Video Transcription
Carving your path: Anisha talks about pressure and motivation
I can’t be the first person to make it to uni and then be the first person to drop out as well. That’s so embarrassing.
My name’s Nisha Damaso. My mobs are Lakia Yanu and Malak Malak, which are all around the top end of the Northern Territory.
I was a bit of an outsider, I guess. Everyone else was kind of just cruising along, and I was stressing the whole time. I definitely carry that pressure with me every day. I feel it every time something gets a little bit hard and I want to quit. It’s probably both pressure and motivation, and I remind myself that it’s not just me that I’m doing this for.
You know, Mom and Dad, family—they’re all very proud of me. I don’t want to let them down. But they’re also so chill in the same sense, where they’re like, “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. If it gets too hard, you can always come home.” They just want me to be happy, pretty much.
And I guess the pressure is almost something I put on myself. My mom and dad and my family were all around me to support me when it came to feeling anxious and scared. But when it came to the actual academic side of things, I think that’s where a lot of the pressure came from.
My mum and dad didn’t know what was going on with my assignments. I think I’m the first person to make it even to Year 12. Year 10 is, I think, as far as either of my parents made it. They couldn’t really help me, I guess, ’cause they didn’t know.
They tried their best. My dad would always be making a cuppa for me and sitting watching TV, staying up late even though he had work in the morning.
I didn’t really get to see anyone do the whole “move away and go to uni” thing, so I think now that I’m doing it, it’s going to make it just a little bit easier for my nephews, my niece, my little cousins—everyone at home. They can see that it is actually achievable.
It’s not that big and scary because I did it. And seeing someone that you know or someone that looks like you do something makes it so much easier, ’cause you’re like, “Oh, I can do that.”
[Music]
