E pehea ana koe? How are you?
This isn’t some surface how are you, but a genuine question of how you’re coping at the moment. And in all honesty, I really do want to know. As people, we sometimes find it hard to communicate exactly what it is we’re feeling and how those feelings relate to the world around us – but why is this? Without making this editorial turn into a kōrero all about mental health, I will talk about some sort of understanding of burnout.
Usually about this time in the trimester, you start feeling a little bit low, or like you’re running out of gasoline, just struggling to move towards the next stop so you can fill yourself up. And that’s totally normal, it’s completely natural that you don’t want to continue and that you feel like it’s just a burden more than something that’s going to further your future and benefit you. But trust me when I say this, the service station is around the corner.
In the past few weeks, I’ve found myself worrying about the idea of ‘stale content.’ And when I say stale content, I’m referring to the next magazine itself and whether or not the content is exactly what you as a reader are looking for. This has been this internal conflict regarding the columns and if they’re intriguing to you as a consumer of this media, if this is anything close to what you want to absorb as you move aimlessly through the world. But you wanna know something interesting? I’m not even close to coming up with an answer to that question. Previous editors often looked to make the magazine the best version of itself that it could be, but we rarely ever achieve that ultimate goal of success and gratification from a ‘perfect magazine.’
And this is a great analogy for you as a student and you as a person.
Am I implying that you will never be the best version of you? Not at all. There is an ideal version of what a successful person looks like in your mind, but this is something completely unattainable. There’s no penultimate version of what success is with you, and there’s no limit to how much you can achieve. At the risk of sounding like a Ted talk, success is subjective and it’s up to you to understand where that limit exists. Lol I definitely have the habit of beginning to sound like some random motivational speaker that you get told to go to by a level 200 philosophy lecturer, soz about that.
I’m not your psychologist, nor am I someone that you should be taking mental health advice from, but if I was to offer any sort of resounding support in your journey as tauira, don’t take it too seriously. Ultimately the mahi that you do here is only a small reflection of who you’ll become later in life. You make your own future, don’t let anyone else dictate your path.
He kai kei aku ringa. Mauri Ora
