Paving the way

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Bachelor of Building Science graduate Zoe So’otaga has overcome both mental and physical health challenges to get where she is today. The secret to her resilience? The people she’s doing it for.

13 October 2023

“I remember at one point I was so close to dropping out, but I realised that choice wouldn’t just affect me.

“I am the first in my family to go to university, and what kept me going is my drive to show them that we could do this, that university is for us too—and if not me, then who?”

Born in Tokelau, Zoe says she was one of the only Pasifika women in her class.

“As hard as that was, it screamed to me that I have to get through this—I have to do this—so that I can make others feel like they’re not alone when they do come to study.”

As the first one in her extended family to go to university, Zoe says there were a few teething problems.

“They used to think that if I was at home I was just sitting around and not doing anything, and I had to explain to them no, I’m studying. When you take four papers that require a minimum of ten hours each, it is a full time job.

“My brother’s started here this year though, and they understand it a bit more so there’s less pressure on him. It’s nice to have paved the way a little bit.”

However, study was never something that came easy to Zoe.

“I’m a very practical learner. I knew I was smart, but I’d have to go over and over things in college to really ‘get it’—and in uni, it’s harder to do that. It wasn’t really until I was able to start paying for a tutor that I started feeling like I was actually capable.”

It was just one more group of people to fight for—Zoe says she never wants anyone who learns differently to be discouraged.

“I want people like me to go to uni and challenge that system and prove that people who might seem dumb aren’t, they just learn in different ways.

“Some of my uncles who have been in the building industry will have so much more knowledge than me, but won’t be recognised for it because they don’t have a piece of paper.

“But they don’t want to pursue study because they don’t think it’s for them, or they feel like they’re outcast, similarly to how I did. They don’t have that confidence because of the stigma they grew up with being in the trades.”

By committing to her studies, Zoe felt like she could begin the battle against that stigma.

But, halfway through her degree, she was diagnosed with Chiari malformation with extensive syringomyelia—a condition where brain tissue extends into the spinal canal.

“It sounds a bit silly, but I was born with my brain being too large for my skull. It had clogged the hole in my skull that allows cerebral fluid to flow through my spine to my skull, causing a mass to build up in my spine, stretching my spinal cord, and damaging the nerves within it.”

She was urgently referred to neurosurgery, but the surgery itself had complications, leading to an excess of fluid around her brain.

“The pain was unbearable. I couldn’t cry or even breathe without being in pain. I vividly remember looking out the window of my bedroom from my bed thinking I couldn’t live with this.”

She underwent another neurosurgery which was successful, though the road to recovery was only just beginning. Zoe says she had to learn to walk again, her brain isn’t as quick as it once was, and some of the damage is permanent, meaning she has no sensation in her left leg. She says that while the return to study was difficult, the university community helped her through.

“All my lecturers were really supportive; Wallace Enegbuma and Guy Marriage were so helpful, and Nigel Isaacs is just the biggest advocate for anyone going through mental or physical health difficulties.”

Now, one year later, she’s finished—and Zoe says it’s finally her chance to give back to her community. She’s working for the Hutt City Council as a building officer, and her current community project is one that’s incredibly close to her heart: her community hall (Te Umiumiga).

“I’ve had so many memories in that hall. I’ve had three close family members’ funerals there, prayers, Easter, people’s birthdays, family reunions—I even help my nana with a language course she runs there.

“It’s essentially the only place in the Hutt Valley that the Tokelauan community can go to feel at home. And with climate change, and our island sinking, it’s so important that we have a space like this hall because we don’t know how much longer we’ll have a place to go to that we can call home.

“But these days, it’s extremely run down.”

She says along with the community building committee, she’s using her knowledge and connection in the building industry to find solutions to get it fixed in the short-term, to give the community time to raise enough money to replace it.

Through it all, Zoe says she never forgot who she was doing it for. But if she could give her past self one piece of advice, it would be to not shoulder it all alone.

“I know if current-me tried to tell me past-me to take it easy she still wouldn’t have listened—I’m stubborn like that.

“But we can never do this alone. I look at my family and what we’ve been through—and when we get through it, we do it together.

“I think the biggest thing—and it is so cliché—is to ask for help. Ask for help and allow yourself to receive that help, and then you can do what you set out to do.”

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