Māia's journey from expelled to thriving

It’s been 10 years since Māia Goldsmith was expelled for the second time from Nayland College.

Now at 24, she’s just months away from graduating with her second university degree.

On Saturday night, Māia shared her story to a room of strangers at Nelson City Council’s Young and Inspired Events at the Suter Theatre.

Māia knows that her story was unlike those of her fellow seven speakers.

“I don’t come from the same side of the tracks as the others," she says. “I grew up in women’s refuge, women’s protection, and youth justice. I was almost sent to juvie. It took a lot to turn that around."

Now Māia is ready to share her journey and is determined to change the system for the next generation of at-risk youth.

It hasn’t been easy for Māia to get to where she is today. Māia had to grow up fast, surviving a traumatic childhood as a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault and poverty at a young age.

At just 15, Māia moved out of home in Nelson and headed to Christchurch after being expelled twice from Nayland College. She says no education programme in Nelson was willing to take her in.

“As a child, I felt labelled, betrayed, and rejected by the system. I figured out you can’t do s**t from the bottom, you’ve got to get qualified,” she says.

Now she’s using education as a tool to change the system.

Once in Christchurch, Māia was able to enrol in a beauty therapy course that not only gave her a new skill set but a new perspective on herself.

“With no NCEA and no real idea of what to do with myself, I really loved it."

It was a level 7 course and the first high-level education she had ever completed.

"It also taught me that I was capable of studying and being something," she says. “I just decided that I wasn’t going to punish myself for what other people had done to me anymore."

Now Māia is just months away from completing her second bachelor's degree, finishing her studies in Criminal Justice, Political Science, Māori and Indigenous Studies, and a minor in Human Services, at the University of Canterbury.

“I had become sick of complaining about the systems and institutions that failed me and all the kids like me, and decided that I should put up or shut up."

Māia wants to make it clear higher education wasn’t an easy path to get her to the person she is now.

“In my first year of university, I was diagnosed with PTSD. Because of my choice of study, I was reliving a lot of traumatic experiences,” she says.

But at just 19, she was able to stick it out.

“It’s a very long journey that I see ahead. During my time at university, I realised how I wanted to make change. I want to work on culturallyappropriate responses to at-risk youth, designing programmes, designing interventions and things that will work,” she says.

“I want to advise policy. Being in that political sector, in that elitist sector with a background like mine, is enough for me,” she says.