A message to my hometown

A speech I gave to the kids from my hometown that I thought maybe you'd like to hear too 𓆩♡𓆪

This would usually be a Friday diary entry just for our paid supporters, but a lot of you ask about what I talk about at the events I go to, and I thought this was a bit of a different one, so I’d share it with you!

This past week I’ve been back home - the place I grew up, met Rubes and Liv (and all my other besties), had my first job, first kiss, first bout of depression - first everything! I was home to talk at a conference about the ‘future of work’ for our young ones, and I was adamant to be as honest as possible about what growing up in a small town did for me - the good and the bad. Here’s what I said:

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“What’s up everyone - I’m Luce & I’m actually from here which is really cool and weird and kinda comforting? It’s strange to be back here for a ✨work ✨ thing, because usually, this is the place where I’m super out of office, rotting in my childhood bed!

But why am I here? Well, back in 2018 I founded a media company with my two best mates, Rubes and Liv - both of whom are from Blenheim too! It’s called Shit You Should Care About and it exists to do exactly that - to help us all give a shit about whatever we want, and to not be made to feel stupid or lame for doing so!! And the business stuff is cool, but I thought we’d talk a little bit about Blenheim first - before all that happened.

Rubes, Liv and I were literally just like you. We loved Blenheim because while it didn’t feel like there was that much to do (we dreamed of having a mall to hang out in and Rubes and I even begged our parents to send us away to a co-ed boarding school!) it meant we just had a whole lot of time to THINK - and think we did! We got existential about everything (maybe to our detriment), we imagined starting magazines, or cafes together - of doing so many things together - and it’s kinda crazy that we actually did end up starting a business together. But, we owe a lot of that to just knowing each other inside and out because there just wasn’t much else to do.

My first job here was delivering newspapers around the neighbourhood on a Wednesday morning - which I always find funny because now my job is delivering the news to about 75,000 people in a morning newsletter, a couple of million people on Instagram, hundreds of thousands of people on podcasts - I reckon we’re probably reaching a few more people than the Marlborough Sun would reach on those Wednesday mornings. Cool to think about how things come full circle like that eh?

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A few years after the paper-delivering job, I went to Marlborough Girls’ College and was their ‘Head Girl.’ It’s funny because after Year 13 I told myself that if I ever did anything ‘notable’ or became ‘successful’ I would never go back to that school to talk about it. Year 13 was one of the worst years of my life. This had a little bit to do with the ‘senior management team’ (which was different back then) because they did noooot get me (or know how to deal with me maybe) and a lot to do with teenage angst and being super mentally unwell and not knowing how to deal with it (and therefore, my friends took on that burden - ily guys.)

I was also somewhat of a rogue Head Girl - I loved doing things for the students but didn’t so much love doing things for the teachers (I wasn’t being paid - they were! Not enough though, but that’s another conversation). Put simply, I wanted to make something that was typically boring (school), fun! Kinda like what I try to do with the news - I want to make it fun!

I did things like organize a Year 13 Sleepover where we all slept at school overnight, hosted a Spirit Week where we just played games and acted insane for a whole week in the name of “school spirit”, I got all the prefects to come in on an April fools prank where we spread rumours for WEEKS about a famous celebrity coming to school to perform, but just got all the male teachers at the time to dress up as a boyband and perform a song on the quad for us (we even got the local radio and newspaper in on the prank.)

I also remember at the end of the year, when you have to write a ‘leaving song’ (ours was set to the tune of Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift because of course) and I wrote and printed an entirely different version to give to the teachers for approval, while me and my classmates sung our actual truth in the final version (it wasn’t controversial, just funny).

