
destroyed it.”
He said the rangers had seen
an increase in people doing
burn-outs at The Groynes,
ripping the paddocks to pieces,
and wondered if this was due to
frustrations with Covid.
This time of year tends to
be the quietest for the rangers
and they spend it planning and
planting as well as taking in new
volunteers to help out around
the parks.
Outside of work, Rate-Smith
enjoys pottering in his garage,
gardening and painting, and
is even learning how to tattoo,
using his legs as a drawing board
for his “doodles”.
One of his favourite parts of
the job is seeing changes such
as rare birds coming back to
an area or catching glimpses of
waterways improving through
the work the rangers do.
“We could well be leaving
something for people hundreds
of years from now,” he said.
“You can change things for
the better so easily; you get to do
something good everyday.”
• By Mick Jensen
BURNSIDE HIGH School
student Grady Kenix has been
selected as a member of the New
Zealand Mathematics Olympiad
team.
The 17-year-old is in his final
year at school and is one of just
six students selected, and the only
one outside of Auckland.
He will compete at the 63rd
International Mathematical Olympiad
in Norway in July, which
is expected to draw teams from
more than 100 countries.
Ironically, Grady elected to
drop maths after Year 11, but
has continued to have a strong
interest in the subject outside of
the formal classroom setting.
His interest in maths started at
primary school in Lyttelton, he
said.
“We had a really good teacher
called Jeremy and he was the one
who stirred up my interest and fascination
for the subject and started
the maths journey for me.’’
Grady’s quest to be part of
the New Zealand Mathematics
Olympiad team started over 10
months ago, alongside hundreds
of other hopefuls.
Over those months and after
many hours of tuition, training
camps and competitions, entry
numbers were steadily whittled
down to the final elite students.
Grady was given his selection
news recently and is modest
about his achievements.
“I’m happy to have been chosen
after a long selection process and
a lot of work, and I am looking
forward to testing my maths
skills against other students
from around the world,” he
said.
He receives $2000 towards the
costs of attending the olympiad
and will use earnings from his
waiter job at Lyttelton’s Nomnom
Kitchen to help fund the trip.
His travels will include a
stopover in his birth-land of
the USA, which he left at ninemonths-old
to come to New
Zealand.