Bailey | Māngere, Auckland

“At the end of last year, I graduated with my Bachelor of Communications degree at AUT and it was cool, because I’m only the second person in my family to graduate with a degree from university.

So, it was pretty cool not only for me, like it was a massive three-year achievement, but also for my family. Just seeing the smiles on their faces was definitely a proud moment for me.

No matter what you’re a part of, whether you’re working towards your dream, whether you’re at university doing a degree, maybe you’re looking for an awesome job promotion, it’s important to be proud of every single day that you live. I guess it’s important to be proud of who you are and where you’re from, just because that’s what makes you who you are, and each individual is special to their own unique selves.

I think the biggest thing I learned about myself is that I’m a lot more mentally strong than I think I am. Getting through the process of uni obviously isn’t easy, and that’s for anyone, no matter what you’re studying. I just think I learned a lot about myself, but also built a lot of character in learning how to build relationships with people. I have a degree in radio, so I learned a lot of radio and leadership skills, just like looking after a radio station. Hopefully it doesn’t go off-air, and that – all that sort of stuff. I just learned a lot about people, and how people interact with one another, really.

A bit about me, I grew up in Māngere, lived there pretty much all 21 years of my life. What’s important to me is my family. We did a lot of shifting around, moving from house to house throughout the 21 years of my life, and it was really important for us to stick together as a family and stay together as one. So, if anything, that’s important to me. It’s 100 per cent my family.”