My final ✨rogue act✨ was helping to organise a senior prank on the boy’s college, where all our Year 13 students infiltrated the boy’s school after dark and just, idk, harmlessly pulled pranks on the school. The next morning I was called into the Principal’s office and threatened to “have my badge stripped from me” (in an iconic moment, the deputy head girl took the whole blame, said she organised the whole thing and that I knew nothing about it.) But I remember not really giving a shit about my badge being ‘stripped’ from me, because this was the MOST united our year group had ever been - people who didn’t usually hang out… hung out, and it was such a fun way to finish our final year at school. Plus I was leaving - who cares!!

As you can tell I was there to make things fun, and not there to organize the formal or force everyone to use their study periods to actually study. 

I think I also had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about the whole ‘prefect’ and ‘head girl’ thing because all of my closest friends were the most creative, brilliant, and intelligent people I knew, and only one of them became a prefect. I guess I just didn’t like the hierarchy of it all, and couldn’t really understand it - but anyway - all my friends who weren’t ‘prefects’ ended up having a much better year than me - and honestly - for how hung up I was on being a prefect or head student or whatever - having a title like that did not get me any ‘perks’ or any further in life. So don’t stress if that isn’t written in the stars for you - it’s incredibly overrated!

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After the rogue Head Girl years, I did what most people from Blenheim at the time felt was their only option - I went to uni (PS, this is just SO not the case anymore, you do not have to go to uni) but I did, along with Rubes and Liv (of course) to Victoria University in Wellington. It was when I was in my third year of uni that I was sitting in the back of the lecture theatre and was kinda like… why am I not understanding any of the events they’re referring to in the world?? Or the readings they’re setting me?? And I’ve been here for THREE YEARS?? Why is the news so… not made for people our age?

So I text Rubes and Liv and was like ‘I think we should start something called Shit You Should Care About where people aren’t afraid to care about anything.” And obv, they were into it! We were pretty hellbent on letting people care about whatever they wanted: from climate change, to Harry Styles, to abortion rights in America, to Formula 1 - it should feel super safe to be into whatever you’re into!

It started as a blog, then we took it to Instagram, and now we have a daily newsletter and two podcasts where we try to give you the news without giving you the blues!

We did it alongside our normal lives for about three years, but it’s now our full-time jobs (crazy!) and it takes us all over the world - Rubes and I have just arrived home from New York where we spoke at an event with people like The New York Times and The Atlantic about how we - Gen Z - like to be spoken to and like to get our news. We’re also followed by a bunch of celebrities (people like Bella Hadid, Blake Lively, FINNEAS, Bella Ramsey) and Gemma Styles even got me on one of her podcasts! It’s the coolest job in the world, mostly because we never could have imagined it would be our actual jobs.

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In my briefing I was told to give you some “lessons and wisdom” - I’m hesitant to do that because of how rogue I am as a person (as you heard before), but just this once I will follow the rules, and leave you with some shit you should care about:

• You should just try new things and fail really fast - who cares!! The more times you fail the quicker you find out what you’re actually into or what is actually gonna work for you!!

• Everything is temporary. This is something me and my mates talk about all the time - it’s SUCH a comfort to us. You go to uni and hate it? It’s temporary - try a new subject, switch uni’s, go home! You start a new job and you hate it? It’s temporary! You move to a new place and you hate it? Guess what - it’s temporary!

• Your job genuinely might not exist yet, so pleeeease don’t stress out if you don’t know what you want to do. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I ‘grew up’ (and my lecturers at uni told us on multiple occasions that there were no jobs in journalism), so when people would ask what I was going to do after I graduated, I’d tell them ‘my job doesn’t exist yet!’ This was just because I genuinely had no idea what I was going to do, but… it turned out to be true.

• And for that reason (and this is something me and Rubes come back to all the time) don’t feel like you have to set long-term goals! I know this might go against what your teachers have been telling you (kinda like the rest of my talk) but the world is changing super quickly and the best thing you can do to prep yourself for the ✨future✨ is just be ready to change with it!!

I’ve loved being home, loved getting to share why I am so glad to have grown up here, and honestly, just hope you’ve found some comfort in some of the things I’ve said. You got this!!! Who cares!!”