Christmas has come early for you lot, because I’m pleased to announce on behalf of the Critic Te Ārohi team that the mag will shift to printing 32-pages per week, effective semester 2. The decision has been made alongside OUSA. Shifting to 32 pages gives us a net gain of 12 pages per fortnight, compared to the previous 36/16 page structure with Critic Lite*.
The Critic team would once again like to thank the community for the continued support of Critic over the past month. The passion and love many people hold for Critic prompted proactive conversations with OUSA that have resulted in a new print structure. Critic Lite* was something we were trialling in the face of immediate financial pressure, but student feedback has made it clear that Lite* didn’t encapsulate what students, alumni, and the wider community wanted from Critic as an OUSA student service.
We believe this new 32-weekly print is the best balance between what everyone has expressed for Critic, and the most cost effective solution quoted to us. Critic Lite* will have just 2 more issues. I think I will miss the little Lite* badge on each cover the most. We’ll hopefully have a proper flash-looking statement posted up on the ‘gram by the time you’re reading this.
Anyways – a bit about my take on hustle culture. Late in office last Wednesday, I was talking to Ash, the designer for this edition of the mag. Now, if there’s one thing that Ash is, it’s a hustler. He was telling me that he went to the Polytech the other day to give a presentation to a bunch of design students, and they got to talking about burnout.
I think that especially in creative settings, the line between being a hustler versus burning yourself out is pretty thin, or even just straight up transparent. The issue is that in order to achieve and excel in creative spaces, you do need to hustle – especially when you’re young and establishing yourself. Personally, I believe that creativity and hustling go hand-in-hand. But on top of that, the entire creative industry survives off of creative people going above and beyond to achieve their ambitions. That holds even if these creatives are not being adequately compensated for the work that they do, or don’t physically have enough hours in the day to do it. Despite this, they keep it moving, staying hungry for more. I really admire that about creatives, and the brilliance that comes from the hustle.
I think my hot take is that I strongly believe in hustle culture. While I do not encourage anyone to fully burn themselves out or make themselves purposefully miserable, I do think that this is a period in your life where you can afford to go pretty much all in on the things that make you creatively hungry. There’s still a safety net around you while you’re young and at uni, so take advantage of it. This is one of the few chances in life you can take risks, put yourself out there and still have a community - now’s the best time to froth the hustle.
Get out there and hustle. Join Critic Te Ārohi, for example. Create with us. Pitch your ideas and what makes you hungry. After all, a closed mouth doesn’t get fed.
