Re-O Week took out many of its strongest soldiers, with this winter’s flu and its variations flourishing. Our email inboxes are flooded with health communications from wardens. Self-isolating in rooms is back, with hand sanitiser stands stationed all around the hall. In lectures, sniffing and coughing once again overpower the lecturer’s voice — that horrible, aggravating cough that makes everyone around wince in sympathy. But steadily, the stack of sick meals in the wharekai is disappearing, and the number of students bustling around campus is increasing. Coughing fits heard through the walls are slowly fading; my background music no longer. And somehow, amidst all this chaos of sickness and sleeping and Subs, we have fallen back into routine, without our knowledge of how or when. It seems that over just two weeks is all we need to forget our holiday and throw ourselves back into the endless cycle of readings, labs, notes and study. The echoes of our last time on campus in our minds: that final exam we trudged through, eye on the time, pen in aching hand, itching to just be finished. Now, we know where our lectures are taking us. We know what the end goal is. Semester Two is all about doing things better though, and this recent bout of illness has meant that health has never been more on the forefront of my mind. I’m reminded of a concept from long ago. We all learnt about hauora in high school, but it hasn’t been until now that I have fully recognised its significance. Hauora, and its necessity for a balance, is something I’ve been considering a lot these past weeks. We all know about the four walls holding up our whare: taha tinana, taha hinengaro, taha whānau, taha wairua; physical, mental, family, spiritual. It enables us to visualise how health and well-being appear in so many different aspects. Otago provides a unique range of facilities which we are able to access, both within halls and outside of them. Student Health is currently overrun with the flu, but its mental health side is not given enough credit. The care and attentiveness that is received is nothing short of stellar. Unipol waits at the edge of campus, for whenever a gym is needed. Libraries, warmth radiating from the moment the doors slide open. At the centre of all these facilities are the people. Those who run these resources, those who use them. It’s a topic I keep returning to, which I think is testament to just how often it is proven to me day-to-day. Just this past weekend, my friend went with the ski club to Treble Cone, one of the many trips they hold throughout winter. Exhaustion was apparent, but she made it to lectures to tell me all about what she got up to — encouraging me even to tag along on the next one. You can go not knowing anyone, she said, and come out on the other side with so many new friends. As I’m writing, I can hear those outside on the street, in the flats across the street. The music is pounding. Over the intermittent yelling, I can hear laughing and singing. I can hear happiness. I am witness to someone’s joy, and that feels intimately special. Otago has provided me with people and the space to solidify the four walls of my whare. My friends, my kaiāwhina, my tutors. My room, my spot in the library, the balcony where I might write, or read. Here are the components of hauora presented so simply, you only need to reach out. Eleanor Wong is a Dunedin, first-year, University of Otago student. She writes the Between Lectures column for the ODT.
