Former Te Puke High School student Hannah Petuha now editing university magazine

Former Te Puke High School student Hannah Petuha is the editor of Nexus - the Waikato University student magazine.

In the latest in our series of articles about former Te Puke High School students, Stuart Whitaker caught up with Hannah Petuha who is studying at Waikato University while also holding down the role of editor of the university's student magazine, Nexus.

It was only a year and a half ago, but life has changed dramatically for Hannah Petuha since she left Te Puke High School.

As well as studying fulltime at Waikato University, she is also spending up to 30 hours a week as editor of Nexus, the uni's student magazine.

Usually it is a role filled by someone older who has already graduated - but at 19 Hannah thinks she may well be the youngest university magazine editor in the country.

''It is challenging because not many students, or any students that I know, do quite a high pressure job like this while studying.''

While writing for a living might - or might not - be the career path Hannah eventually chooses, she began as a way of coping when her family first moved to Te Puke and she first attended Te Puke Intermediate School in Year 8.

''It was a very different environment because everyone around me had lived in the same town for however long and however many generations, so I actually felt a little bit out of place.

''I think part of that is the reason I started writing because I felt different and it was a way to release all that, to feel grounded in a place I found difficult to get used to.''

While she kept writing at high school, where her mum Nicole is a teacher, she also found that the arts offered a similar release.

''I think with my mum teaching at high school I was able to form a community with quite a few of the teachers who I really looked up to, particularly in the art department, and they really shaped me and influenced me I think, quite a bit, into who I am today - they were really inspiring and encouraging.''

Hannah threw herself into school productions.

''The final year I had one of the lead roles - which was really, really fun. It's going back to that release and expression.''

Other subjects - especially sciences - were ''not up my alley at all''.

She also continued writing but, apart from in English classes, it was for herself rather than her studies.

''I can get overwhelmed quite easily, so I never really went for the top in subjects because I felt I didn't really need to, and I wasn't really motivated to get an award for [writing], it was just something I like to do.

''It was really intrinsic - and I use it sparingly. I'll do a couple of sentences and then leave it and go back to it and change the sentences.''

At the end of her schooling, Hannah was awarded the $5000 Waikato University Manaakitangata Scholarship and early in 2020 she headed off to study psychology.

This year her focus has changed, as has her course, and she is now studying political science. The change was a direct result of her involvement in Nexus.

''I thought psychology was going to be a lot different than what it led on to be,'' she says.

''It was the study of the brain and behaviour and cognition, which I think is really
interesting, but it took a very scientific approach which is not me.''

She was interviewing a university law professor for a Nexus article.

''He studies extremist ideology and he recommended that I should take up political science just because of the questions I was asking and what I was passionate about aligned more with political science.''

Hannah was already considering a change.

''So that was just confirmation to me that I should look at other options.

''It's easy to cross credit and you don' t have to start at the bottom again, you can pick up where everybody else is, which I think is good and you don't feel like you are going to be stuck here forever.''

Hannah has no firm plans for her career after university.

''I think, obviously, something to do with writing. I've never thought I was the best at it, but it's something I've just liked to do but, in terms of political science, if you put two and two together, some type of political news writing or maybe international relations overseas - I'm really not sure.''

It was during semester 2 last year that Hannah first became aware of Nexus.

''I flicked through it and there was an advertisement if you just wanted to write for the magazine.

''The first year is quite relaxed for students and I had a lot of free time and I didn't know what to do with that free time so I just emailed them and said I would like to write - I said I'm not too experienced but I'd like to anyway.

''I think as a student magazine you kind of take those writers in and develop them. It's informal, it's not a New Zealand Herald-type newspaper, so I started writing and I think I'd only written about three articles and my now boss offered me the position [of editor].''

With a heavier workload in her second year, she now writes an editorial and one article a week, assigning others to the volunteer writers.

''It's a hard balance. I'm here to study first, so I've only really now taken a step back to say 'I need to do my study and my assignments'.

''The more I think about it, the more I realise it's quite a big job. It is a really rewarding job and may create opportunities in the future, but I almost miss being a normal student, being able to wake up rested in the morning and go to library and soak in that atmosphere.''