Kiwi Kids Are Rocking It (Rocking It)

It’s been a wild ride, but we’ve finally made it to Issue 24: our final issue as editors. In this issue, we’re reminiscing on our childhoods, teens, and our years at Salient. It’s time to soak in the sappiest soppiest of nostalgia. 

We all seem to be going back in time and searching for the things that gave us childhood comfort. We’re building our dream homes, and making them up to the Healthy Homes Standards, in The Sims. Bella is blasting K-pop in the office as we write this and we can’t stop krumping. The other week, Maia played Penguin Diner on FRIV games for an hour. Fran is getting cosy in bed and rewatching old 2014 Vidcon colab vlogs on YouTube.  

It’s safe to say this time of transition has got regression looking all types of crazy, sexy cool. 

Slightly blurry selfies taken on an iPhone 4 are looking fresh as hell. We’re doing Jump Jam dances to Sticky Fingers, recreating our Smokefree Rockquest days. All these chats about our first pink Nokia bricks and watching What Now on Sundays and then seeing Tāmati Coffey as a Labour candidate at the VUWSA Climate Debate has got us feeling old. But, who cares? At least we’re not 30 yet. We still have a little bit of time left to figure out our lives, so for now we’ll be putting on our jelly sandals and Silly Bandz like it’s time for the school disco, and cuing up the classic 00’s Barbie movies for the sleepover party. Get your glow sticks ready girlies!! 

Being a kid was wrought with super bright primary colours, terrible dancing, and the earliest of Apple iPod technology. In Primary, wearing a sunhat in the wooden, splinter-filled playground was mandatory—no hat and you’re in the shade babes. We all popped off to bangers such as ‘Kiwi Kids are Rocking It’ in assembly and Glee covers in school singing. Silly Bandz, Smiggle, and Pokémon cards had to be banned in our intermediate schools because it just got too much. In high school, we all prepared for our first time, jobs, and experiences with drugs and alcohol. Fran once prepped for her first proper hospo job at Noah’s Ark by playing Papa’s Freezeria, and it low-key helped. Maia prepped for being a writer in early teens by reading Wattpad and playing Episode. (Bella, Maia, and Fran were all Wattpad authors. Bella was actually ridiculously successful at 50k reads on a 5SOS fic.) Being nostalgic in Aotearoa is like no other, a little isolated from the world as we are. 

While we love looking back in time, it’s safe to say that Salient is not the publication it was in the 2000s, and we love the way it’s grown. This year’s Salient has been a time. From making noise about law school lecture recording in the first issue, to reviewing sex toys, to having a bit of a boygenius stan era, to the departmental-gutting staff cuts that have changed this university, and students’ experience of it, forever—not to mention an election among it all. We’re so grateful to everyone who has read these editorials, stuck a centrefold up on their wall (breaking their flat’s rules about blu tac in the process), and told us the crossword had a mistake (xoxo). Thanks for staying with us until Issue 24. 

In this issue, the Salient News Team breaks campus news for the last time in 2023. Ethan reveals the university decision makers behind the call to tear down Students Against Cuts posters on open day. We report on the politicians braving Study Wage for All protestors to vote on campus. There’s an update on the mysterious disappearance of a condom dispenser from the bathrooms of level 1, Student Union. And for the freshers currently struggling to find flats in Wellington’s cut-throat rental market, we’ve got some tips for surviving the rat race. 

We’ve got two pages for the final of Groove Garden, complete with a release calendar to keep your summer soundtracks stocked. Phoebe admits to her biggest secret: her Minecraft YouTuber past. Fran is having a quarter-life crisis and considering time-travelling back to the 2010s in search of nostalgic comfort. Kiran takes us back to 2016 for some first-year nostalgia, and reflects on how the first-year experience is different in 2023. Barbara explores the iconic 2014 Tumblr smash hit that was Alexa Chung’s It. And Pippi pulls through with fake blood recipes to make your Halloween terrifying. 

(BTW, if you were worried after last week, Fran is not actually bald.)

Enjoy the final issue of 2023, and don’t be so nostalgic that you forgot to live in the moment. In 10 years, we’ll all be reminiscing on our uni days gone by. We’ve vowed to have a reunion in 10 years, take shrooms, and relive it all, chaos and crack ups included. 

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

Maia and Fran